78 ANIMAL LIFE AND HUMAN PROGRESS 



museum is a sort of Barnum's Show a place for the exhibition 

 of freaks is not entirely dead. 



Not long ago two little boys came up to me in the Central 

 Hall of the Natural History Museum and asked the way to 

 the " curios of nature." I said, " What do you mean by 

 that ? " and one replied, " The two-headed cats and such- 

 like things." I asked why they wanted to see them, and 

 the answer was, " Well, sir, they make us laugh." 



I think the majority of our visitors place us on a higher 

 level than that, but it is astonishing how few of them have 

 any idea of the work done behind the scenes. Many of them 

 think that the museum begins and ends with the exhibition 

 galleries and that the staff consists of commissionaires and 

 policemen ; and if that is the case with the people who visit 

 the museum, it is even more so with those who never come 

 near it. 



With our present system of education it is perhaps not 

 surprising that the public should fail to appreciate the relation 

 of a zoological museum to the development of the resources 

 of the Empire. But I must confess that it was something of a 

 shock to me to read the recently issued reports of the Advisory 

 Council to the Committee of the Privy Council for Scientific 

 and Industrial Research ; this Advisory Council included 

 seven scientific men of great eminence chemists, physicists 

 and engineers but no biologist. 



When this Committee was appointed it was arranged that 

 the Advisory Council should " keep in close touch with all 

 Government Departments concerned with or interested in 

 scientific research," by inviting the departments to appoint 

 officers to act as assessors, to advise and assist the Council and 

 attend its meetings. The assessors represent the following 

 departments : Admiralty, Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, 

 Air Board, Development Commission, Colonial Office, Board 

 of Education, Home Office, India Office, Irish "Office, Local 

 Government Board, Medical Research Committee, Ministry of 

 Munitions, Scottish Education Department and the Board of 

 Trade ; but there is no assessor from the Natural History 

 Museum, which was evidently not regarded as a Govern- 



