MUSEUMS AND RESEARCH 79 



ment Department concerned with or interested in scientific 

 research. 



In their report the Council deal with the national institu- 

 tions engaged in scientific research, particularly the National 

 Physical Laboratory, the Imperial Institute and the Imperial 

 College of Science, and they endeavour to complete the list 

 in a footnote which runs as follows : ' The work initiated 

 under the Development and Road Improvement Funds Acts 

 of 1909 and 1910, the work of the Medical Research Committee 

 and that of the Home Office Testing Station at Eskmeals are 

 omitted from this review, which deals only with the develop- 

 ment of industrial research." Here again the Natural History 

 Museum is not mentioned at all ; it is not found worthy to 

 figure on a list of national institutions engaged in scientific 

 research. 



I am precluded by my official position from saying anything 

 about the recent attacks on the Museum by other Government 

 Departments, but I may remind you that Professor Dendy, 

 in the opening lecture of this series, noticed this example of 

 incapacity to understand the importance of the Natural 

 History Museum, and that Professor Bourne in his lecture 

 referred to the treatment of the Natural History Museum 

 as showing how little zoology is valued in this country. 



But, at any rate, things are not so bad nowadays as they 

 used to be. In the days before the Natural History collections 

 of the British Museum were moved to South Kensington, the 

 Zoological Department was housed in an underground dungeon, 

 in the gloom of which many of the catalogues of the collections 

 were written. The department was thus described in 1877 in 

 a review in Nature : " If the visitor to the British Museum will 

 pause at the foot of the staircase leading up to the palaeonto- 

 logical gallery and look carefully into the obscurity in the 

 right-hand corner he will perceive a door with a brass plate 

 on one side of it. On entering this door and descending (with 

 care) a flight of darkened steps, he will find himself in the 

 cellar, which has for many years constituted the workshop of 

 our national zoologists. Two small studies partitioned off 

 to the left are assigned to the keeper of the department and 



