1856 MUSEUMS AND THEIR ARRANGEMENT 191 



this position. He writes in his Autobiography that, 

 when Sir Henry de la Beche, the Director-General of the 

 Geological Survey, offered him the post Forbes Vacated 

 of Paleontologist and Lecturer on Natural History, 



I refused the former point blank, and accepted the 

 latter only provisionally, telling Sir Henry that I did 

 not care for fossils, and that I should give up Natural 

 History as soon as I could get a physiological post But 

 I held the office for thirty-one years, and a large part of 

 my work has been paleontological. 



Yet the diversion was not without great use. A 

 wide knowledge of paleontology offered a key to 

 many problems that were hotly debated in the years 

 of battle following the publication of the Origin of 

 Species in 1859, as well as providing fresh subject- 

 matter for the lectures in which he continued to give 

 the lay world the results of his thought. 



On the administrative and official side he laid 

 before himself the organisation of the resources of 

 the Museum of Practical Geology as an educational 

 instrument. This involved several years' work in 

 the arrangement of the specimens, so as to illustrate 

 the paleontological lectures, and the writing of . 

 " introductions " to each section of the catalogue, 

 which should be a guide to the students. The 

 " Method of Paleontology " mentioned above served 

 as the prefatory essay to the whole catalogue, and 

 was reprinted in 1869 by the Smithsonian Institute 

 of Washington under the title of Principles and 

 MetJiods of Paleontology. 



