ADDRESS TO BIOLOGICAL SECTION, BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 421 
inclined to devote their leisure hours to it a beneficial training 
for whatever their real calling in life may be: they acquire a sense 
of order and method ; they develop their gift of observation; they 
are stimulated to healthy exercise. Nothing encourages them 
in this pursuit more than a well-named and easily accessible 
eollection in their own native town, upon which they can fall back 
as a pattern and an aid for their own. This local collection ought 
to be always arranged and named according to the plan and 
nomenclature adopted in one of those numerous monographs of 
the British Fauna and Flora in which this country excels; and 
I consider its formation in every Provincial Museum to be of 
higher importance than a collection of foreign objects. 
The majority of Provincial Museums contain not only bio- 
logical collections, but very properly, also, collections of art and 
literature. It is no part of my task to speak of the latter; but 
before I proceed to the next part of my address I must say that 
nothing could more strikingly prove the growing desire of the 
people for instruction than the erection of the numerous Free 
Libraries and Museums now spread over the country. The 
healthier their rivalry the safer their growth will be, especially 
if they avoid depending on aid from the State, or placing them- 
selves in the hands of a responsible minister; if they remain what 
they are—municipal institutions, the children and pride of their 
own province. 
However great, however large a country or a nation may be, 
it can have, in reality, only one National Museum truly deserving 
of the name. Yours is the British Museum; those of Scotland 
and Ireland can never reach the same degree of completeness, 
though there is no one who wishes more heartily than I do that 
they may approach it as closely as conditions permit. The most 
prominent events in the recent history of the British Museum (to 
which I must confine the remainder of my remarks) are well known 
to the majority of those present:—that the question either of 
enlarging the present building at Bloomsbury, or of erecting 
another at South Kensington for the collections of Natural 
History, was fully discussed for years in its various aspects; that 
finally a Select Committee of the House of Commons reported in 
favour of the expediency of the former plan; that the Standing 
Committee of the Trustees, than whom there is no one better 
qualified to give an opinion, took the same view; and that, 
