422 



NA TURE 



{Sept. I, 1 88] 



my plan, and expressed my belief that "Administrators will 

 consider it due to the public that the gentlemen in charge of the 

 several departments of the National Collection of Natural His- 

 tory should have assigned to them the duty of explaining the 

 principles and economical relations of such departments, in 

 elementary and free lectures, a", e.g. on Ethnology, Mammalogy, 

 Ornithology, Herpetology and Ichthyology, Malacology and 

 Conchology, Entomology, Zoophytology, ^Botany, Geology, 

 Palaeontology, Mineralogy." 



After the lapse of twenty years I have lived to see the fulfil- 

 ment of all the recommendations, save the final one, of my 

 Report of 1859. The lecture-theatre was erased from my plan, 

 and the elementary courses of lectures remain for future ful- 

 filment. 



Considering that, in the probable communication of this 

 Report to Parliament, I was addressing the representatives of 

 the greatest commercial and colonising nation in the globe, 

 representatives of an empire exercising the widest range of 

 navigation and supreme in naval power, such nation and empire 

 might well be expected by the rest of the civilised world to offer 

 to students and lovers of natural history the best and noblest 

 museum of the illustrations of that great division of general 

 science. 



But for such a museum, a site or superficial space of not less 

 than eight acres was asked for, the proportion of such space to 

 be occupied by the proposed building being, at first, limited, 

 and dependent upon its architectural arrangement in one, two, 

 or more storeys. But the effect of restricting the site or avail- 

 able superficial space to that, e.g. on which the Museum at 

 Bloomsbury now stands, was significantly demonstrative of diffi- 

 culties to come, and concomitantly indicative of the administra- 

 tive wisdom which would be manifested by securing, in a rapidly 

 growing metropolis, adequate space for future additions to the 

 building which might be in the first place erected thereupon. 



Nevertheless one or two of my intimate and confidential friends 

 dissuaded me from sending in a Report which might be construed 

 or misinterpreted as exemplifyiug a character prone to incon- 

 siderate and extravagant views, and such as might even lead to 

 disagreeable personal consequences. Moreover the extent of 

 space reported for seemed inevitably to involve change of loca- 

 lity. Two of my colleagues occupied the elegant and commo- 

 dious residences attached to the British Museum ; and it was 

 possible that provision for such residences marked in the plan 

 which accompanied my Report might not be adopted. Moreover 

 no statement of grounds for adequate space requirements for the 

 whole of the National Museum of Natural History had previously 

 been submitted to authority. The legislative mind had n6t been 

 prepared for calm and due consideration of the subject. Still I 

 flattered myself that, by whomsoever the details and aims and 

 grounds of my Report « ere known and comprehended, any strong 

 opposition on the part of Parliament could hardly be expected. 

 Nevertheless, an Irish Member seeing a way to a position in the 

 House which is gained by the grant of a Committee of Inquiry, of 

 which the Mover becomes Chairman, made my Report and Plan 

 the ground of a motion to that effect, which was carried. The 

 Select Committee, after taking the evidence published in the 

 Blue Book {ordered to be printed August 10, 1S60, quarto, pp. 

 238, with ten plans), reported against the removal of the Natural 

 History Collections from the British Museum. As to the chief 

 reasons alleged for such removal the Report states that with one 

 "eminent exception the whole of the scientific naturalists ex- 

 amined before your Committee, including the Keepers of all the 

 Departments of Natural History in the British Museum, are of 

 opinion that an exhibition on so large a scale tends alike to the 

 needless bewilderment and fatigue of the public, and the im- 

 pediment of the studies of the scientific visitor .... Your 

 Committee, therefore, recommend the adoption of the more 

 limited kind of exhibition advocated by the other witnesses, in 

 preference to the more extended method recommended by Prof. 

 Owen." 



Lest however the House might attach undue weight to the 

 exceptional testimony, the chairman of the Committee deemed 

 it his duty, in bringing up the Report, to warn the House of the 

 character of such testimony, and his speech left, as I was told, a 

 very unfavourable impression as regards myself. I was chiefly 

 concerned to know what might be put upon record in "Han- 

 sard." In that valuable work hon. members revise their reported 

 utterances before the sheets go to press. I was somewhat re- 

 lieved to find Mr. Gregory regretting that "a man whose name 

 stood so high should connect himself with so foolish, crazy, and 



extravagant a scheme, and .should persevere in it after the folly 

 had been pointed out by most unexceptionable witnesses. . . . 

 "They had on one side, and standing alone, Prof. Owen and 

 his ten-acre scheme, and on the other side all the other scientific 

 gentlemen, who were perfectly unanimous in condemning the 

 plan of Prof. Owen as being utterly useless and bewildering. 

 . . . "Among the'e gentlemen were Prof. Huxley, Prof. Mas- 

 kelyne, Mr. Waterhouse, Dr. Gray, Sir Roderick Murchison, 

 Mr. Thomas Bell, P.G.S., Dr. Sclater, Sec.Z.S., Mr. Gould, 

 and SirBenjamin Brodie. To give the Hou-e some idea of that 

 gigantic plan, he might mention that a part of it consisted of 

 galleries 850 feet in length for the exhibition of whales. The 

 scientific men examined on the snbject, one and all, disapproved 

 of that plan in tola ; and they advocated what was technically 

 called a ' typical mode of exhibition.' "^ 



In point of fact that Supplementary Exhibition Room which 

 was planned and recommended for the purpose I have already 

 cited, was urged by the instructor of Mr. Gregory as the sole 

 reasonably required National Museum of Natural History, for 

 which the nation ought to be called upon to provide space and 

 funds, a conclusion subsequently adopted and unanimously re- 

 commended by the Royal Commission on Science." 



Although grief was natural and considerable at this result, not 

 without mortification at the reception by Parlkament of the 

 "Report and Plan" submitted thereto, I iiow feel grateful that the 

 sole responsil)ility of their author is attested in the pages of a 

 Work^ which will last as long as, and may possibly outlast, the 

 great legislative organisation whose debates and determinations 

 are therein authoritatively recorded. 



I was not, however, cast down, nor did I lose either heart or 

 hope ; I was confident in the validity of the grounds of my 

 appeal, and foresaw in the inevitable accumulations year by 

 year, the evidence which would attest its soundness and make 

 plain the emergency of the proposed remedy. 



Moreover, there was one who, though not a naturalist, had 

 devoted more time, pains, and thought to the subject than had 

 been bestowed by any — whether naturalist or administrator — who 

 testified adversely thereon. The Right Hon. William Ewart 

 Gladstone, an elected Trustee of the British Museum, took 

 nothing on trust ; he explored with me in 1S61 every vault and 

 dark recess in the Museum which had been or could be allotted 

 to the non-exhibited specimens of the natural history, those, viz. 

 which it was my aim to utilise and bring to light. He gave the 

 same attention to the series selected for exhibition in the public 

 galleries, and ajipreciated the inadequacy of the arrangements 

 to that end. He listened to my statements of facts, to the 

 grounds of prevision of annua! ratios of increase, to the reasons 

 for providing space therefor, to my views of the aims of such 

 exhibitions, and to the proposed extended applications and eluci- 

 dations of the collections. Mr. Gladstone tested every aver- 

 ment, and elicited the grounds of every suggestion, with a tact 

 and insight that contrasted strongly with the questionings in Mr. 

 Gregory's committee-room, where too often vague interrogations 

 met with answers to match. 



Conformably with Mr. Gladstone's convictions, he as Chancellor 

 of the Exchequer moved, May 12, 1S62, for "Leave to bring 

 in a Bill for removal of portions of the Tru^tees' Collections in 

 the British Museum." 



On May ig, when the Bill was to be read a second time, 

 a new, unexpected, and formidable antagtniist arose. Mr. 

 Disraeli early got the attention of the House to a speech, 

 warning hon. members of the "progressive increase of expendi- 

 ture on civil estimates," and laying stress on the fact that the 

 "estimates of the actual year showed no surplus."* The in- 

 fluence of this advocacy of economy is exemplified in the debate 

 which ensued. For repetitions of the nature and terms of 

 objections to the Report and plan, as already denounced by Mr. 

 Gregory, Mr. Bernal Osborne, and others, reference may be 

 made to the volume of "Hansard" cited below. An e-timable 

 hon. member, whose words had always and deservedly carried 

 weight with the country party, lent his influence to the same 

 result. Mr. Henley, representative of Oxfordshire, said ; — 

 "All the House knew v\as that a building was to be pint up 

 somewhere. He considered this a bad way of doing business, 

 particularly at a time when nobody could be sanguine that the 

 finances of the country were in a flourishing state. Let the 

 stone once be set rolling, and then all gentlemen of science and 

 taste would have a kick at it, and it would lie knocked from one 

 ' "HansDird." Debate of July 22, 1861, pp. 1861, 1918. 

 ■ Founh Report, p. 4. 1 "Hansard," ut supra. 4 11:. 1862, p. 1027, 



