450 
NATURE 
[ Oct. 6, 1879 
chief executive officer is the present principal librarian, 
with whose great literary qualifications for his position 
every one is well acquainted, but who would not, I am 
sure, claim for himself in any sense the name of a natu- 
ralist. It will thus be seen that the actual government 
of our Natural History collections is at present vested 
in persons who have no special qualifications for the task. 
But, it may be said, there is the Superintendent of the 
Natural History collections, and the keepers of the 
various departments into which they are divided—have 
they nothing to do with the administration ? To this I 
reply, very little indeed, unless theiradviceis asked, or unless 
they choose to offer it. And, in the latter case, they can 
only address the trustees through the secretary, who is 
the only official present at the meetings of the trustees, 
and in whose hands, therefore, the administration of the 
Natural History collections is practically vested. This 
objectionable form of government, we think, ought to be 
replaced by appointing a director of the proposed new 
institution, “immediately responsible to one of the 
Queen’s Ministers.” This simple form of administration 
has been mest successful in other scientific institutions, 
such as the Kew Gardens and Herbarium, and the Royal 
Observatory, and we believe it would be the best in the 
present case. It might, however, be advisable to give 
the Director of the National Museum of Natural History 
a board of advice, composed of the heads of the princi- 
pal departments into which the Museum is divided. Or 
another mode of softening the despotism would be to 
appoint a board of visitors, consisting of distinguished 
naturalists. These might be delegates from the principal 
scientific societies of the country, each of whom would be 
specially bound to see that the particular branch of 
science, to the advancement of which his society is 
devoted, received its fair share of attention. 
As regards the subordinate appointments in the Natural 
Museum of Natural History, these ought to be made, if 
not on the nomination of the director, at least not without 
his full sanction and approval. The director, being held 
responsible for the well-doing of the whole establishment, 
should certainly be allowed.to select his own officers more 
or less directly. It is well known that some of the appoint- 
ments made by the trustees in the departments of Natural 
History in the British Museum have been, to say the least 
of them, in no wise felicitous, and that in one case at 
least great public scandal has been caused by the noto- 
rious incompetence of the person nominated, It is in vain 
to address remonstrances to a body of irresponsible trustees, 
but if the director is required to sanction every nomination, 
we Shall know to whom to apply in case of any appoint- 
ment not being up to the mark. 
Il. Of the form of Building of the National Museum 
of Natural History. 
In discussing the form of building best adapted for a 
great National Museum of Natural History, let us begin 
by considering the principal classes of persons for whose 
accommodation it is or ought to be constructed. These 
are— 
1. The public at large, who go there to get a more or 
less general notion of the structure of natural objects and 
of their arrangement in the Systema Nature. 
2, The students who use the Museum for scientific 
purposes. 
3. The officers of the institution, whose business it is 
to amass and arrange the collections. 
In the opinion of most members of parliament apparently 
especially of those who represent metropolitan constituen- 
cies, the first of these three classes is that whose accom- 
modation ought to be first considered in the present case. 
In my opinion, and probably in that of most of those here 
present, the National Museum of Natural History ought to 
be constructed primarily for the accommodation of the third 
of the three classes. For, unless the officers of the institution 
have ample space and opportunity to examine and arrange 
the collection, it is obvious that neither the public nor the 
special student can be benefited thereby. At the same 
time I do not think that the public ought to be utterly 
excluded from their Museum four days in every week, as is 
now the case, and | therefore put it forward as an axiom 
that some system of construction of the New Museum 
should be adopted whereby the public can be admitted 
all day and every day to view the collections without inter- 
fering with the scientific work of the establishment or 
with the special examination of objects by students. 
There is, so far as I know, only one plan by which this 
object can be carried out—namely, by arranging the 
exhibited objects in large wall-cases, to which access is 
obtainable from the back by doors opening into work- 
rooms adjoining the exhibition room, In this way any 
ordinary object can be removed out of the series into the 
adjoining work-room, and returned to its place without 
disturbing the public in front of the cases, just as any 
article can be taken out of the shop-windows in Regent 
Street without interfering with those who are looking into 
them from the pavement outside. This system of exhi- 
bition would be attended by the further very great 
advantage that the glass cases may be hermetically sealed 
on the side towards the public, and the ingress of dirt and 
dust thus prevented. Those who are acquainted with the 
filthy state of the specimens in the public galleries of the 
British Museum, in spite of frequent cle ‘nsings inflicted 
upon them, will readily appreciate the mecit of this plan.* 
This collocation of the exhibition galleries and corre- 
sponding working-rooms being insisted upon as of primary 
importance, the general form of the building must depend 
somewhat upon the site on which it is to be placed. My 
own belief, however, is that a hollow square, or something 
nearly approaching that form, will in many ways be most 
convenient for a National Museum of Natural History, and 
the sketches which I now exhibit, which have been pre- 
pared for me by my accomplished friend Mr. Osbert 
Salvin, will serve to show the general plan of arrangement 
which I propose. The building might be of three or four 
stories, since, in the system of exhibition which I advo- 
cate, it would not be necessary to have top-lights. The 
basement, which might be partly below the surface, would 
be dedicated to taxidermy and to rooms for unpacking, 
storage, and mechanical work of all sorts. In the outer 
galleries running round the whole length of the ground 
story, I should propose to arrange the entire series of 
vertebrates from the highest mammal to the lowest fish. 
The specimens, according to the system already spoken of, 
would be placed in hermetically sealed glass cases along 
the inner walls of the galleries. The inner series of rooms 
surrounding the interior of the hollow square would be 
the working-rooms for the officers of the museum and the 
students of natural history, and would communicate with 
the glass cases on the inner side of the outer galleries. 
Each set of working-rooms would, of course, be in imme- 
diate apposition to the glass cases containing the corre- 
sponding series of exhibited objects. The lights to these 
working-rooms would be furnished from the inner sides of 
the hollow square. 
In the first story of the building I should propose to 
arrange the series of invertebrate animals in exactly the 
same way, with the rooms for officers and students imme- 
diately adjoining them on the inner side. 
The third story might contain the botanical and mine- 
ralogical collections, and perhaps certain others which it 
might not be possible to introduce into the general series, 
unless room could be found for these collections in the 
second story. 
* In an admirable article on this subject in NATuRE, for May 26, 1870, 
Prof. Flower has attributed the original invention of this mode of exhibition 
to myself, I having first brought it under his notice. It appears, however, 
from a subsequent communication to NaTurg& by Prof. Flower (June 2, 
1870), that the same plan had been already proposed by Dr. Hooker in the 
Gardener's Chronicle for 1858. p. 749. 1 can only, therefore, claim to be a# 
(not ¢He) original inventor of this method of arrangement, 
