52 Notes and Comments. 



the collections, and to whom the donors look for the proper 

 care of the various specimens they have given to the nation, 

 have written thanking the press for the support given in this 

 crisis. There is no doubt that this support was most necessary, 

 but we trust that in the future the Trustees of the British 

 Museum will decide momentous matters of this kind without 

 leaving it to public opinion. If the Trustees are the Trustees, 

 and if they have the power which was given them by an Act of 

 Parliament passed in the reign of George II. — an x^ct which has 

 never been repealed — they should have had the power to have 

 prevented Sir Alfred Mond or anybody else from interfering 

 with the control of the Buildings and their contents. 



LETTERS IN THE PRESS. 



We should much like to refer at length to the correspondence 

 which has appeared, but will be content with quoting from two : 

 the first, on behalf of the Museums Association, signed by the 

 President (Mr. E. Rimbault Dibdin), and the Hon. Secretary 

 (Mr. E. E. Lowe) ; and the other from Sir Henry H. Howorth. 

 Both appeared in The Times : — 



THE MUSEUMS ASSOCIATION. 



' The Museums Association desires to support in the most 

 unequivocal manner, the weighty protests raised in your pages 

 by Sir John Sandys, Sir Arthur Evans, Sir H. H. Howorth, 

 Mr. R. C. Witt, Mr. Kennedy Jones, M.P., Mr. C. J. Holmes and 

 Mr. H. E. Maiden. My Council has, however, reason to believe 

 that the Government proposes to take a further step no less 

 disastrous to the interests of learning. It intends, we hear, 

 to turn out collections and workers from the greater part of 

 the galleries of the Natural History Museum, so that it may 

 house a couple of departments, which it is evicting elsewhere. 

 Had the proposers of this step any conception of the damage 

 it must infhct on the present and future welfare of the nation 

 itself, no less than on the priceless and irreplaceable collections 

 entrusted to its charge for present and future generations, 

 then no words of reprobation could be too strong for them. 

 We who, as professional museum officials, are familiar with 

 the vast extent of these collections, with the scientific research 

 of which they are the foundation, and with the labour involved 

 in the mere task of preserving them in orderly and good 

 condition — are appalled at the certain confusion, at the 

 inevitable and irremediable damage, and at the years of un- 

 necessary labour such a step will involve. Few, even of the 

 educated public, understand the magnitude of the interests 

 affected, and we therefore consider it our duty to raise the most 

 solemn protest and warning before the step is irrevocably 

 taken.' 



Naturalist, 



