2i6 Notes and Comments. 



VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM. 



A letter has been sent from the Museums Association, 

 representing the museums and art galleries of the Empire, to 

 the Prime Minister, protesting against the closing of the 

 Victoria and Albert Museum, in whole or part, in order to 

 provide offices for the Board of Education. It is pointed out 

 that, ' apart from all other considerations, it is universally 

 recognised that to secure the supremacy of British trade after 

 the war the standard of artistic excellence in our manufactures 

 must be raised, and this is the special raison d'etre of the Victoria 

 and Albert Museum. To appropriate extensive portions of 

 the institution for quite other purposes will greatly hamper 

 this vital function of the museum. The loss to the general 

 community from the educational point of view will be heavy, 

 too, and we find it difficult to conceive that the Board of 

 Education, of all Departments, can be a party to the arrange- 

 ment.' The hope is expressed that it ' may be found possible 

 to provide other and more suitable quarters for the Board, 

 and thus avoid this seriously retrograde step.' 



A BUSINESS MUSEUM. 



' The Londoner ' writes on the subject in the London- 

 Evening News of May 31st. He truly says : — Some of us are 

 going to be robbed of what pleases us very much : friendly 

 fellow-citizens should stand by us. But there is a better 

 reason for complaint. It is the sacred reason that every 

 Englishman will heed. When I say that, ' after all, Business 

 is Business,' the great heart of the country should be touched. 

 And here is a case where we should say that Business is Busi- 

 ness. If we close this Museum and turn it into another nest 

 for those swarming Cuthberts, the civil service clerks, we 

 shall lose money by the change. For South Kensington Mus- 

 eum, if you look at it fairly, is Business : it is a factory : it 

 is an annex to half our factories. South Kensington Museum 

 is there to teach their trades to weavers and joiners and potters, 

 to workers in glass and metal. I do not say that, if we shut 

 all our Museums, we could not make ourselves cups and plates 

 and tables and the rest, things that would serve their purpose 

 in our houses. But be very sure that, if we cut off the workers 

 from the sight of all the beautiful work of the ages gone by, 

 we shall lose all our foreign trade in such wares. We shall 

 give the world-market to the Boche, who is not closing his 

 industrial Museums. So like our officials, is it not, that this 

 thing should be threatened by a Board which calls itself a 

 Board of Education, which is setting about to stop the educa- 

 tion of the hand and the eye ? ' 



A supplement to the Journal of the Board of Agriculture dealing with 

 grass land and ploughed land, has been issued, at the price of 4dr 



Naturalist, 



