48 REPORT—1890. 
by means of their flourishing Institute for the advancement of technical 
education, which, through its two great instructional establishments in 
London, and through the operation of its system of examinations through- 
out the country, extending now even to the Colonies, has afforded very 
important aid towards eradicating the one great blot upon our national 
educational organisation. To have been first in the field in practically 
developing a far-reaching scheme for the advancement of technical educa- 
tion in this country must continue to be a source of pride to the City of 
London and its ancient Guilds in time to come, when the operation of 
efficient legislation, supported and extended by patriotic munificence and 
by the hearty co-operation of associations of earnest and competent 
workers in the cause, shall have placed the machinery and resources for 
the technical instruction of the people upon a footing commensurate with 
our position among Nations. 
The remarkable Address delivered by Owen here in 1858, wherein — 
the condition, at that time, of those branches of natural science 
which he had made particularly his own was most comprehensively 
reviewed, included some especially interesting observations on the 
importance to the cultivation and progress of the natural sciences, and 
to the advancement of education of the masses in this country, 
of providing adequate space and resources for the proper develop- 
ment of our National Museum of Natural History; and it cannot 
but be a source of great satisfaction and pride to him to have lived to 
witness the thoroughly successful realisation of the objects of his own 
indefatigable strivings and powerful advocacy in that direction. Com- 
prehensive as were the views adopted by Owen regarding the scope and 
possible extension of that museum, it may, however, be doubted whether 
they ever embraced so extensive a field as was presented for our contem- 
plation by his successor last year, when he told us that a natural history 
museum should, in its widest and truest sense, represent, so far as they can 
be illustrated by musenm-specimens, all the sciences which deal with 
natural phenomena, and that the difficulties of fitly illustrating them have 
probably alone excluded such subjects as astronomy, physics, chemistry, 
and physiology, from occupying departments in our National Museum of 
Natural History. 
The application, in its broadest signification, of the title, Natural 
History Museum, may doubtless be considered to include, not only illustra- 
tions and examples of the marvellous works of the Creator and of the 
results of man’s labours in tracing their intimate history and their relations 
to each other, but also illustrations of the means employed, and of the 
results attained, by man in his strivings to fathom and unravel the laws 
by which the domains of Nature are governed. But the reason why 
representative collections, illustrative of the physical sciences, do not form 
part of our National Natural History Museum, has, I venture to think, 
