50 rEerort—1890. 
illustrate, and also greatly to enhance, its value, and affording the best 
exemplification of the way in which such collections must exercise direct 
influence upon the advancement of science and upon the diffusion 
of scientific knowledge. These lectures and conferences demonstrated 
the wisdom of the suggestion made by the illustrious representative 
of associated Science in Leeds eighteen years previously, that public 
access to museums should be combined with the delivery of lectures 
emphasising and amplifying the information afforded by their contents. 
The example then set of thoroughly utilising for instructional purposes, 
and for the advancement of science, a collection illustrative of the 
physical sciences, has since heen followed by the Science and Art 
Department ; illustrative lectures connected with the existing nucleus of 
a national gcience-collection have been delivered from time to time, and 
the objerts in the collection are constantly utilised in the courses of 
instruction at the adjoining Normal School of Science. 
Although the national importance of thoroughly representative and 
continuously-maintained science collections has long been manifest, not 
only to all workers in science, but also to all who have cared to inquire, 
even superficially, into the influence of the cultivation of science upon the 
industrial and commercial prosperity of the country, the labours ofa 
Royal Commission, and of successive Committees, in demonstrating the 
necessity for the provision of adequate accommodation for such collections, 
and for their support upon the basis of that afforded to the natural 
history collections, have been very long in bearing fruit. However, 
lovers of science, and those who have the prosperity of the country near 
at heart, have at length cause for rejoicing at the acquisition by the 
Nation of a site in all respects suitable and adequate for the accommoda- 
tion of the science collections, which, as soon as appropriate buildings are 
provided for their reception, will not fail, in comprehensiveness and com- 
pleteness, to become worthy of a Country which has been the birthplace 
of many of the most important discoveries in science, and of a People who 
have led the van among all Nations in making the achievements of 
science subservient to the advancement of industries and commerce. 
The site selected as the permanent home of our National Science 
Collections is immediately in rear of the Natural History Museum, and faces 
the stately edifice, now rapidly progressing towards completion, for the 
erection of which, as an Imperial memorial of the Queen’s Jubilee, funds 
were provided by voluntary contributions from every portion of the Empire 
and every class in the Empire’s Nations. The Imperial: Institute, the 
conception of which we owe to His Royal Highness the Prince of 
Wales, occupies a central position among buildings devoted to the 
illustration and cultivation of pure and applied Science and of the 
Arts—i.e. the Normal School of Science, the Technical College of the 
City and Guilds of London, the National Schools of Art, the Science 
Museum, the South Kensington Museum, and the Royal College 
