TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. — DEPT. ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY. 653 



generation, or thirty years. It further recommended that such museum-building, 

 besides giving the requisite accommodation to the several classes of natural history 

 objects, as they had been by authority exhibited and arranged for public instruction 

 and gratification, should also include a hall, or exhibition-space for a distinct 

 department, adapted to convey an elementary knowledge of the subjects of all the 

 divisions of natural history to the large projportion of public visitors not specially 

 conversant with any of those subjects. 



I may crave permission to quote from that part of my Ileport which lias 

 received the sanction of the ' Commission on the Advancement of .Science' of 1874 : 

 ' One of the most popular and instructive features in a public collection of natural 

 history would be an apartment devoted to the specimens selected to show type- 

 characters of the principal groups of organised and crystallised forms. This would 

 constitute an epitome of natural history, and should convey to the eye in the easiest 

 way, an elementary knowledge of the sciences.' ' 



An estimate of the space required for such apartment is given, and it has been 

 obtained in the new Museum of Natural History. 



I ventured also on another topic in connection with the more immediate object 

 of my Report. Previous experience at the museum of the Iloyal College of 

 Surgeons had impressed me with the influence on improved applications of col- 

 lections and on the ratio of their growth, through Lectures expository of their 

 nature. I felt confident that, with concurrence of authorities, both relations would 

 be exemplified under the actual superintendence at the British Museum. More- 

 over, such museum of natural history has wider influences over possessors and 

 collectors of rarities and of desiderated specimens than one of restricted kind as 

 in Lincoln's Inn Fields. I concluded my Report, therefore, bv referring to the 

 lecture theatre shown in my plan, and expressed my belief tha't ' Adrainistrators 

 will consider it due to the public that the gentlemen in charge of the several 

 departments of the National Collection of Natural History should have assigned to 

 them the duty of explaining the principles and economical relations of such depart- 

 ments, in elementary and free lectures, as, e.g. on Ethnology, Mammalogy, Orni- 

 thology, Herpetology and Ichthyology, Malacology and Conchologv, Entomology, 

 Zoophytology, Botany, Geology, PaL-e ontology. Mineralogy.' 



After the lapse of twenty j'ears I have lived to see the fulfilment of all the recom- 

 mendations, save the final one, of my Report of 1859. The lecture-theatre was 

 erased from my plan, and the elementary courses of lectures remain for future fulfil- 

 ment. 



Considering that, in the probable communication of this Report to Parliament, 

 I was addressing the representatives of the greatest commercial and colonising 

 nation in the globe, representatives of an empire exercising the widest range of 

 navigation and supreme in naval power, such nation and empire might well be ex- 

 pected by the rest of the civilised world to otter to students and lovers of natural 

 history the best and noblest museum of the illustrations of that great division of 

 general science. 



But for such a museum, a site or superficial space of not less than eight acres 

 was asked for, the proportion of such space to be occupied by the proposed build- 

 ing to be limited and dependent upon architectural arrangement in one, two, or 

 more storeys. But the eftect of restricting the site or available superficial space to 

 that, e.g. on which the Museum at Bloomsbury now stands, was significantly 

 demonstrative of difficulties to come, and concomitantly indicative of the adminis- 

 trative wisdom which would be manifested by securing, in a rapidly growing 

 metropolis, adequate space for future additions to the building which might be in 

 the first place erected thereupon. 



Nevertheless one or two of my intimate and confidential fiiends dissuaded me 

 from sendmg in a Report which might be construed or misinterpreted as exemplifj-- 

 ing a character prone to inconsiderate and extravagant views, and such as might 

 even lead to disagreeable personal consequences. Moreover the extent of space 

 reported for seemed inevitably to involve change of locality. Two of my colleagues 

 occupied the elegant and commodious residences attached to the British Museum ; 



' Report, id supra, p. 22. 



