656 REPORT — 1881. 



Nevertheless, iieitber averments nor arguments in the House on May 19, 1862, 

 nor testimonies in the hostile Committee of 1860, 1861, had shaken my faitli in 

 the oTounds on which my Report and Plan of 1S59 had been based. The facts 

 bearino- thereupon, which it was my duty to submit in my ' Annual Reports on the 

 Natural History Departments of the British Museum,' would, I still hoped, have 

 some influence with hon. members of the legislature to whom those Reports are 

 transmitted. 



The .annual additions of specimens continued to increase in number and in 

 value year by year. I embraced every opportunity to excite the interest of lovers 

 of natural history travelling abroad, and of intelligent settlers in our several 

 colonies, to this end, among the results of which I may cite the reception of the 

 Ave-Aye, the Gorilla, the Dodo, the Notornis, the maximised and elephant-footed 

 species of Dinornis, the representatives of the various orders and genera of extinct 

 Reptilia from the Cape of Good Hope, and the equally rich and numerous evidencps 

 of the extinct Marsupialia from Australia, besides such smaller rarities as the 

 animals of the Nautilus and Spirula. 



Wherever room could be found in the exhibition galleries at Bloomsbury for 

 these specimens, stufl'ed or as articulated skeletons, or as detached fossils, tliey 

 were squeezed in, so to speak, to mutely manifest to all visitors, more especially 

 administrative ones, the state of cram to which we were driven at Bloomsburj'. 



Another element of my 'Annual Reports' was the deteriorating influence on 

 valuable specimens of the storage vaults, and the danger of such accumulations to 

 the entire Museum and its priceless contents. And here perhaps you may deem 

 some explanation needful of the grounds of the latter consideration addressed to 

 economical grauters of the National funds. 



The number of specimens preserved in spirits of wine amounted to thousands ; 

 any accidental breakage, with conflagration, in the subterraneous localities con- 

 tiguous with the heating-apparatus of the entire British Museum, would have 

 been as destructive to the building as the gunpowder was meant to be when stored 

 in the vaults beneath King James's Houses of Parliament. 



At this crisis the ' Leading Journal,' after the stormy debate of May 19, 1862, 

 made the following appeal to me : — ' Let Mr. Owen describe exactly "the kind of 

 building that will answer his purpose, that will give space for his whales and light 

 for his humming-birds and butterflies. The House of Commons will hardly, for 

 very shame, give a well-digested scheme so rude a reception as it did on Monday 

 night.' 1 



My answer to this appeal was little more than some ampliflcation, with 

 additional examples, of the several topics embodied in the original Report. The 

 pamphlet ' On the Extent and Aims of a National Museum of Natural History,' 

 with reduced copies of the plans, went through two editions, and no doubt had 

 the eflPect anticipated by the able Editor. 



Another element of reviving hope was the acceptance by Mr. Gregory of the 

 government of a tropical island. 



The sagacious Prime Minister accurately gauged the modified feeling — the 

 subsiding animosity— of Parliament on the subject, and submitted (June 15, 1863) 

 a motion 'for leave to purchase live acres for the required Natural History 

 buildino-.' The choice of locality he left to honourable members. Lord Palmerston 

 pointed out that the requisite extent of site could be obtained at Bloomsbury for 

 50,000/. per acre, and that it could be got at South Kensington for 10,000/. per 

 acre ; and his lordship distinctly stated that the space, in either locality, would be 

 bought for the purpose of a Museum of Natural History. The purchase of the 

 land at South Kensington was accordingly voted by 267 against 135, and thus the 

 Government proposition was carried by a majority of 132. By this vote the 

 decision of Mr. Gregory's Committee was virtually annulled. 



In a conversation with which I was favoured by Lord Palmerston, I interpose 

 a warning against restriction of space, and eventually eight acres of ground we 

 obtained, including the site of the Exhibition Building of 1862, opposite Cromw, 



' The Times, May 21, in a leader on the Museum Debate. 1 



