58 PHYSIOLOGY AND NATTTBAL HISTORY. 



British Museum also coutains a Taluable Collection of Fossil Plants, but not more 

 readily available for Science than its Zoological Collections. 



There exists no Tj'pical or Popular Botanical Museum for public inspection. 



The efficiency of the Botanical Gardens and Museumof Economic Botany at Ke^v 

 as now organized, and the consequent advantages to Science and the public, are 

 too generally recognized to need any comment on the part of your Memorialists. 



In Zoology — The British Museum contains a magnificent Collection of Recent 

 and Fossil Animals, the property of the State, and intended both for public exhi- 

 bition and scientific use. But there is no room for its proper display, nor for the 

 provision of the necessary accommodation for its study — still less for the separation 

 of a Popular Typical series for public inspection, apart from the great mass of 

 specimens whose importance is appreciated by professed Naturalists. And, in the 

 attempt to combine the two, the Public are only dazzled and confused by the 

 multiplicity of unexplained objects, densely crowded together on the shelves and 

 «ases ; the man of science is, for three days in the week, deprived of the opportu- 

 nity of real study; and the specimens themselves suffer severely from the dust and 

 dirt of the locality, increased manifold by the tread of the crowds who pass 

 through the galleries on Public i)ays, — the necessity of access to the specimens on 

 other days preventing their being arranged in hermetically closed cases. 



A Museum of Economic Zoology has been commenced at South Kensington. 



There is an unrivalled Zoological Garden or living Collection, well situated in 

 the Regent's Park, but not the property of the State, nor receiving any other than 

 indirect assistance, in the terms on which its site is granted. 



The measures which your Memorialists would respectfully urge upon the consid- 

 eration of Her Majesty's Government, with a view to rendering the Collections 

 really available for the purposes for which they are intended, are the following: — 



That the Zoological Collections at present existing in the British Museum be se- 

 para:ed into two distinct CoUectious, — the one to form a Typical or Popular Mu- 

 seum, the other to cnnstitute the basis of a complete Scientific Museum. 



These Museums might be lodged in one and the same building, and be under one 

 direction, provided they were arranged in such a manner as to be seijarately accessi- 

 ble ; so that the one would always be open to the Public, the other to the man of 

 science, or any pi rson seeking for spoeial information. This arrangement would 

 involve no more trouble, and would be as little expensive as any other which could 

 answer its double purpose, as the Typical or Popular Museum might at once be 

 made almost co nplete, and would require but very slight, if any, additions. 



In fact, the plan proposed is only a further development of the system accor- 

 ding to which the Entomological, Conchological, and Osteological Collections in the 

 British Museum are already worked. 



That an appiopriate Zoological Library be attached to the Scientific Museum, 

 totally independent of the Zoological portion of the Library of the British Museum, 

 which, in the opinion of your Memorialists, is inseparable from the General Li- 

 brary. 



That the Scientific Zoological Museum and Library be placed under one head 



