Febeuary 15, 1918] 



SCIENCE 



165 



condition of his specimens leaves little to be 

 desired. The insects in the collection number 

 over 100,000, and the shells 52,000. Mr. Eip- 

 pon's great wish was that his collections should 

 not be broken up, but that they should have 

 some home where they could be of public or 

 private use. 



The Rippon collection will enable the Na- 

 tional Museuim of Wales to teach natural his- 

 tory in a way it could not attempt without 

 such ample resources. It will also enable the 

 student to examine exotic types and be of great 

 aid to the specialist in the determination of 

 species. So complete is the series that such 

 gaps as occur, either in the insect collection or 

 the shell collections, can be easily filled as op- 

 portunity offers in the future. Many of the 

 larger and more curious shells and insects are 

 familiar through the pages of standard works 

 on general natural history. No illustration in 

 any book could, however, do justice to the 

 wonderful coloring of some of these exotic in- 

 sects. An idea of the extent of the collections 

 in the Lepidoptera alone will be gained when 

 it is stated that in the Papilionidse (the Swal- 

 low-tails) there are over 3,000 specimens, and 

 in the Nymphalidse (or Fritillaries) there are 

 over 5,000. Dragon-flies, May-flies, crickets, 

 grasshoppers, the wonderful stick and leaf in- 

 sects of the tropics, the many and curious flies 

 belonging to the order Diptera, the beetles or 

 Coleoptera which number over 40,000 speci- 

 mens, the ants, bees and wasps or Hymenop- 

 tera are too numerous to do more than men- 

 tion. 



The shells, or Mollusca, are exceedingly numerous 

 and well represented in all the large and beautiful 

 forms from the coral reefs of the Pacific, among 

 which may be mentioned the Cones, Cowries, 

 Olives, Woodcock shells, Volutes, and many others. 

 There is an example of the rare Orange Cowry, 

 used by the natives of Fiji and New Caledonia as 

 a badge of royalty, and many Volutes for which 

 high prices have been given. Many large and 

 beautifully colored bivalve shells crowd the cabi- 

 nets. 



The collection of minerals comprises about 

 3,000 specimens many of which are from such 

 widely diartant parts as Siberia, Japan, South 



America, etc., all carefully named according 

 to Dana's Manual. 



THE BRITISH MUSEUM AND THE WAR 



The British government has been induced 

 to abandon the intention to use the British 

 Museum at Bloomsbury for the purposes of 

 the Air Board and the Natural History Mu- 

 seum at South Kensington for other govern- 

 ment departments. Lord Sudeley directed at- 

 tention to the proposed appropriation of these 

 buildings in a question asked in the House 

 of Lords on January 9, and, in reply, Earl 

 Curzon said that, as regards the British Mu- 

 seum, he was glad to state that for the accom- 

 modation of the Air Ministry it was no longer 

 necessary to appropriate that building. As to 

 the Natural History Museum, it had been 

 found, after detailed examination, that any 

 attempt to convert the galleries into public 

 offices would involve the closing of the building 

 to the public, extensive internal rearrange- 

 ments, and the consumption of an enormous 

 amoimt of labor and material and very con- 

 siderable delay. In these circumstances it 

 had been decided that there was no necessity 

 sufficiently urgent to warrant the use of the 

 museum as had been contemplated. Nature 

 remarks : 



This decision has given much satisfaction to all 

 who cherish regard for national prestige and 

 understand the intellectual stimulus or practical 

 value of the collections in our national museuma. 

 What astonishes us, however, is that Sir Alfred 

 Mond, the First Commissioner of Works, and a 

 son of the late Dr. Ludwig Mond, should have 

 placed himself in such an indefensible position by 

 putting the scheme before the government. It is 

 diflScult to comprehend also why, before deciding 

 to requisition the building, the government did not 

 inquire as to whether such action was imperatively 

 needed, and consult the trustees and other respon- 

 sible authorities as to what its consequences would 

 be. If that had been done, a storm of protest 

 would have been saved, and Earl Curzon would 

 not have had to confess in the House of Lords 

 that there was no real necessity for the proposed 

 occupation, which would, indeed, have been more 

 like the act of an invader than of a government 

 entrusted with the care of national interests in 

 every direction. The trustees of the museum, at 



