June 2, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



855 



dents dealing, from various points of view, 

 ■with the very serious question that has arisen 

 between the Office of Works and the trustees 

 of the Natural History Museum concerning 

 the respective claims of that museum and of 

 the adjacent Science Museum to what re- 

 mains still unoccupied of the space which 

 separates the one from the other. No one can 

 think that the buildings in which the Science 

 Museum is at present housed are worthy of the 

 dignity of science, or of their position as as- 

 sociated with the central home of science in 

 the capital of a great empire. Every one 

 should approve, therefore, of the recent ap- 

 pointment of a committee by the president of 

 the board of education to consider the de- 

 molition of existing buildings and the con- 

 struction of a new Science Museum on a 

 scale worthy of its purpose and character. 

 But it would appear from the recently pub- 

 lished oiBcial correspondence between the 

 Office of Works and the trustees of the Nat- 

 ural History Museum that this committee is 

 only empowered to consider the construction 

 of an enlarged Science Museum on the site 

 now occupied by the unworthy and unsightly 

 buildings which now go by that name. It is 

 clear, however, that this can not be done — for 

 on this point, at any rate, the Office of Works 

 and the trustees are in full agreement — with- 

 out encroaching on the space required for fu- 

 ture enlargements, already urgently needed, 

 of the Natural History Museum, and in fact 

 on space which after much correspondence 

 hetween the trustees, the Office of Works, and 

 the Treasury, was formally allotted in 1899 

 to the Natural History Museum for that pur- 

 pose. In the interest of the new Science 

 Museum the Office of Works now proposes to 

 resume possession of a strip some seventy 

 feet wide and some 1,200 feet long, running 

 the whole length of the north side of the area 

 hitherto allotted to the Natural History Mu- 

 seum. This strip is at present occupied as to 

 some portion of its length by a Spirit Mu- 

 seum — ^that is, a building for the storage and 

 exhibition of specimens preserved in spirit, 

 145,000 in number, contained in 95,000 jars, 

 many of large size — which has been erected 



and fitted up within recent years at a total 

 cost of no less than £38,000. It is now pro- 

 posed that, as soon as the Spirit Museum has 

 been removed to a new and very objectionable 

 site, a portion of this strip some forty feet 

 wide should be assigned to the new Science 

 Museum, while the remainder, some thirty 

 feet wide, is to be converted into a private 

 road separating the two museums. 



It should surprise no one that the trustees 

 should, as they say, view these proposals 

 " with extreme apprehension." The only 

 wonder is, perhaps, that the Office of Works 

 should ever have entertained them seriously. 

 It was originally proposed that the total area 

 to be assigned to the Natural History Mu- 

 seum should be about fifteen and a half acres, 

 and the steady growth of the museum in re- 

 cent years has shovm that this was not a 

 yard too much. By the arrangement of 1899, 

 to which we have already referred, this area 

 was reduced to a little over thirteen acres, and 

 it is now proposed to reduce it by very nearly 

 two acres more, although, as the trustees 

 point out, the reduced area of 1899 was ac- 

 cepted on the understanding that it was their 

 intention to use the land in question for the 

 further extension of the Spirit Museum, and 

 " it can only have been by reason of such 

 understanding that the trustees felt justified 

 in accepting that line of boundary as a final 

 settlement of the question." Yet if the Office 

 of Works is to have its way, that final settle- 

 ment is now to be treated as no settlement at 

 all. The northern boundary is to be set back 

 by seventy feet; the Spirit Museum is to be 

 abolished and reerected facing Queen's Gate 

 in such a position on the vacant space still 

 surrounding the Natural History Museum as 

 grievously to impair the symmetry and sight- 

 liness of any future extension of the latter; 

 and the Science Museum and the Natural 

 History Museum are to be left and even en- 

 couraged to approach each other from the 

 north and south respectively in such a man- 

 ner as may and probably will leave in the end 

 only a private road some thirty feet wide be- 

 tween them. We can hardly believe that 

 parliament and public opinion will ever sane- 



