i88 SIR WILLIAM FLOWER chai.. 



needful to obtain success. Part of what Flower said 

 in this address, in which he summed up so many of 

 his convictions, was quoted by the Archbishop of 

 Canterbury at the unveiling of the memorial bust ^ 

 in the Great Hall of the Museum on July 25, 1903. 

 The following extract gives not only the quotation 

 but its context : — 



What a museum really depends on for its success is not its 

 building, not its cases, not even its specimens, but on its curator. 

 He and his staff are the life and soul of the institution upon 

 whom its whole value depends, and yet in many — I may say most 

 — of our museums they are the last to be thought of. The care, 

 the preservation, the naming of the specimens are often left to 

 voluntary effort, often excellent for special collections and for a 

 limited time, but never to be depended upon as a permanent 

 arrangement ; or a grievously under-salaried, and consequently 

 under-educated, official is expected to keep in order, clean and 

 dust, arrange, name and display collections varying in extent over 

 almost every branch of human learning, from the contents of an 

 ancient British barrow to the last-discovered bird of paradise from 

 New Guinea. ... A museum is like a living organism. It 

 requires continual and tender care. It must grow or it will 

 perish ; and the cost and labour required to maintain it in a 

 state of vitality is not yet by any means realised or provided for 

 either in our great national establishments or in our smaller local 

 institutions. 



In the course of his Directorship even the Trea- 

 sury was so far impressed by the work done at the 

 Museum that Flower's representations as to the 

 under-payment of the staff there were not heard 

 with deaf ears. He had the great satisfaction of 

 knowing that his assistants' good work was so far 



' By Thomas Brock, R.A. 



