1846-47 URGES ONE GREAT COLLECTION 279 



Lord Northampton informs me, without success. 

 The case is briefly this : Parliament recognised 

 the principle of a national or public collection of 

 comparative anatomy by purchasing in the year 

 1799 that left by John Hunter, but transferred the 

 expense of maintaining and augmenting it, accord- 

 ing to the needs of the progress of the science, to 

 the College of Surgeons, voting to the College a 

 sum in aid of the building for the lodgment of the 

 museum. The sum total granted by Parliament 

 for the original purchase and the building was 

 42,500/. Half a century has now nearly elapsed, 

 and the College of Surgeons has duly fulfilled, 

 without further aid, the terms on which it accepted 

 the Hunterian Museum, and has greatly aug- 

 mented it, especially in the Pathological De- 

 partment. But the Comparative Anatomy has 

 by no means kept pace with the progress of the 

 science, and is very far behind the collections at 

 Paris, Leyden, and Berlin in the series of skeletons. 

 It seems not unreasonable to think that a collection 

 which displays the interior organisation of animals 

 should have a claim for an annual grant from 

 Government for its preservation and increase 

 equal to that which is assigned to the collections 

 of exterior zoology. The specimens of divine 

 mechanism from which a Ray and a Paley have 

 reduced so many beautiful illustrations of final 

 purpose may be expected to have at least as much 

 influence in humanising and improving the tone 



