28o PROFESSOR OWEN ch. ix. 



of mind of a common visitor as the beauty or 

 strangeness of the outward forms of animals. 



' As to the expense : if the fossils are to 

 remain and to be arranged, as they should be at 

 the British Museum, that must be incurred to 

 meet the needs of this and of other departments ; 

 and the question is whether the public and science 

 would not be the better served by expending so as 

 to combine and concentrate collections now unna- 

 turally dissevered, and thereby gain space for the 

 more legitimate objects of the British Museum. 

 Lincoln's Inn Fields is as central a position as 

 Great Russell Street ; Spode's great premises 

 extend from the Square to Portugal Street, in 

 close contiguity with the College. 



' I would gladly devote the years that may 

 be spared me in systematically arranging and 

 expounding both by catalogue and lecture, as 

 heretofore, in regard to the Hunterian Collection, 

 such a proposed worthy national collection of 

 comparative anatomy. 



' Although the proposed combination and re- 

 organisation of the collections of recent and fossil 

 comparative anatomy would be a great good, it 

 is not the best which could be done for the great 

 end which your Lordship has in view. But the 

 apparently best possible improvement always 

 appears Utopian and impracticable when it is 

 broached. I have indulged in speculations on a 

 concentration of all zoological illustrations — living, 



