1856-81 CARLYLE'S OPINION 55 



light and a consequent adaptation of the walls as 

 well as the floor to the needs of exhibition.' 



In concluding this sketch of Owen's great 

 scheme, it will be interesting to quote some of the 

 letters he received while awaiting its realisation. 



Thomas Carlyle writes from Chelsea : — 



1 Dear Owen, — I hope you will get your 

 Museum. I am, for my own share, no great 

 judge of such matters, and have never myself 

 been able to do much good in museums ; but it 

 seems to me that a nation ready to spend any 

 amount of millions on any foolery that turns up, 

 really might as well take counsel of its chief 

 naturalist, and build such a museum as will satisfy 

 him, while its hand is in ! 



' I read from your little book, with intelligence 

 more or less complete, and always with pleasure in 

 proportion to my clearness. But what interested 

 me more than the museum question was certain 

 characteristics, brief, incidental, which started up 

 here and there — characteristics of the now pleader 

 for such a museum. For instance, that of the 

 winged gentlewoman 7 (in New Holland, I think), 

 who gathers rotten leaves and fermenting sub- 

 stances to do her hatching for her, and how she 

 fared in the Zoological Gardens here. Or still 

 better, that of the cane-billed Passeres, who have 

 "a marriage-bower" (better luck to them), and 

 how the British jackdaw is still a Passer of that 



7 Megapodius. 



