ciety of London, a position he held 
for twenty years. 
Thus, when Flower came to the mu- 
seum in 1884, he was uniquely quali- 
fied for a unique post, the first di- 
rectorship of the new museum. Almost 
at once he brought a new sense of 
purpose to the task, understanding 
that he had in his hands a wonderful 
instrument of public instruction and 
inspiration. He set about creating ex- 
hibitions that would teach rather than 
simply display and devised the “Index 
Museum,” a series of exhibits in the 
central hall that illustrated compara- 
tive anatomy. 
With its growing role in education 
and a policy of free admission, the mu- 
seum took on a public look. The re- 
alization that without an audience to 
charm, influence, and inform, the mu- 
seum was largely mute had been a 
long time coming. The possibilities for 
conducting research in the museum, 
never overlooked by Flower, were in- 
creased by the favorable public re- 
action and by the gifts of collections. 
Flower became active in spreading his 
new' gospel of museums, using his pres- 
idency of the Zoological Society and 
of sections of the British Association 
to reach a wider and more influential 
audience. He published on museums 
as well as on mammals and supported 
the formation in 1889 of the Museums 
Association, which has since reached 
across the world with its journal and 
professional examinations. 
Through the end of the nineteenth 
century and the beginning of the twen- 
tieth, the museum prospered as its 
departmental structure became in- 
creasingly well defined. During this 
Daniel Solander 
The Granger Collection 
period the keepers of the museum 
were men of great distinction, all of 
them fellows of the Royal Society. 
Their participation in influential or- 
ganizations brought new collections 
and new forms of technology to the 
museum and helped attract ambitious 
young people to the careers that the 
museum could now offer. The pres- 
tigious collections were continually 
outgrowing the study rooms, store- 
rooms, and narrow galleries allocated 
to them. In fact, several collections, 
including the diaries, notebooks, and 
marine deposits from famous ocean- 
ographer Sir John Murray’s round the 
world voyage aboard HMS Challenger 
(1872-76), were set up in small, sep- 
arate buildings of their own. 
The growth of the collections called 
for skilled curators, and joining the 
scientific staff became a more difficult 
undertaking. Applicants were required 
to have a good degree in the appro- 
priate subject and had to be nominated 
for entry by one of the museum's prin- 
cipal trustees. Only after passing an 
interview were they permitted to sit 
a civil service examination. While this 
system more or less assured that staff 
members understood the subject on 
which they were to work, it provided 
no guarantee of curatorial interest or 
ability. 
The collecting instinct, a crucial ele- 
ment in the making of an able curator, 
is rooted deep in the human psyche. 
In The Little Universe of Man (1978), 
biologist Cyril Dean Darlington dis- 
cusses this instinct and its proper role 
in modern science: 
The instinct for collecting, which began 
as in other animals as an adaptive prop- 
erty, could always in man spread beyond 
reason: it could become a hoarding mania. 
But in its normal form it provides a means 
of livelihood at the hunting and collecting 
stage of human evolution. It is then at- 
tached to a variety of rational aptitudes. 
above all in observing, classifying, and 
naming plants, animals, and minerals, 
skills diversely displayed by primitive 
peoples. These skills with an instinctive 
beginning were the foundation of most 
of the civilized arts and sciences. At- 
tached to other skills in advanced societies 
they promote the formation of museums 
and libraries: detached, they lead to ac- 
quisition and classification by eccentric 
individuals, often without any purpose or 
value at all. 
Darlington’s remarks point up an- 
other problem all museums face: what 
to do with growing and aging collec- 
tions. At the turn of the century the 
Natural History Museum still had col- 
lections of Charles Darwin, Alfred 
Wallace, John Gould, and others — 
benefactors, collectors, scientists, and 
eccentrics. What should be done with 
them? Should they be treated as his- 
torical relics, too precious to handle, 
or used, carefully, as steppingstones 
to more modern knowledge? The wall 
cases in the South Kensington mu- 
seum, deep, dark, and high, were ob- 
viously not made for human faculties 
of perception, and the table cases, suit- 
able enough for exhibiting relatively 
small objects and storing others, often 
served as barriers to divide the staff 
workrooms from the wandering public. 
To relieve part of the problem, the 
museum soon extended a warmer wel- 
come to the public. 
In July 1913, some thirty years after 
the new Natural History Museum was 
furnished, a pamphlet entitled The 
Public Utility of Museums was pub- 
lished. Intended to “call the attention 
of all Local Authorities to the de- 
sirability of the Public having the 
Richard Ow en 
The Granger Collection 
45 
