William Henry Flower 
The Granger Collection 
means of obtaining information at all 
Museums, Gardens, and Galleries,” 
this tract included among other items 
a number of announcements from the 
great London museums. One was of 
particular interest as it noted the ap- 
pointment of J.H. Leonard, B.Sc., “to 
conduct parties of Visitors round the 
Collections,” adding that “NO 
CHARGE is made for this service 
and no gratuities are to be offered.” 
Mr. Leonard appeared at the museum 
at noon and at 3:00 p.m., six days 
a week, with a demanding program 
that covered as many as seventeen 
galleries, pavilions, and corridors. Fur- 
thermore, special groups could obtain 
Mr. Leonard’s services at other hours, 
again without charge or gratuity. 
Leonard and his successors served as 
guides, philosophers, and often friends 
to the many individuals who followed 
them through the museum, week after 
week, year after year. The museum 
inspired many people, and for some 
the tours became a way of life. 
In 1931, the Natural History Mu- 
seum celebrated its first fifty years. 
By then, museum visitors wanted sou- 
venirs, so new guides were produced. 
During this period, such figures as 
King George and Queen Mary; King 
Alfonso of Spain; Field Marshall Jan 
Christian Smuts, prime minister of 
South Africa; and many others visited 
the museum, ajid the Staff Association 
gave monthly tea parties. 
At the time of its fiftieth anniver- 
sary, the museum addressed itself to 
matters referred to in a four-page re- 
port by the Royal Commission on Na- 
tional Museums and Galleries. The 
report concluded that the museum 
needed more staff, better accommo- 
dations, and money to play a more 
active part in expeditions abroad. 
Also at this time, under director 
Tate Regan, an ichthyologist, the mu- 
seum put together A Short History 
of the Collections, a review of its col- 
lections and the departments that con- 
tained them. The studies required for 
this undertaking revealed that through 
the years some items in the museum’s 
collections had been lost forever. For 
example, little that was truly ancient 
in the mammal collection could be 
identified, two exceptions being the 
still intact forehead of a West African 
dwarf buffalo first described in a sci- 
entific publication in 1686, and the 
skeleton of a young chimpanzee de- 
scribed in 1699. 
The next decade was a troubled one 
for the world and the museum. During 
the Second World War, the museum 
was struck by bombs many times, suf- 
fering fire and water damage. Yet 
some of the more important speci- 
mens, such as an Archaeopteryx fossil, 
fared better, sandbagged and cellared 
in South Kensington, than those that 
had been transferred to the cold and 
damp of stately homes and abandoned 
slate mines. 
The postwar years saw an expansion 
and reorganization of the staff along 
civil service lines. Publications began 
to flow again, and in time galleries 
were restored and reshaped. In the 
last decade, several structural changes 
have been made, including the much- 
needed addition of a new paleonto- 
logical wing at the east end of the 
museum. The whole concept of the 
museum has been altered, largely by 
those within the institution. It remains 
a great source of scientific knowledge 
through collecting, research, and pub- 
lication, but it now welcomes the pub- 
Alfred Waterhouse 
The Granger Collection 
This guelder-rose, or snowball 
(Viburnum opulus), is part of a 
collection of dried, pressed specimens 
made by the young Linnaeus when he 
was curator of the garden of Dutch 
merchant George Clifford. 
lie as never before, with new and 
imaginative exhibits, accompanied by 
books that enlarge on the ideas pre- 
sented. The past three years alone 
have seen the opening of four exhibits: 
Human Biology, Introducing Ecology, 
Dinosaurs and Their Living Relatives, 
and Man’s Place in Evolution. And 
one of the main events in this year’s 
centenary celebrations will be the 
opening of yet another, Origin of Spe- 
cies. All of these new exhibits incor- 
porate contemporary visual and me- 
chanical aids, including computers, to 
emphasize more effectively the diver- 
sity of the natural world and the un- 
derlying principles of biology. 
Old and gray, like many of its 
friends at home and abroad, what 
memories the Natural History Mu- 
seum evokes. The list of distinguished 
scientists who have walked its galleries 
is long: Teilhard de Chardin, French 
paleontologist and philosopher; Robert 
Broom, anthropological wizard of 
South Africa; the Leakeys, always 
bursting with enthusiasm over new 
and newer finds of the remains of early 
apes and humans in East Africa; 
Henry Fairfield Osborn, curator of 
vertebrate paleontology and president 
(1908-35) of the American Museum 
of Natural History; George Gaylord 
Simpson, evolutionist and paleontolo- 
gist; and hosts of other friends who 
came from museums of renown around 
the world and found themselves much 
at home in the Cromwell Road. 
Returning from expeditions to Af- 
rica, India, Madagascar, Australia, the 
Arctic, and Antarctica, travelers can 
sometimes catch, as their planes are 
on the approach to London Airport 
early in the morning, a glimpse of the 
museum’s arched roofs, shining tiles, 
and pointed towers, all set in the 
sunken garden of the Cromwell Road. 
They can sigh with relief: It is still 
there, and they are home. Long may 
the museum remain a home for the 
traveler whose name is renowned, a 
place of resort for the thousands who 
have yet to make their scientific name, 
and a place of wonder for all. □ 
46 
