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 P)e- 
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 
