28 o 
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) 
