1883-92 RETIRES FROM THE BRITISH MUSEUM 259 
Southport Meeting of the British Association, 
and thus continued : ‘To the usual inquiry from 
our masters the Trustees, I replied that “ I had no 
intention to take any vacation this year.” So, at 
present, I am almost the only officer on duty at 
the New Museum. But my work there is, as 
you may imagine, one of love The birds 
have been received into their gallery, and the 
beasts into theirs ; and both are steadily getting 
into their proper places. We are also receiving, 
without interruption, the other classes of the 
existing creation, to which the west wing of the 
New Museum is devoted. 
‘ What a contrast the two gatherings which 
give food to columns in the daily papers present ! 
Philosophers in sober garments ; emperors, kings, 
princes and princesses in gorgeous uniforms and 
brilliant orders, watching the evolutions of thou- 
sands of well-drilled soldiers ! 
‘ I derived a wholesome lesson from the inau- 
gural address of my old friend the Cambridge 
Professor of Mathematics. / could not comprehend 
a word of it ! My brain was a blank ! Palaeonto- 
logy may be as strange to him ! ’ 
‘With this year ( 1883),’ Owen has written in his 
diary, ‘ end my official relations with the national 
collections of natural history, the several de- 
partments — Zoology, Geology, Fossils, Minerals, 
Plants — being arranged and displayed in their 
respective galleries. I felt that I could now “depart 
