BKITISH MUSEUM COLLECTIONS 379 
and endless others added.' The Hookers were summoned 
to meet the Trustees of the British Museum on the subject 
of the Botanical collections coming to Kew. 
Brown [he writes to Harvey] leaves everything to Bennett 
except the fossils, which he gives to Brit. Mus. if they will 
keep them with the plants ; if not they are to go to 
Edinburgh. The Trustees will put Bennett in Brown's 
place and keep their collections at B. M., but whether Govt. 
will not insist on the Brit. Mus. N. Hist, collections being 
turned out of the building is quite another question. My 
idea is, that eventually all the Nat. Hist, will go to Kensington 
Gore but the plants, which will come here. 
That the collections should be moved from the dust and 
grime of their cramped quarters at the British Museum was 
certainly an excellent thing ; the zoologists wished the zoo- 
logical specimens to go to a new museum in Eegent's Park, 
close to the living animals in the Zoological Gardens ; the 
botanists were agreed that the botanical collections should 
be merged in the greater Kew collections, instead of main- 
taining an independent existence. But Natural History 
carried little weight in the House of Commons, and was very 
slightly represented among the British Museum Trustees, 
Geologists and Physicists especially having been appointed to 
this body owing to official interest in the Jermyn Street Museum. 
Thus in the eyes of working men of science there was great 
danger ahead lest the collections should be handed over to the 
charge of the non- scientific Science and Art Department, and 
that at South Kensington science and the interests of research 
should be subordinate to exhibition as a popular show.^ 
1 The surplus from the Great Exhibition of 1851, amounting to £213,000, 
was invested by the Commissioners in land at South Kensington. Hero a 
Museum of Art was established, the nucleus of which consisted of exhibits 
purchased by the Government. To these others were gradually added, such 
as the collections from Marlborough House, the Sheepshanks collection, and 
so forth. Tn natural sequence proposals followed for the transfer bodily to 
the same centre of other institutions and museums that received Government 
support, especially those connected with scientific instruction. For in 1853 
the Science and Art Department was detached from the Board of Trade by 
the amalgamation of several minor establishments with the School of Design, 
under the Secretary of the latter and the indefatigable Henry Cole (afterwards 
K.C.B.), himself the chief organiser of the Great Exhibition, and reorgamsation 
