Address to the Biological Section of the British Association / by Richard Owen.

Owen, Richard, Sir, 1804-1892

Date:: 1881

Credit: Address to the Biological Section of the British Association / by Richard Owen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

12/16 page 10

$predecessor, -was such as to engender a conviction that it would suffice for all sub- sequent additions. The difficulty in our tinite nature and limited capacity of looking forward is exemplified in such names as New College at Oxford, Newcastle, New Street, New Bridge, &c., as if nothing was ever to grow old; and the same restricted power of outlook affects our prevision of requirements of space for ever-growing collections. The Printed Book Department, which took the lion's share of the then new British Museum, found itself compelled, in the course of one generation, to appropriate the quadrangle left by Smirke in order to admit light to the windows of the galleries looking that way or inwards. From analogy I foresee that some successor of mine may exemplify human short-sightedness in my limit of demand to eight acres for the growth of the present Museum. These acres, however, after conflicts stretching over a score or more of years, have at last been acquired for due display and facilities of study of the subjects of our * Sections C and D.' Amongst the works of architectural art which adorn the metropolis, West- minster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral stand supreme. Of later additions may with them be named the noble example of the Perpendicular Gothic selected by Barry for the Houses of Parliament, and I may be permitted to add, the new Law Courts, which exemplify the more severe style of the Thirteenth-century Gothic. Mr. Alfred Waterhouse, E.. A., for the realisation of the plans and requirements ■ of our Museum of Natural History, has chosen an adaptation of the Round-arched Gothic, Romanesque, or Romaic of the twelfth century. No style could better • lend itself to the introduction, for legitimate ornamentation, of the endless beautiful. varieties of form and surface-sculpture exemplified in the animal and vegetable • kingdoms. But the skill in which these varieties have been selected and combined . to produce unity of rich effects will ever proclaim Mr. Waterhouse's supreme ; mastery of his art. 1 need only ask the visitor to pause at the grand entrance, before he passes into » the impressive and rather gloomy vestibule which leads to the great hall, and 1 prepares him for the flood of light displaying the richly-ornamented columns,, arcades, and galleries of the Index Museum. In the construction of a building for the reception and preservation of natural I history objects, the material should be of a nature that will least lend itself to ^ the absorption and retention of moisture. This material is that artificial stone' called terra-cotta. The compactness of texture which fulfils the purpose in rela- - tion to dryness is also especially favourable for a public edifice in a metropolitan i localitv. The microscopic receptacles of soot-particles on the polished surface of f the terra-cotta slabs are reduced to a minimum; the influence of every shower in i displacing those particles is maximised, d am sanguine in the expectation that thee test of exposure to the London atmosphere during a period equal to that which i has elapsed since the completion of Barry's richly ornamented palace at West-- minster, now so sadly blackened by soot, will speak loudly in favour of Sir. ■• Waterhouse's adoption of the material for the construction of the National 1 Museum of Natural History. A collateral advantage is the facility to which the'f moulded blocks of terra-cotta lend themselves to the kind of ornamentation to}> which I have already referred. ,|. In concluding the above sketch of the development of our actual Museum ot?t Natural History, I may finally refer, in the terms of our modern phylogenists, to *^ the traceable evidences of 'ancestral structures.' In the architectural details ot the new Natural History Museum you will find but one character of the primitive and now extinct museum retained, viz. the Central Hall. In Montague Houae •• there were no galleries, but side-lit saloons or rooms of varying dimensions aud on different storeys. r H \ In its successor, the Museum developed on its site at a later period, we una i galleries added that, for example, which was appropriated to the birds and shells - being .'500 feet in length. This architectural organisation still exists at Bloonisbury- ^ The Museum, which may be said to have budded ofl, has risen to a still higuer i$

Address to the Biological Section of the British Association / by Richard Owen.

Licence and re-use

Contents