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

  • Owen, Richard, Sir, 1804-1892.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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.

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    evening when the Leader of the Opposition had made a speech denouncing thatt exorbitant expenditure—a speech, he might add, which was re-echoed by many] Liberal members of the House,' ^ ■ It was however not a * curious,' but a ' designed coincidence,' Mr. Disraeli knowing the temper of the House on the subject, and that the estimates for the required Museum of Natural History were to be submitted by Mr. Gladstone, chose the opportunity to initiate the business by an advocacy of economy which left its intended effect upon the House. In vain Lord Palmerston, in reply to the Irish denunciators, proposed as a compromise to 'exclude whales altogether from I disporting themselves in Kensington Gardens.' * The Government was defeated I by a majority of ninety-two, and the erection of a National or British Museum of Natural History was postponed, to all appearance indefinitely, and in reality for ten years. Nevertheless, neither averments nor arguments in the House on May 19, 18G2, nor testimonies in the hostile Committee of 1860, 1861, had shaken my faith in the grounds on which my Report and Plan of 1859 had been based. The facts bearing thereupon, which it was my duty to submit in my ' Annual Reports on the Natural History Departments of the British Museum,' would, I still hoped, have some infiuence with hon. members of the legislature to whom those Reports are transmitted. I' The annual additions of specimens continued to increase in number and in I value year by year. I embraced every opportunity to excite the interest of lovers I of natural history travelling abroad, and of intelligent settlers in our several j colonies, to this end, among the results of which I may cite the reception of the I Aye-Aye, the Gorilla, the Dodo, the Notornis, the maximised and elephaut-footed species of Dinornis, the representatives of the various orders and genera of extinct Reptilia from the Cape of Good Hope, and the equally rich and numerous evidenc 3 of the extinct Marsupialia from Australia, besides such smaller rarities as the animals of the Nautilus and Spirula. Wherever room could be found in the exhibition galleries at Bloomsbury fo these specimens, stuffed or as articulated skeletons, or as detached fossils, they were squeezed in, so to speak, to mutely manifest to all visitors, more especially admini.-trative ones, the state of cram to which we were driven at Bloomsbury. Another element of my ' Annual Reports' was the deteriorating infiuence on valuable specimens of the storage vaults, and the danger of such accumulations to the entire Museum and its priceless contents. And here perhaps you may deem some explanation needful of the grounds of the latter consideration addressed to economical granters of the National funds. 1 The number of specimens preserved in spirits of wine amounted to thousands; any accidental breakage, with conflagration, in the subterraneous localities con- tiguous with the heating-apparatus of the entire British Museum, would have i been as destructive to the building as the gunpowder was meant to be when stored i in the vaults beneath King James's Plouses of Parliament. I At this crisis the ' Leading Journal,' after the stormy debate of May 19, 18; .', ;' made the following appeal to me :—' Let Mr. Owen describe exactly the kind of building that will answer his purpose, that will give space for his whales and hght for his humming-birds and butterflies. The House of Commons will hardly, for i very shame, give a well-digested scheme so rude a reception as it did on Monday I night.' 3 My answer to this appeal was little more than some amplification, with additional examples, of the several topics embodied in the original Report. The pamphlet 'On the Extent and Aims of a National Museum of Natural History, with reduced copies of the plans, went through two editions, and no doubt had the effect anticipated by the able Editor. Another element of reviving hope was the acceptance by Mr. Gregory of the government of a tropical island. ' Hansard, 18G2, p. 1918. H). p. 19.31. ' The Times, May 21, in a leader on the Museum Debate.