I see nothing for it but for you and I to constitute ourselves into a permanent “Committee of Public Safety,” to watch over what is being done and take measures with the advice of others when necessary...As for —­ and id genus omne, I have never expected anything but opposition from them.  But I don’t think it is necessary to trouble one’s head about such opposition.  It may be annoying and troublesome, but if we are beaten by it we deserve to be.  With shall have to wade through oceans of trouble and abuse, but so long as we gain our end, I care not a whistle whether the sweet voices of the scientific mob are with me or against me.

[According to Huxley’s views a complete system demanded a triple museum for each subject, Zoology and Botany, since Geology was sufficiently provided for in Jermyn Street—­one typical or popular, “in which all prominent forms or types of animals or plants, recent or fossil, should be so displayed as to give the public an idea of the vast extent and variety of natural objects, to diffuse a general knowledge of the results obtained by science in their investigation and classification, and to serve as a general introduction to the student in Natural Science”; the second scientific, “in which collections of all available animals and plants and their parts, whether recent or fossil, and in a sufficient number of specimens, should be disposed conveniently for study, and to which should be exclusively attached an appropriate library, or collection of books and illustrations relating to science, quite independent of any general library”; the third economic, “in which economic products, whether zoological or botanical, with illustrations of the processes by which they are obtained and applied to use, should be so disposed as best to assist the progress of Commerce and the Arts.”  It demanded further a Zoological and a Botanical Garden, where the living specimens could be studied.

Some of these institutions existed, but were not under state control.  Others were already begun—­e.g. that of Economic Zoology at South Kensington; but the value of the botanical collections was minimised by want of concentration, while as to zoology “the British Museum contains a magnificent collection of recent and fossil animals, the property of the state, but there is no room for its proper display and no accommodation for its proper study.  Its official head reports directly neither to the Government nor to the governing body of the institution...It is true that the people stroll through the enormous collections of the British Museum, but the sole result is that they are dazzled and confused by the multiplicity of unexplained objects, and the man of science is deprived thrice a week of the means of advancing knowledge.”

The agitation of 1859-60 bore fruit in due season, and within twenty years the ideal here sketched was to a great extent realised, as any visitor to the Natural History Museum at South Kensington can see for himself.