News and Views

Abstract

THE appointment is announced in tho London Gazette of a Royal Commission on Museums and Galleries under State control in London and Edinburgh. The announcement is a welcome indication of the interest of the Government in the great national collections for which it is responsible. For many years the majority of the twenty institutions named in tho terms of reference has each pursued its own course vmhampered by consideration of the development of sister institutions, and now the promise arises of a means of xinifying efforts and correlating activities, which cannot but result in benefit to the institutions themselves and particularly to the public which supports and makes use of them. The need for such an investigation has recently boon strongly urged in NAT HUB by Sir Ray Lankester, and also in a leading article in our issue of April 16. The Commission is a strong one. Every member has had wide administrative experience: finance is specially represented by the Lord D'Abernoii (chairman) and Sir Thomas Heath; artistic interests by the chairman, Mr. Evan Charteris, Sir Martin Conway, and Sir Robert Witt; education and the libraries by Sir George Macdonald and Dr. A. E. Cowley; the buildings in which the properties are housed by Sir Lionel Earle; and science by Sir Richard Glazebrook and Sir Henry Miers, the last of whom was himself at one time an assistant in the British Museum (Natural History). It is unfortunate that the Commission includes no one intimately qualified to weigh the evidence from the biological sciences, although they must occupy a large part of the inquiry, since they cover most of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, a large section of the Royal Scottish Museum, and the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, the name of which, surely by some slip, does not appear in the terms of reference.