21 JANUARY 1911, Page 24

We have received two volumes of the " Treasure-House "

Series (Wells Gardner, Dorton, and Co., 3s. 6d. per vol.) One of these is 'The British Museum of Natural History (South Kensington), by W. P. Pycraft. In nothing is the scientific development of recent -times more marked than in the ordering of museums. There 'was no little uproar when it was proposed to " banish " the natural history collections of the British Museum to South Kensington. Who regrets it now? Without doubt there is no such assemblage, so large and so well ordered, in the world. Mr. Pycraft tells us .how to learn what it has to tell us, and, at the same time, to learn its lesson. The next volume seems to deal with quite a different class of treasures. It is a guide to the Greenwich Hospital and Royal United Service Museums, by Edward Fraser. The " treasures " are absolutely different,—swords, guns, pictures of battle, personal relics of soldiers and sailors, and so forth. Yet we may see a connexion between these and the collection of birds and beasts from all the regions of the earth. We have these in unrivalled plenty because we are a world-Power, and the relics ..are the relics of men who made us such a Power.