Designs for the Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, South Kensington, London: elevation of one bay and details of roofs over the Index Museum

NOTES: The museum was to have a central apartment containing two special displays. One was to be of 'specimens selected to show the type-characters of the principal groups of Organized Beings: it would form an Epitome of Natural History, and would convey to the eye, in the easiest way, an elementary knowledge of living Nature'. This characteristic expression by Sir Richard Owen, the driving force behind the establishment of the Natural history Museum, illustrates his concern with the relation of actual to archetypal forms and came to be called the 'Index Museum'. The other display was to be the 'British Natural History Museum' displaying each 'Class, Order and Genus' illustrated by native species of the British Isles.