Joseph Priestley, Adventurer in Science and Champion of Truth

of anatomical specimens, housed in his Museum in Leicester Square and guarded by young William Clift. Matthew Baillie and Everard Home, the executors of Hunter's Will, enlisted the help of Lord Auckland and Sir Joseph Banks (the President of the Royal Society), and by their influence a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed and the result was that the Government granted £15,000 to purchase the Collection for the Nation, and the newly constituted College of Surgeons was asked to take charge of the Collection under certain conditions. One of the conditions was that thirty Trustees should be appointed 'who are to take care that the Corporation of Surgeons perform their Engagements respecting the said Collection.' Fourteen of the Trustees were to be appointed by the Lords of the Treasury in the first instance and thereafter by the Trustees themselves, but sixteen were chosen by virtue of their Offices which were respectively: The Lord Chancellor, The First Lord of the Treasury, The Chancellor of the Exchequer, The First Lord of the Admiralty, The Speaker of the House of Commons, The Secretary of War, The President of the Royal Society, The President of the Royal College of Physicians, The four Censors of the Royal College of Physicians, The Regius Professor of Medicine in the University of Oxford, The Reader in Anatomy in the University of Oxford, The Regius Professor of Physic in the University of Cambridge, and the Professor of Anatomy in the University of Cambridge. It will be seen that the Trustees of the Hunterian Collection have through one hundred and fifty years constituted a very distinguished body of men, statesmen, lawyers, doctors, clerics, and scientists of every kind, and well worthy of historical remembrance. It is altogether fitting that this History should be written by Sir Victor Negus, who is not only the present Chairman ofthe Trustees, but has himselfprepared and presented to the Museum one of its most recent and valuable collections. For the greater part of the past one and a half centuries the Trustees have held a watching brief, only interfering when some special crisis occurred, but they performed vital duties during the first few decades of the Museum's history, and again during the last twenty-five years they have been of incalculable help in re-constituting the Museum after the destructive effects of the bombing during the 1939-45 War. Sir Victor, using the records as his guide, has traced the whole course of the history of the Trustees' work, culminating in the brilliant ceremony of the opening of the magnificent new Museum on Friday 17 May 1963 when Mr. Harold Macmillan, the Prime Minister, declared the Museum open. Brief biographies of all the Trustees are appended and the book ends with a chronological table of the chief events from 1793 to the present day. The book is well printed and tastefully produced. ZACHARY COPE