53 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



itic appellatives have not descended to our day, since for years natu- 

 ralists have been inflicting long Latin cognomens on all animals and 

 plants coming under their observation, and it would almost seem as if 

 the supply of names would be exhausted long before the things to be 

 named ! 



Ever since the time of Adam men have enjoyed a contemplation 

 of the created things which surround them, and have formed collec- 

 tions of minerals, plants, or animals, varying in size from the few 

 " curios " on the mantel-piece of a back-country parlor to that most 

 wonderful display contained in the British Museum. Our records of 

 the museums of antiquity are very meager, and but little can be told 

 concerning tbem. Noah's collection in the ark can hardly be consid- 

 ered in this connection, as it was formed with an entirely different end 

 in view. Solomon possibly had a collection. The temple of the oracle 

 at Delphos had many curiosities brought as votive offerings from for- 

 eign lands. Apollonius saw with surprise in India trees bearing the 

 different kinds of nuts he had before seen in the temples of Greece. 

 The museum at Alexandria contained the largest collection of books 

 in antiquity, but whether it contained productions of nature is not 

 known. Alexander the Great commanded all sailors and traders to 

 bring the peculiar productions of the countries they visited to Aris- 

 totle ; Apuleius made a collection of the fossils of the Gaetulian Alps ; 

 while the Emperor Augustus had a large cabinet of curiosities from 

 all parts of the then known world. 



One reason why the ancients were deficient in museums was the 

 lack of efficient methods of preserving the various forms of life : cov- 

 ering a body with wax or honey was not the best manner imaginable 

 of rendering an object either interesting or instructive ; and so it was 

 that not until the discovery of alcohol and the manufacture of glass 

 bottles that museums became of much importance. Another fact 

 that also had much to do with the entire absence of any collection 

 from the third until the sixteenth centuries was that all studies of 

 nature were regarded as strongly savoring of infidelity, and were 

 therefore to be discountenanced. So it was that not until the revival 

 of letters were museums known in the Christian era. 



In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries every prince of Europe 

 felt it incumbent upon him to be a patron of learning, and, with the 

 object of advancing the knowledge of nature, formed a cabinet in 

 which were mingled in the most absurd manner Chinese mermaids, 

 pebbles from the Holy Land, birds from the Orient, and coins from 

 ancient Rome. Every prince also deemed it his duty to employ some 

 scrivener to write, in that quality of Latin which has justly been styled 

 "piggish," descriptions of the various curiosities thus brought to- 

 gether ; and these lucubrations, embracing fact and fiction curiously 

 mingled, were published with all sincerity in ponderous tomes illus- 

 trated with rude figures which, by a severe strain of the imagination, 



