1896. THE PERTH MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. 45 



The south wall of the gallery contains as yet tut a portion of the 

 Society's collections of local insects. These are arranged in large, 

 close-fitting boxes, topped with clear glass, and framed within steeply 

 sloping exhibition cases. A portion of the Lepidoptera and a portion 

 of the Hemiptera, the work respectively of Mr. S. T. Ellison, 

 honorary secretary of the Society, and Mr. T. M. Macgregor, F.E.S., 

 are all the insect collections that are as yet displayed. 



The remaining wall-case contains an extensive series of local 

 rocks, and has been arranged for the Society by Messrs. H. Coates 

 and P. Macnair. This case contains, besides a very full collection of 

 the rocks, minerals, and fossils of the district, series showing rock- 

 structures and the formation of soils from the local rocks. 



Desk-cases are arranged round the gallery, and contain, from the 

 north-west corner to the south and along the south wall, our fungi, 

 algae, lichens, mosses, and ferns. 



While the main hall of the Museum, as so far described, is 

 destined to illustrate in the fullest possible way the natural history, 

 botany, and geology of our great county, a smaller hall, that was once 

 the Society's main museum, is now about to be devoted to the 

 exhibition of an index-collection. The Society hopes to show in this 

 index-collection, as far as possible after the model and example of the 

 newer index-collections in the British Museum and elsewhere, 

 teaching preparations illustrative of zoological classification of various 

 anatomical and morphological features, of theories of descent, of 

 phenomena of natural and sexual selection, of principles of distribu- 

 tion, of organisms useful or injurious to man. The task of framing 

 these collections, morphological, biological, or industrial, may be a 

 long and costly one ; but the Society aspires to make them, in course 

 of time, not unworthy to take rank beside the rich collections of the 

 local fauna and flora that its members and friends have already 

 brought together. 



The Society's collection of plants is also divided into a local 

 herbarium, illustrative of the flora of the county, and a general one, 

 which consists mainly of the collection of European plants formed by 

 the late Dr. Buchanan White and'-presented by him to the Society. 

 The Perthshire herbarium consists largely of plants collected by him, 

 also by Col. Drumraond-Hay, Messrs. W. Barclay, J. Coates, R. H. 

 Meldrum, C. Mcintosh, and other botanical members of the Society. It 

 forms the foundation on which Dr. Buchanan White built up the chief 

 work of his life, " The Flora of Perthshire," which is to be published 

 shortly under the editorship of Professor Traill. A special feature 

 of this herbarium is Dr. White's own collections of Perthshire 

 wihows, named and mounted by himself, and intended to illustrate 

 his important paper on that difficult genus, published in the 

 Transactions of the Society. 



Alex. M. Rodger. 

 The Museum, Perth, 



