Feb.. 1896. CASUAL THOUGHTS ON MUSEUMS. 115 



stone," said he. " Have you no fossils in America ? " " Oh, no," she 

 repHed, " America is such a new country." There you have an object 

 lesson in " palaeontology." 



Look at some of the results of this same reasoning. In the 

 Natural History Museum there are some very interesting remains of 

 the dodo, of which too many relics have not been preserved. It would 

 be incredible, if it were not true, that the bones of this hapless bird 

 have been fought over by two departments of the museum and 

 have been torn asunder, and are now exhibited in two entirely different 

 departments. A similar fight took place over the recently extinct 

 Madagascar tortoise. The excuse for this absurd struggle is that 

 these animals, although extinct, have so recently become so that they 

 ought not to be called fossils. The fact is, there is really no gap at all 

 between the graveyards in which we are now burying our fossilised 

 friends and the graveyards of former days. There has been a con- 

 tinuity of deposition . 



So much do I value this continuity, that I hold that in every 

 specially geological museum, in which the different ages of the earth 

 are successively illustrated, the last room should be always one 

 devoted to the actual living things of to-day arranged according to 

 their geographical distribution. The actual world as we know it is 

 really the last chapter of the geological book. 



If this be just, a fortiori must it be just and sensible that in a 

 museum illustrating as nearly as may be the great lessons of biology, 

 there should be shown, in sequence if possible, the various forms that 

 bridge over gaps, and that people should learn early and often that 

 these queer-looking bones and shells, etc., etc., which we dig out of the 

 ground were really once parts of living animals more or less like those 

 they now know, and were not mere sports and toys of Nature. 



We are told that, however wise in theory, this is fantastic and 

 unworkable in practice. I have been told so many a time, and I remain 

 as obdurate as John Huss at the stake. In the first place, I claim to 

 have on my side the two most accomplished and experienced directors 

 and keepers of museums of my acquaintance, namely, the late John 

 Gray and the present Sir William Flower ; secondly, the plan has 

 actually been tested in some cases, though not quite in the way in 

 which I should like to see it carried out. 



I must here point out that I am referring only to the exhibition 

 part of the museum, and not to the study department ; the latter is 

 an entirely different matter. I am speaking only of what the great 

 mass of philistines like myself, who ramble about the museum for 

 pleasure and for profit, would like to see there. I hold very strongly 

 that far too much is exhibited of certain things, and not half 

 enough of others. Every type or rare specimen that will spoil or 

 alter by exhibition should be removed from the cases and placed in 

 the safest keeping possible. At the British Museum this has recently 

 been done largely, to the joy of us all ; but it is only a year or two ago 



