REMARKS ON MUSEUMS OF NATURAL HISTORY. 277 



It was with the greatest pleasure that I heard it stated in the 

 Report of the Newcastle Society, that, notwithstanding articles of 

 great value were exposed on the cases without any cover, they had 

 never lost a single specimen, nor had any part of the collection been 

 injured by the visitors. This account quite agrees with my own ex- 

 perience in the British Museum, where there have been occasionally 

 more than 6,000 visitors in a single day. During the last twelve or 

 thirteen years I have been in that institution (and the greater part 

 of this time I have had the immediate superintendence of the zoolo- 

 gical part of the collection), I do not recollect a single instance 

 of wilful injury, and, indeed, hardly of carelessness, on the part of 

 the visitors, though now and then a pane of glass may be cracked ; 

 but that is scarcely to be avoided from the frequently crowded state 

 of the rooms, with glass cases in every direction. From my expe- 

 rience in the British Museum, and in other situations, I think that 

 the English public have been most unjustly abused in this respect; 

 partly arising from that delight which the English have in com- 

 plaining of their countrymen, and praising foreigners at their ex- 

 pense, and partly by designing persons, who have profited by places 

 being kept from public view, except on the payment of fees. For 

 example : I do not think, (though the accusation has been repeated- 

 ly made) that the English are more inclined to write on walls than 

 our continental neighbours,* except that they have not the con- 

 stant dread of the surveillance of the police, which the French 

 appear always to have before their eyes. In those places where it 

 can be done with little chance of detection — as in the passages of 

 the Courts of Justice, in Paris — I have seen the walls much disfig- 

 ured by writing in charcoal instead of chalk ; the French hand in 

 which they were written, and the names, at once shewing it was 

 the work of natives. 



The French police interfere in the most trifling cases, and their 

 conduct in this respect must afford much amusement to an observ- 

 ant Englishman. As an instance of their severity, I have seen 

 visitors to the museum of the Garden of Plants rebuked, in no very 

 measured terms, for merely accidentally touching the glass of the 

 cases with their fingers in pointing to a bird ; and for any infraction 

 of the rules of that institution they are immediately arrested by the 

 military guard who have the care of the rooms during the public 

 exhibition. I was once arrested myself, because Mrs. Gray was car- 



* I never recollect to have seen an instance of it in the part of the Biitish 

 Museum dedicated to the Natural History collection. 



