GROUPS AND GROUPING. 23f 



with the care which such subjects merit, and the results are 

 truly admirable. \Vlmn some of these groups were seen by the 

 enterprising- and far-sighted President of the Board of Trus- 

 tees of the American Museum of Natural History, Mr. Moms 

 K. Jesup, he immediately determined to have a series of bird 

 groups prepared for thy great institution he has for many years 

 so ably directed. He engaged Mr. Jeuness Richardson, then in 

 the taxidermic department of the National Museum, and the 

 work was begun in 1886. Mr. Richardson never saw any of the 

 bird groups of the British Museum, and the work he has pro- 

 duced is as much his own as though the British Museum col- 

 lection had never existed. Going as he did from the National 

 Museum, the group idea was by no means new to him, and the 

 seventy beautiful groups he has since produced stand as a 

 lasting monument to his skill as a taxidermist, his artistic con- 

 ception in designing, and his energy as a collector. No other 

 feature in the entire Museum of Natural History at New York 

 is so attractive and pleasing to the general public as are the 

 groups of mounted birds. 



