II.— ZOOLOGY 



Art. IX. — On an " Index - Collection" for small Zoological 

 Museums, in the Form of a Genealogical Tree of the Animal 

 Kingdom. By T. Jeffery Parker, B.Sc, Professor of 

 Biology in the University of Otago, and Curator of the Uni- 

 versity Museum. 



[Read before the Otago Institute, dth June, 1885.] 



The main thing which distinguishes a museum from a collection 

 of curiosities is arrangement. The object of the unscientific 

 collector is to make his cabinet of " curios " look as attractive 

 as possible, and to this end he does not hesitate to mix together 

 stuffed birds, coins, savage implements, eggs, and minerals, for 

 the sake of securing an effective arrangement of form and colour. 

 In a scientific museum, on the other hand, the object aimed at 

 is to place like things with like ; to have the minerals, shells, 

 birds, etc., etc., each by themselves, and the individual members 

 of each group arranged according to some definite standard of 

 classification. In this way, the visitor is, as it were, compelled 

 to see the objects exhibited in a definite order, and is thus led 

 to compare not only object with object, but also group with 

 group. 



It is, however, obviously difficult to do this thoroughly. In 

 any ordinary museum building it is practically impossible so to 

 arrange the doors, passages, galleries, etc., that the visitor is 

 obliged to traverse them in a certain direction, and so to have 

 forced upon him the natural sequence and grouping of the 

 objects he sees. Moreover, the fact that certain forms of glass 

 cases are suitable to one class of objects, and not to another, 

 often prevents a strictly natural arrangement. For instance, in 

 the Otago University Museum, the necessity for exhibiting both 

 birds and mammals in large wall-cases, has necessitated the 

 former group being placed in the upper gallery, the latter on the 

 ground floor, the lower vertebrates occupying an intermediate 

 position in the lower gallery. Similarly, most invertebrates are, 

 from their small size, best exhibited in flat or "desk" cases, 

 which could only be conveniently placed round the two galleries 

 and between the windows in the lower gallery, in places where 

 wall-cases were inadmissible. 



A brief account of the general arrangement of the zoological 

 collection will show clearly enough that, in spite of the plan 

 recently adopted of placing over or in each case labels giving 

 names of the groups represented in it, the natural sequence of 

 the groups is by no means obvious to an ordinary observer. 



