114 LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS, [iv. 



at the British Museum contains between two and three 

 thousand species of birds, and sometimes five or six 

 specimens of a species. They are very pretty to look 

 at, and some of the cases are, indeed, splendid ; but 

 I will undertake to say, that no man but a professed 

 ornithologist has ever gathered much information from 

 the collection. Certainly, no one of the tens of thousands 

 of the general public who have walked through that 

 gallery ever knew more about the essential peculiarities* 

 of birds when he left the gallery, than when he entered 

 it. But if, somewhere in that vast hall, there were a 

 few preparations, exemplifying the leading structural 

 peculiarities and the mode of development of a common- 

 fowl ; if the types of the genera, the leading modifi- 

 cations in the skeleton, in the plumage at various ages, 

 in the mode of niclification, and the like, among birds, 

 were displayed ; and if the other specimens were put 

 away in a place where the men of science, to whom 

 they are alone useful, could have free access to them, 

 I can conceive that this collection might become a 



o 



great instrument of scientific education. 



The last implement of the teacher to which I have 

 adverted is examination — a means of education now so 

 thoroughly understood that I need hardly enlarge upon 

 it. I hold that both written and oral examinations 

 are indispensable, and, by requiring the description 

 of specimens, they may be made to supplement 

 demonstration. 



Such is the fullest reply the time at my disposal 

 will allow me to give to the question — how may a know- 

 ledge of zoology be best acquired and communicated ? 



But there is a previous question which may be moved, 

 and which, in fact, I know many are inclined to move. 

 It is the question, why should training masters be 

 encouraged to acquire a knowledge of this, or any other 



