no NATURAL SCIENCE. August, 1896. 



but considered as " the correlation between the distributional areas of 

 organisms and all the general biological conditions " ; thus, we have 

 animals from warm regions, animals from cold regions, alpine species, 

 species from great depths, species from deserts, species from caverns, 

 species from islands, species from forests, and so forth. Then follow 

 exhibits showing the correlations between the present fauna of certain 

 countries and their extinct faunas. Other cases exemplify migration, 

 means of dispersion, and laws of geographical distribution. The next 

 gallery is given up to evolution, and here Professor Herrera is frankly 

 Darwinian, making no mention of neo-Lamarckism, bathmism, and 

 other philosophical schools. Consequently, his exhibits are intended 

 to show such facts of nature as the rapid multiplication of individuals, 

 the struggle for existence, adaptations, sexual selection, and results 

 of selection. In the arrangement of his specimens, in order to bring 

 out the various ideas, Professor Herrera places them in series and 

 places them in contrast, using either method as seems most suitable 

 to each occasion. 



The paper is undoubtedly suggestive, and it is not intended to be 

 anything more ; no doubt Professor Herrera would agree that each 

 curator must find his ideas and work them out for himself, in accordance 

 with the circumstances of the museum in which he is placed. Neither 

 does he mean to den}/^ that some such arrangement of the museum 

 according to ideas has found its scattered instances ; indeed, he does 

 allude to some of those beautiful cases that adorn the entrance-hall of 

 the Natural History Museum in London, exemplifying such biological 

 ideas as variation, protective mimicry, and albinism. But it is still 

 true that the idea which governs our museums is the arrangement in 

 accordance with some human system of classification — "Why ! " says 

 our author, " the decimal classification that is being adopted for 

 libraries is preferable to the natural (?) classification. It is this that 

 will be universally applied in the museums of the future." And thus 

 he concludes : " All I know is that if, fifty years ago, museums had 

 adopted the philosophical and not the systematic order, then man, 

 seeing side by side the animals of the deserts, would have discovered 

 protective mimicry fifty years ago. Seeing together on one side the 

 victims, on the other side the executioners, and further off the 

 champions, he would have discovered the struggle for life, unity, 

 selection, catabolism. . . . But from time immemorial, man 

 has tried to imprison the things of nature in a fixed system, a fixed 

 classification, which is not the whole of science, and which cannot be 

 the nest of all philosophy. Nature, in her vastness, protests against 

 the classifiers ; maddened, indignant, desperate, she revolts against 

 routine. A Darwin and a Huxley as yet have lived in vain ; for we, 

 here below, we classify, classify, classify. ... I know that when they 

 have visited the museums of the future, the learned, the children, the 

 pretty girls will remain very serious, seriously meditating upon all this 

 profound philosophy of nature, upon all her wings, upon all her nests." 



