ON NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS. 19 



Even in the Essex Museum, though far from being large, an 

 attempt has been made in a small way to carry out this dual 

 scheme. A case stands, for example, in the Hall, containing 

 .both living and fossil forms of the Cephalopoda. Several fossil 

 Nautili are here placed by side of the recent Pearly Nautilus; 

 and some typical Ammonites are to be found close by ; whilst 

 a group of Belemnites keeps company with spirit preparations of 

 the calamaries and the cuttle-fishes of the Essex coast. In the 

 Gallery, again, will be found a very instructive case of certain 

 extinct animals associated with their living representatives. 



But whilst these series are arranged to illustrate in some 

 measure the biological side of Palaeontology, the bulk of the fossils 

 will be found arranged, as is usual elsewhere, on a chronological 

 system. By disposing them in stratigraphical sequence, the 

 student gets a notion of the fauna and to some extent of 

 the flora at successive periods of geological history. To Mr. W. 

 H. Dalton the Club is much indebted for having expended 

 a great deal of labour on the arrangement of the Fossils, and 

 especially for writing a Handbook 18 descriptive of the Pliocene 

 fossils which have rendered East Anglia geologically famous, 

 and of which, notwithstanding the ravishes of denudation to 

 which Mr. Spiller has lately called attention, Essex can still 

 boast a characteristic example in those shelly sands of Walton- 

 on-the-Naze, which are believed to represent the oldest part 

 of the Red Crag. 



From this rapid survey of the contents of the Essex Museum 

 and their arrangement, it will be seen how admirably the 

 objects for which the Museum was originally organized have 

 been so far carried out. The division into a Local and a General 

 Collection is well defined. This division is in harmony with the 

 views of most of those who have given thought to the Museum 

 question. Mr. John Hopkinson, for instance, in suggesting 

 to the Hertfordshire Natural History Society many years ago 

 a scheme for the formation of a County Museum, insisted on the 

 importance of dividing every Provincial Museum into two 

 parts — one representative of a definite district, generally a 

 county, and the other an educational department with a typical 

 collection chiefly for the purpose of teaching. 19 



18 A brief sketch of the Crag Formation of East Anglia. By W. H. Dalton, F.G.S. 

 Essex Field Club, Museum Handbooks, No. 4, 1900. 



19 " The Formation and Arrangement of Provincial Museums." Trans. Herts. Nat. Hist. 

 Soc, Vol. i. (1881), p. 193. 



