ON NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS. 9 



rather impatient of artificiality, and indeed the naturalistic idea 

 is even being extended from the Museum to the Menagerie. Just 

 as people are not satisfied to-day with seeing in our glass cases 

 stuffed birds perched in rows on monotonous stands of turned 

 wood, so they are getting rather tired of seeing wild animals 

 pent up in rows of cages ; and Mr. Hagenback is said to have 

 in view a scheme which will enable him in the near future to 

 exhibit the animals under conditions apparently approaching to 

 some extent those of nature. 



At the present time there is displayed in the Upper Room of 

 the Forest Museum a small collection of Fossil Vertebvata, 

 representing the ancient fauna of the district ; but the question 

 is under consideration, whether it would not be expedient to 

 remove these objects to Stratford, and devote the space at 

 Chingford, which is but very limited, to illustrations of the fauna 

 and flora of the Forest as they exist to-day. 



Whilst the Chingford Museum makes natural history its 

 most prominent feature, it has always sought — and quite 

 legitimately— to illustrate the early archaeology of the district, 

 •especially the Prehistoric ages. Hence we find in the Banqueting 

 Hall the interesting collection of relics which were dug up 

 from the two Forest camps — the camp at Amesbury Banks 

 explored by our Club in 1881, and Loughton, or Cowper's 

 Camp, examined in the following year, both probably of British 

 origin. Then again the same room contains the valuable group 

 of antiquities obtained by Mr. Chalkley Gould in the course of 

 his exploration of the Romano-British settlement at Chigwell, 

 and so well described in his Museum Handbook/ 8 ' 



The mention of antiquarian relics raises a suggestion which, 

 to some, may appear rather startling. Will the day ever come 

 when it will be possible to divorce these relics from the natural 

 history objects with which they are now associated, so that the 

 works of art may be shewn in one building and the works of 

 nature in another? It is true that Sir Thomas Browne, that 

 grand old East Anglian worthy, quaintly says that " All things 

 are artificial, for nature is the art of God." But taking words as 

 common-place people like ourselves use them, there seems 

 ample justification for separating, under certain conditions, the 



(8) " Notes upon the Romano-British Settlement at Chigwell, Essex." By I. Chalkley 

 Gould, Essex Field Club Museum Handbooks, No. 2, 187. 



