8 ON NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS. 



whose guidance we may be sure that the birds will receive due 

 attention. It is also intended, our purse permitting, to erect a 

 case in the middle of the Oak Room, on the lower floor, with a 

 collection of the small Mammals of _ the Forest, showing their 

 natural environment. At present the Forest mammals are 

 represented only by a few examples of heads and antlers of the 

 fallow deer, the red deer, and the roe deer — with one stuffed 

 specimen of the forest breed of fallow deer. 



In the picturesque mounting of natural objects, we cannot 

 hope to imitate the splendid groups in the British Museum 

 (Natural History), or even to vie with those of the large Pro- 

 vincial Museums, such as the fine pictorial groups by Mr. 

 Montagu Browne, at Leicester. But even in a small way, we 

 may be able to invest our stuffed birds and mammals with a touch 

 of living interest. Instead of mounting them in the time- 

 honoured fashion on polished pedestals of wood, we may at least 

 encircle them with something suggestive of their forest-sur- 

 roundings. The realistic adjuncts of a " habitat group " appeal 

 especially to the young visitor ; and a young visitor is always 

 worth attracting. 



Although the pictorial mounting of natural history objects has 

 been brought promimently forward in recent years, it is b)' no means 

 a new thing in Museums. In the early years of the last century, 

 there existed at the Egyptian Hall, in Piccadilly, in connection 

 with Bullock's famous Museum, an exhibition called the 

 Pantherion. The conception was much too ambitious, since it 

 aimed at representing, as far as possible, the whole of the 

 mammalia, but its merit and novelty lay in the attempt to convey, 

 in the words of its projector, " a more perfect idea of their haunts 

 and mode of life than has hitherto been done." (7) 



By means of a tropical scene, with models of appropriate 

 vegetation, such creatures as the lion, the elephant, the rhinoceros, 

 and the giraffe were "exhibited as ranging in their native wilds and 

 forest." With regard to our unambitious Museum at Chingford, 

 it seems in the highest degree desirable that we should be able 

 to set up without further delay a few groups of local birds and 

 mammals, under conditions suggestive of a glimpse of wild 

 nature in Epping Forest. Nature-study is making us now-a-days 



(7) A Companion to the London Museum and Pantherion. By William Bullock, 

 London. 1816 (17th Ed.) p. 97. 



