1903 Coast Museums and Zoological Treasures 293 



that our big-headed, big-jointed horses, with well-marked 

 chestnuts on the hind-legs, are more intimately related to 

 the wild horse than the small -headed, slender - limbed 

 varieties without chestnuts on the hind-legs; that, in fact, 

 the heavy horses found living in a semi-wild state and 

 Prjevalsky's horse have sprung from the same ancestors. 



Our Coast Museums and their Zoological 

 Treasures. 



By F. G. Aflalo, F.R.G.S., F.Z.S. 



I. The East Coast. 



ALTHOUGH our English centres of thought and learning 

 do not, like those of Australasia, congregate immediately 

 on the seashore, it is obvious to anyone visiting the 

 museums at our larger ports and watering-places that the 

 educational developments of recent years have reached 

 even to the coast. Sometimes, as at Whitby, the museum 

 is maintained by voluntary contributions and a small fee 

 for admission, the said funds being administered by a local 

 committee. Elsewhere, as at Scarborough, the museum 

 has the advantage of ownership by an enthusiastic field 

 club or philosophical society, with regular donations and 

 subscriptions. The third case, illustrated by the museums 

 at Hull and Great Yarmouth, is that of Corporation 

 management, in which case the institution is financed in 

 the ordinary way out of the rates. Needless to say, such 

 a condition is the most prosperous of all, for the fortunes 

 of scientific collections which depend for their maintenance 

 and increase on the public affection are notably pre- 

 carious. 



It was my fortune during the summer of 1903 to 

 visit every museum of note round the English coast, 

 from Yorkshire round to Lancashire ; and it occurred to 

 me that one or two notes on the chief animal treasures, 

 with a selection of photographs for which I am in every 

 case indebted to the kindness of the officials, might be of 

 some value as affording a basis of comparison, as well as 



