376 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1892. 



cially in the power of correct observation in animal morphology, and 

 in other matters which will be enumerated farther along. 



Dr. Sharpe has given ns a very able article touching upon the ques- 

 tion of artistic taxidermy.* He says: 



At Leyden, where a staff of trained taxidermists is kept in the museum, some 

 attempt has been made to vary the usual mode of stuffing animals by representing 

 them in varied and active positions, and thus the general effect is never monotonous. 

 But this was never done in the British Museum, and the constrained attitudes of 

 many of the specimens exhibited at Kensington form part of a legacy from the pa- 

 rent institution, the bad influence of which it will take many years to efface. Thou- 

 sands of specimens have been unmounted already or have been transferred to ih • 

 duplicates and distributed to such provincial museums as prefer to tread in the old 

 paths, and will accept specimens belonging to the bad old times. 



The credit of having broken away from time-honored tradition, in the mode of 

 mounting animals in this country is certainly due to Mr. John Hancock, who taught 

 how to combine scientific accuracy and artistic feeling. Mr. Hancock's name is at 

 Password throughout England wherever taxidermy is mentioned, and in London 

 his ablest representative has probably been Mr. A. D. Bartlett, the well-known 

 superintendent of the zoological gardens, to whom we owe many of our most beauti- 

 fully mounted specimens in the bird gallery. But the first to suggest this combina- 

 tion of art and taxidermy for an entire museum, was undoubtedly Mr. E. T. Booth, of 

 Brighton, whose collection of British birds in the Dyke Load Museum, still remains 

 one of the sights of England, and is not surpassed in interest by any natural history 

 exhibition in the whole world. Here may actually be seen our native birds in their 

 haunts, every species being represented as in a wild state, with corresponding nat- 

 ural accessories, reproducing as nearly as possible the surroundings as they were 

 when the birds were alive, and representing the scenes sketched by the collector 

 at the time of capture. Many years before we actually saw Mr. Booth's collection, 

 its lame had reached our ears, and the idea seemed to us to indicate what the museum 

 of I lie future, ought to be; thus we lost no opportunity of advocating this system of 

 artistic taxidermy in all our public lectures. At Leicester the notion was well 

 received, and some groups of British birds were mounted under the auspices of the 

 natural history committee of the town museum, until by the appointment of Mr. 

 Montague Brown, as the curator of the museum, Leicester obtained the services of a 

 taxidermist as skilled as he is energetic, and the result has been that the system of 

 natural mounting has been extended to the entire collection of birds, so that not 

 only British, but foreign species are represented with their familiar surroundings in 

 a state of nature. The Leicester Museum is the only one which has applied the 

 principle in its entirety with the utmost success and public appreciation. 



And farther along in his article, and referring to the series of the 

 groups of British small birds and their nests in the South Kensington 

 Museum, Dr. Sharpe adds: 



In this corridor are placed most of the smaller perching birds, some of the artistic 

 work being very satisfactory. The mounting of the specimens has been done by Mr. 

 Pickhardt, who, when he exercises his full powers, is probably without a rival as a 

 bird-stuffer, and the majority of the plants have been reproduced by Messrs. Min- 

 torn, of Soho Square, but a great deal of the arrangement of the cases is done in the 

 taxidermist's room of the museum by Mr. .James West, one of the staff. And here it 



'Sharpe, R. Bowdler: Ornithology at South Kensington. The English Illustrated 

 Magazine, No. 51, December, 1887. London: Macmillan & Co., pp. l(>. r >— 17"*. Illus- 

 trated. 



