432 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1892. 



well known to require description in this place; and there are others of 

 equal beauty and interest. 



Of recent years a great deal of well-directed energy and skill has 

 been brought to bear to reproduce various races of men, and these 

 attired in their native costumes and represented in the pursuit of 

 various employments. They are. as a rule, the size of life, and so real 

 in the majority of instances as to excite the wonder and admiration of 

 all who chance to behold them for the first time. But this subject has 

 been found too extensive to handle in the present connection, and it 

 will no doubt furnish the material for another writer at some time iu 

 the near future. If ever the Museum indulge in the mounting of such 

 groups, the propriety of which seems to be questionable, as Jules Ver- 

 reaux's "Arab courier attacked by lions," or John Wallace's famous 

 '•Horseman attacked by tigers," and similar efforts, why this would 

 appear to be the more proper place for them, rather than any depart- 

 ment of zoology. If not showing too much or great activity, or other- 

 wise not too sensational, some such compositions arc quite instructive, 

 and to the public always interesting. 



So far as I am aware at present, the Museum has never undertaken 

 to preserve man, by any other process than the ones now employed, of 

 clothed manikins, the laces and heads being obtained by casts or other 

 means. That the direct preservation of man's body intact has been 

 elsewhere attempted, however, there can be no doubt, and with some 

 measure of success. On page 14 of Oapt. Brown's little work on 

 taxidermy, I read : 



Numerous have been the attempts of mankind to preserve the skin of their fellow - 

 creatures. The very hest of these have been most disgusting deformities, and so 

 totally unlike the " human form divine " that none of them have found a place iu 

 collections, with the exception of some parts of man. which form part of the Euro- 

 pean anatomical collections. In the museum of the Jardiu dn Roi, at Paris, there is 

 one of the best things of this kicd which we have seen, a human head injected and pre- 

 served in spirits of turpentine. This curiouspreparationwas the production of Riutch, 

 a Dutch physician, highly celebrated for his pathological skill. The precise manner 

 this interesting preparation was originally preserved is not known. However, it 

 retains to the present day, all the original and natural colors. In winter, the cold 

 affects the spirit so much, in which it is preserved, that the head can not be distin- 

 guished, until the return id' warm weather, which dispels its cloudy appearance. The 

 New Zealanders have a method of drying and preserving the heads of their chiefs, 

 with the flesh entire. Many of these arc to be found in museums; but they are of 

 little use, and by no means calculated to produce pleasurable seusatious. 



We may safely predict that no method will ever be discovered, by which man can 

 be preserved so as to be fit for placing in a museum. (1870.) 



Could Capt. Brown but see the host of thoroughly lifelike Indians, 

 Africans, Japanese. Sauioau, Aino, Esquimau, and Caucasian figures, 

 of all ages, and both sexes, that Prof. O. T. Mason now marshals in his 

 department, he could have but one opinion about it, and that is that 

 the necessity therefor had gone by. 



As I closed upon a former page of this paper what I had to say 

 about the taxidermy of birds, I passed a few brief remarks upon the 



