6 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



and was long exhibited in the Bruton Street museum. 

 Spirit specimens are only second in value to live 

 ones; since all necessary measurements can be taken 

 from them. Even the contour of the muscles 

 (allowance being made for shrinking due to the 

 action of the spirit) can be approximately deduced ; 

 but the weight of such examples is probably less 

 than that of living ones, since the dehydrating action 

 of the preservative causes the tissues to be poorer in 

 the watery constituents which it necessarily extracts. 

 In 1837 Mr, H. Cuming presented to the Zoological 

 Society's museum a female tarsier and a young one 

 not more than a few weeks (or perhaps days) old, so 

 that the Society was well equipped for the study of 

 these quaint lemurs. An excellent figure of the 

 tarsier will be found in Cassell's Natural History 

 (Second Edition). The animal is represented as 

 standing semi-erect on the ground, with one hand 

 outstretched to grasp a beetle crawling over a leaf. 

 Both beetle and leaf give an approximate idea of the 

 size of the tarsier : such valuable adjuncts are too 

 often neglected by artists, who sometimes give no 

 guide at all to the size of the animals they figure, 

 woodenly drawing mouse and mammoth, rabbit 

 and rorqual on the same scale! Mr. Cuming directed 

 his specimen to be displayed in a standing position 

 and inclined forward, as if about to spring. At the 

 present day, good taxidermy and improved draught- 

 manship have given us an excellent idea of the 



