10 NATURAL SCIENCE [July 
curator finds hints, suggestions, and actual information of value to 
himself; whereas the Report of, say, the British Museum, contains 
little but lists of donations and the numbers of specimens registered 
during the year, with similar matter of no use to anybody in the 
wide world. 
WHALES AT THE British Museum 
Ir is not as though our museums had nothing of general interest to 
record, nothing of special interest to curators of other museums. At 
the British Museum (Natural History), for instance, the enlightened 
administration of Sir William Flower has introduced many novelties, 
which may be casually alluded to as having occupied the time of 
such and such assistants or artisans, but which are not explained in 
the Annual Report. One such interesting and important addition 
has been completed this very month. No museum has hitherto 
solved the difficulty of exhibiting the outward form of the various 
kinds of whales, which baffle the taxidermist’s art on account 
of the oily nature of their skin. At last, however, Sir William 
Flower has solved the problem in a most satisfactory manner, and 
the result is a unique addition to the Department of Zoology in the 
museum over which he presides. The new Gallery of Cetacea was 
opened to the public for the first time during the Whitsuntide holi- 
days, and the exhibition is no longer a forest of dry bones, but a 
selection of the principal types of cetacean life displaying not only 
the skeleton, but also the outward form. Each skeleton is mounted 
in the ordinary manner on iron supports, and a second frame of more 
elaborate construction is fixed on one side—the side from which the 
visitor first sees the specimen. This frame reproduces the original 
contour of the animal, and is covered with a peculiar composition 
somewhat similar to papier maché; this represents the skin, and is 
finally painted with a tint and gloss as nearly life-like as possible, 
When the visitor stands on one side of the gallery, the animals thus 
appear as if living, while from the other side he observes the skele- 
ton and realises its relation to the soft parts. The four principal 
specimens are a whalebone whale (Balaena biscayensis) from [ce- 
land, 49 feet in length; a fin-whale (Balaenoptera musculus) from 
the Moray Firth, 69 feet long; a smaller fin-whale (Balaenoptera 
borealis) caught in the Thames near Tilbury ; and a gigantic sperm- 
whale (Physeter macrocephalus) from Thurso, 54 feet in length. In 
addition to these there are other specimens, notably the mandible 
of a Balaena twice as large as the complete skeleton exhibited. 
We congratulate not only the Director of the Museum who has 
devised and superintended this important new departure in the 
exposition of zoology, but also Mr Edward Gerrard, junr., and his 
staff, who have so admirably carried out the technical part of the 
work. 
