• 338 NATURAL SCIENCE. Nov., 



mounting may be seen at the American Museum of Natural History, 

 New York; "but the restricted space and the small amount of 

 money available at Washington have hitherto prevented the National 

 Museum from extending to birds the treatment which has been so 

 ^successfully apphed to the larger mammals." The popularity of this 

 '^Smithsonian exhibit may be gauged by the difficulty that a visitor 

 experiences in forcing his way through the almost immovable crowd. 

 One portion, however, he will have almost to himself; yet it is by no 

 means the least interesting. This is the admirable Synoptic Series 

 of Invertebrata, arranged by Mr. Lucas, where every help is afforded 

 by means of well-expressed labels. Adjoining is the no less instructive 

 series illustrating the osteology of the vertebrata. This shows the 

 homologies of the principal bones by means of compared articulated 

 and disarticulated skeletons of the chief vertebrate types, the bones 

 of the cranium being distinguished by colours. 



Those who visited either the Fisheries Exhibition at South 

 Kensington, or the similar division of the Philadelphia Exposition, 

 will learn little new at Chicago. The Fisheries Building is truly, as it 

 has been called, " a poem in architecture " ; but, except for the 

 fisheries of N. America, the exhibition is small and mostly unim- 

 portant. " The reason," writes Mr. Dall, " is not far to seek. The 

 United States and Canada collectively have nothing to learn at present 

 from foreign countries, and no foreign dealers in fish products have 

 any reason for supposing that they can gain a foothold in our markets, 

 except for sundry specialties like cod-liver oil. Consequently the 

 commercial incentive is lacking, and, apart from such countries 

 as New South Wales and Japan, which have made an exhibit as a 

 matter of national pride and in evidence of the state of their 

 industries, the foreign fisheries are very imperfectly represented." 

 The exhibit of the Fish Commission in the Government Building is 

 good, " though less prominent than in 1876, and the practical rather 

 than the scientific side of its work is emphasised. Similarly, the 

 collection shown by Japan is more interesting from the economic or 

 anthropological side than as illustrating the ichthyology of the 

 empire." Pounded shark and dried cuttle-fish do not strike the 

 Western mind as particularly appetising ; but with cockroach catsup 

 they are by no means bad. One doubts, however, whether the enter- 

 prising Japanese firm who are trying to introduce dried sea-weed as a 

 reHsh will meet with the success that they deserve. Some of the 

 Japanese methods of fishing are so curious that they might have been 

 illustrated at Chicago, but, as they are not, one cannot now describe 

 them. " There are a few interesting models of fish traps and weirs 

 in the collection shown by the Sultan of Johore in the Plaisance, but 

 these objects belong under the head of Anthropology rather than that 

 of Ichthyology." 



Among the more obviously attractive exhibits in the Fisheries 

 Building are the skeleton of a Pacific Humpback Whale, 47 ft. 6 in. 



