The American Museum Journal 



Volume XiV 



JANUARY, 1914 



Number 1 



THE STORY OF MUSEUM GROUPS 



Part I 

 By Frederic A. Lucas 



****; quseque ipse [felicissima] vidi 

 Et quorum pars [minor] fui 



THE many groups of animals in the 

 American Museum of Natural 

 History represent many phases 

 of what may be termed "the group 

 question" and illustrate the various 

 steps that have led from the dreary ex- 

 hibits of forty years ago to the present 

 realistic pictures of animal life. Twenty- 

 five years ago, even, there was scarcely 

 a group of animals, or a descriptive 

 label, in any museum in the United 

 States. It is to be noted that the 

 qualifying adjective scarcely is used, for 

 even twenty-five years ago there w^ere a 

 number of animal groups in our mu- 

 seums, though it was still a moot ques- 

 tion whether their display was a legiti- 

 mate feature of museum work, and the 

 educational possibilities of such exhibits 

 were realized by few. 



Museum authorities are somewhat 

 conservative and as museums at first 

 were mainly for the preservation of 

 material for students, their educational 

 value to the public was not considered. 

 The principal object in mounting ani- 

 mals, especially mammals, was to pre- 

 serve them and put them in a condition 

 to be studied aAd compared one with 

 another. Groups were not even thought 

 of and, as Dr. Coues wrote as late as 

 1874: "'Spread eagle' styles of mount- 

 ing, artificial rocks and flowers, etc., are 

 entirely out of place in a collection of 



any scientific pretensions, or designed 

 for popular instruction. Besides, they 

 take up too much room. Artistic group- 

 ing of an extensive collection is usually 

 out of the question; and when this is 

 unattainable, halfway efforts in that 

 direction should be abandoned in favor 

 of severe simplicity. Birds look best 

 on the whole in uniform rows, assorted 

 according to size, as far as a natural 

 classification allows." The only use of 

 groups was for a few private individuals 

 and they were mainly heterogeneous 

 assemblages of bright-plumaged birds 

 brought together from the four quarters 

 of the globe and shown simply because 

 they were pretty. 



So far as we are aware, the introduc- 

 tion of groups into public museums was 

 due to the influence of an enthusiastic 

 private collector, Mr. E. T. Booth, of 

 Brighton, England, who devoted a large 

 part of his life to making a collection of 

 British birds, mounted in varied atti- 

 tudes, with accessories that copied more 

 or less accurately the appearance of the 

 spot where they were taken. As Mr. 

 Booth wrote, "the chief object has been 

 to endeavor to represent the birds in 

 situations somewhat similar to those in 

 which they were obtained; many of the 

 cases, indeed, being copied from sketches 

 taken on the actual spots where the birds 

 themselves were shot." These groups 

 were intended to be viewed from the 

 front only and were arranged in cases of 



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