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helps to illustrate the history of the more remarkable animals, 

 those especially which are serviceable to man in any way, or on the 

 contrary destructive to himself, his crops, or some other of his 

 possessions. Many such cases arc to be seen in some of our 

 Museums relating however chiefly to the class of insects ; cases 

 for instance, exhibiting the silk-worm moth in its stages of growth 

 and transformation, along with other allied species likewise 

 yielding silk of different qualities ; cases of insects injurious to 

 corn or timber, showing every part of their history, side by side 

 w4th tliat of other insects appointed to keep them in check ; 

 insects forming the different kinds of galls, with specimens of the 

 galls annexed ; a seriea of the different species of moths that attack 

 woollens ; other cases got up in illustration of the habits of 

 peculiar species, their mode of building their nests, &c. These 

 cases, and others that might be suggested relating to the higher 

 animals as well, would fall under the head of " special purpose" 

 cases before alluded to. If, in addition to such cases, the student 

 could see a general systematic arrangement of the productions of 

 nature, not in all their details, but as represented by those type- 

 forms which serve best to characterise respectively the chief groups, 

 — so as to see the place which any particular species as above 

 illustrated occupies in the system, — he would have Nature's book 

 laid open before him in such a way as that he could hardly fail to 

 read a large portion of its contents. 



Reference has been made above to the Ipswich Museum ; and 

 if we would see a Museum in which the ijrtnciples here advocated 

 are carried out, perhaps more admirably than in any other 

 existing similar institution, we should go there and inspect the 

 well-chosen series of natural objects to sene for the instruction 

 of beginners in Natural History, and the excellent arrangement 

 of the whole estabUshment. "Beginning witli the elements, so 

 far as these are capable of exhibition in a IMuseum, the collection 

 proceeds with the most important and cliaracteristic simple 

 minerals, models of crystals, rocks, fossils, and other geological 



