Birds. 87 



the collections, or as a tradesman to settle an account. Amid 

 the perpetual interruptions thus caused, our national zoologist 

 has to pursue his work. 



" Some of the specimens are here, some in the galleries over- 

 head, and some are stored away in cellars at a still lower depth 

 than that in which he sits at work. The library attached to 

 the department contains merely some of the most obvious books 

 of reference ; all others have to be obtained on loan from the great 

 national depository of books in the centre of the building. No 

 lights are allowed, and when the fogs of winter set in, the 

 obscurity is such that it is difficult to see any object requiring 

 minute examination. 



" Under these circumstances, which we trust to see materially 

 altered when the zoological collections are moved to their new 

 home in South Kensington, it is more than creditable to our 

 zoologists that they should have turned out the large amount of 

 scientific work that has issued from their department of the 

 British Museum during the past thirty years." 



The collections of Bird-skins were packed in boxes, which 

 were arranged in book-cases, some round the wall of the 

 Assistant-Keeper's study, others in the dark passage by which 

 the Insect-room was approached. As the collection of big birds 

 increased, larger wooden boxes were provided, which were placed 

 in racks in the same outside passage, and in the recesses behind 

 the Bird-gallery upstairs, each box requiring two men to carry 

 it ; but these larger boxes were constructed after Gray's death, 

 with a \dew to the transference of the collection from Bloomsbury 

 to South Kensington. Some idea of the increase in the collection 

 of Bird-skins between the years 1872 and 1883 may be gained 

 from the fact that, in the former year, the specimens of Birds 

 of Prey, or Accipitres, occupied only a few wooden boxes, and 

 wei'e all contained within a single book-case in the Insect-room 

 passage. Eleven years later, when they were removed to 

 South Kensington, these birds occupied 108 boxes, measuring 

 3 X If X 1 ft., each requiring two men to lift it. They now 

 fill thirty great cabinets, extending down one entire side of the 

 Bird-room in the Natural History Museum. 



I have no exact record of the number of specimens of birds 

 and their eggs which existed in 1872, when I took over the charge 

 of the collections, but I should reckon the mounted birds at 

 about 10,000, the skins and eggs at the most 20,000 more, so 

 that an estimate of the total number of specimens at 35,000 is 



