BRITISH MUSEUM. 335 



number comprised under the separate items marked 

 there being no less than 19,272. Nineteen thousand 

 of these, in all probability, have perished, either from 

 the imperfect manner in which they were prepared, 

 or from the neglect which accompanied a long period 

 of indifference, in the former conservators, to their 

 proper custody. It is very probable that the leg of 

 that extinct bird, the dodo, already adverted to, and 

 now forming the greatest curiosity in the ornitholo- 

 gical department, is one of the Sloanean relics. This 

 noble basis having been laid, successive donations 

 and purchases were added, and successive losses 

 were suffered, as zeal or supineness on the part of 

 succeeding curators predominated. This state of 

 things continued until the appointment of Dr. Leach, 

 a naturalist whose ability was only equalled by his 

 zeal, and whose health eventually fell a sacrifice to 

 incessant labour. Well do we remember the time 

 when he set to work manfully in cleaning out what 

 was then an Augean stable — a chaos of " confusion 

 worse confounded." But the effects of long years 

 of misrule and of disorder were not to be overcome 

 by a single individual, who, while he was stopping 

 the plague in one quarter, was necessitated to permit 

 its full rage in another. Duties which, to be per- 

 formed, would have required the activity of five or 

 six naturalists, were imposed upon one ; the task 

 was Herculean, and, as his friends foresaw, he sunk 

 under their burthen. 



(236.) Whether this lamentable circumstance 

 forced conviction upon the trustees, that the zoolo- 

 gical department required augmentation, or whether 

 the opening of the Continent, by showing us the 



