288 Dr. J. E. Gray on Museums and their Uses. 
A selection of a specimen of each of the more important or striking 
species of each genus or section. 
The changes of state, sexes, habits, and manners of a well-known 
or an otherwise iiteresting species. 
The economic uses to which they are applied; and such other 
particulars as the judgment and talent of the curator would 
select as best adapted for popular instruction, and of which 
these are only intended as partial indications. 
No one, I think, who has ever had charge of a museum, or has 
noted the behaviour of the visitors while passing through it, can 
doubt for a moment that such cases would be infinitely more attrac- 
tive to the public at large than the crowded shelves of our present 
museums, in which they speedily become bewildered by the multi- 
plicity, the apparent sameness, and at the same time the infinite 
variety of the objects presented to their view, and in regard to which 
the labels on the tops of the cases afford them little assistance, 
while those on the specimens themselves are almost unintelligible. 
When such visitors really take any interest in the exhibition, it 
will generally be found that they concentrate their attention on in- 
dividual objects, while others affect to do the same, in order to con- 
ceal their total want of interest, of which they somehow feel ashamed, 
although it originates in no fault of their own. 
I think the time is approaching when a great change will be made 
in the arrangement of Museums of Natural History, and have there- 
fore thrown out these observations as suggestions by which it appears 
to me that their usefulness may be greatly extended. 
In England, as we are well aware, all changes are well considered 
and slowly adopted. Some forty years ago, the plan of placing 
every specimen on a separate stand, and arranging them in rank and 
file in large glass wall-cases, was considered a great step in advance, 
and it was doubtless an improvement on the preexisting plan, espe- 
cially at a time when our collections were limited to a small number 
of species, which were scarcely more than types of our modern 
families or genera. 
The idea had arisen that the English collections were smaller 
than those on the Continent, and the public called for every speci- 
men to be exhibited. But the result has been that, in consequence 
of the enormous development of our collections, the attention of the 
great mass of visitors is distracted by the multitude of specimens, 
while the minute characters by which naturalists distinguish genera 
and species are inappreciable to their eyes. 
It was not, however, the unenlightened public only who insisted 
on this unlimited display ; there were also some leading scientific 
men who called for it, on the ground that the curator might be in- 
duced to keep specimens out of sight in order to make use of them 
for the enlargement of his own scientific reputation while the scien- 
tific public were debarred the sight of them, and that valuable spe- 
cimens might thus be kept, as the favonrite phrase was, ‘‘in the 
cellars.” But any such imputation would be completely nullified by 
