Dr. J. E. Gray on Museums and their Uses. 289 
the plan which I have proposed of placing all the specimens in the 
scientific collection in boxes or drawers appropriated to them, and 
rendering them thus at once and readily accessible to students at 
large. 
I may observe that the late Mr. Swainson, who was the first to 
raise the ery, lived to find that it was far more useful to keep his 
own extensive collection of bird-skins in drawers, like his butterflies 
and his shells; and that most scientific zoologists and osteologists 
are now convinced that the skins of animals unmounted and kept in 
boxes are far more useful for scientific purposes than stuffed skins 
or set-up skeletons. 
So also, with reference to my proposal for the arrangement of the 
Museum for the general public, I find that those who are desirous 
of exhibiting their specimens to the best advantage are generally 
adopting similar plans. ‘ 
Thus, when Mr. Gould determined on the exhibition of his mag- 
nificent collection of Humming-birds, he at once renounced the 
rank-and-file system, and arranged them in small glazed cases, each 
case containing a genus, and each pane or side of the case showing 
a small series of allied species, or a family group of a single 
species. 
When lately at Liverpool, I observed that the clever curator, 
Mr. Moore, instead of keeping a single animal on each stand, has 
commenced grouping the various specimens of the same species of 
Mammalia together on one and the same stand, as several are 
grouped in the British Museum, and thus giving far greater interest 
to the group than the individual specimens would afford. 
In the British Museum, as an experiment with the view of testing 
the feelings of the public and the scientific visitors, the species of 
Nestor Parrots and of the Birds of Paradise, a family of Gorillas and 
the Impeyan Pheasants, and sundry of the more interesting single 
specimens, have been placed in isolated cases; and it may readily 
be seen that they have proved the most attractive cases in the 
exhibition. 
In the Great Exhibition of 1862, Prof. Hyrtl of Vienna exhibited 
some framed cases of skeletons like those here recommended: one 
contained the types of each family of Tortoises, another the principal 
forms of Saurians, &c. They excited much interest, and were pur- 
chased by our College of Surgeons. 
In some of the Continental museums also I have observed the 
same plan adopted to a limited extent. 
I now exhibit a case of insects, received from Germany, in which 
what I have suggested is fully carried out. You will perceive that 
in one small case are exhibited simultaneously, and visible at a 
glance, the egg, the larva, the plant on which it feeds, the pupa, 
and the perfect moth, together with its varieties, and the parasites 
by which the caterpillar is infested. Such cases, representing the 
entire life and habits of all the best-known and most interesting of 
our native insects, would be, as I conceive, far more attractive and 
instructive to the public at large than the exhibition of any con- 
Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 3. Vol. xiv. 19 
