18 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



naming, classifying, and cataloguing them has been beyond 

 the power of the curators and their assistants. During 

 the same period, while new species have been so rapidly 

 added to the collections, the labours of anatomists and 

 embryologists have led to constant and important changes 

 in classification, and as it is quite impossible to be con- 

 tinually re-arranging scores of thousands of specimens, it 

 necessarily follows that the museum cases have presented 

 to the public an old and long-exploded arrangement, often 

 quite at variance with the knowledge of the day as to the 

 affinities of the different groups. A still further difficulty 

 has been the overcrowding of the cases, because it was long 

 the custom to exhibit to the public at least one specimen 

 of every new species acquired by the museum ; and the 

 difficulty of finding room for the ever-increasing stores has 

 rendered nugatory all attempts to group the specimens in 

 varied ways, so as to convey the maximum of instruction 

 and pleasure to the visitor. 



Although the evils of this method of arranging a 

 museum had been pointed out by many writers, notably by 

 Sir Joseph Hooker, in his address as President of the 

 British Association, at Norwich ; by myself, in an article 

 in Macmillans Magazine, and by the late Dr. J. E. Gray, 

 keeper of the zoological department of the British Museum, 

 very little radical improvement has been effected in the 

 new building at South Kensington. It is true that many 

 of the large mammalia are more effectually exhibited in 

 costly glazed floor-cases, and there is a great extension of 

 the interesting series illustrating the habits and nesting 

 of British birds ; but the great bulk of the collection still 

 consists of the old specimens exhibited in the old way, in 

 an interminable series of over-crowded wall-cases, while 

 any effective presentation on a large scale of the various 

 aspects and problems of natural history, as now understood, 

 is almost as far off as ever.^ What may be done in this 



1 The late able Director of the Natural History Museum, Sir William 

 Flower, utilized the entrance hall for educational purposes by means 

 of a series of collections illustrating the comparative anatomy of 

 animals, their protective colouring, and the phenomena of mimicry, 

 thus showing a full appreciation of the true objects of a public museum 

 But the great bulk of the collection is still exhibited in the old manner 



