36 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



globe, and he will certainly admit the imperfections of this 

 mode of exhibition, as profitless and puzzling to the 

 general public as it is wasteful of valuable space and in- 

 convenient to the student or the specialist. In a proper 

 system of arrangement all these fragments would be 

 treated as material for study, not as specimens to be 

 exhibited to the public. Casts and models of bones and 

 other fossils can now be cheaply and easil}^ made of paper, 

 which when carefully coloured are to the ordinary eye in- 

 distinguishable from the specimen itself; and the materials 

 already existing in the museums of Europe and America 

 are so vast that nearly complete skeletons can be obtained 

 of a great number of the more interesting extinct 

 animals. 



What ought to be exhibited to the public is a typical 

 series of such skeletons or models, so arranged as to show 

 the progression of forms and the evolution of the more 

 specialized types as we advance from the earlier to the 

 later geological periods. Instead of one huge gallery, a 

 series of moderate-sized rooms should be constructed, each 

 to illustrate one geological epoch, with subsidiary rooms 

 where necessary to show the successive modifications 

 which each class or order of animals has undergone. 

 Where only fragments of an important type have been 

 obtained, these might be exhibited with an explanation 

 of why they are important, and an outline drawing 

 showing the probable form and size of the entire animal. 

 A museum of this kind, utilising the palseontological 

 treasures of the whole world, would be of surpassing 

 interest, and would probably exceed in attractiveness and 

 popularity all existing museums. It would offer scope for 

 a variety of groupings of extinct and living animals, 

 calculated, as Professor Agassiz intended his museum to 

 do, " to illustrate the history of creation, as far as the 

 present state of scientific knowledge reveals that history." 

 It is surely an anomaly that the naturalist who was most 

 opposed to the theory of evolution should be the first to 

 arrange his museum in such a way as best to illustrate 

 that theory, while in the land of Darwin no step has 

 been taken to escape from the monotonous routine of one 



