174 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
ordinary collector who does not pretend to be an expert, or 
who may be only a beginner, but who finds in the collections 
exhibited or preserved in public museums the most welcome 
assistance in naming and understanding the specimens of in- 
sects, shells, or other natural objects which he may employ his 
leisure time in collecting, or which friends may send him from 
abroad. It embraces the student getting up a subject, it may 
be for an examination, and who, though he may be possessed 
of ever so much industry and enthusiasm, will find his 
text-book dry and profitless reading indeed, if he has 
no opportunity of studying the actual objects therein 
described, and which it is impossible, even with the best 
figures, thoroughly to realise without seeing them. And it 
embraces also a numerous class of the general public, who 
may be neither experts, nor collectors, nor students, but who, 
having an interest in nature and natural objects to a greater 
or lesser extent, read popular books or articles on natural 
history, or books of travel in which such things are alluded 
to, and are laudibly curious to see the objects which other- 
wise would be to them little more than mere names. We 
read, for instance, of a strange parrot in New Zealand, which, 
since the colonisation of that country by Europeans, has 
taken to carnivorus habits, and digs into the sides of sheep— 
let us go to the museum and see a stuffed specimen, if there 
is one there. We read of gigantic birds, 12 or 14 feet high, 
taller than the tallest ostrich, which, though now extinct, 
once roamed about in that same distant land, and which, 
though never seen alive by the white man, were certainly 
hunted and eaten by the aborigines—perhaps we may see in 
the museum, if not a complete skeleton, at least some of 
their enormous bones. We read of the astounding phenomena 
of protective mimicry in animals; how mild-tempered honey- 
sucking moths may parade about dressed up as fierce wasps, 
thereby reversing the familiar saying of the wolf in sheep’s 
clothing, or of butterflies gay and gaudy on the wing, but, 
when they alight on a bush, hardly to be distinguished from 
a withered leaf adhering to a twig—shall we not also visit 
the museum in search of these and other wonders of a like 
nature? I need not go any further in recounting things 
