President's Address. 177 
demanded to know why these were not exhibited to the 
public. I asked him if he had mastered the characters of 
the hundreds of stuffed birds exhibited in the glass cases 
along the gallery. He was taken aback, but not convinced. 
I then asked if there was any particular species, genus, or 
family of birds which he wished to study critically, but which 
was not represented in the exhibited collection, or insuffici- 
ently so for his purpose. Here he was silenced! but as far 
as ever from being convinced, and went away doubtless in 
the firm belief that we were doing a scandalous injustice to 
the British public in not hanging up to view every feather 
we had on the premises. 
Others seem to imagine that one function of a museum 
is to contain a set of little monuments to the industry or 
zeal of individual collectors, and refuse to give or bequeath 
collections except under the stipulation that, regardless of all 
other considerations, they be for ever kept together and 
exhibited as the “Brown” or the “Jones” collection, as the 
case may be. 
But the general voice of those whose opinions on the 
subject are worthy of consideration, is that the exhibited 
collections in a large museum ought to be more or less 
limited in extent, and in this I to a great extent agree. 
Whole classes of objects, such as dried insects and 
crustacea, lose their colours by exposure to light, and 
therefore only a selection of easily replaceable species 
should be so exposed. Fishes and reptiles in spirit not only 
become, in like manner, when exhibited, bleached and ruined, 
but as the spirit containing them becomes in most cases 
brown, their appearance is not attractive, while to the ichthyo- 
logical expert a stuffed fish is in the majority of cases nearly 
useless. The ornithologist finds a collection of skins most 
useful for his purpose, but unstuffed skins of birds are hardly 
suitable for being looked at through glass. But far more than 
this, the exhibition of endless rows of closely allied species, 
as of stuffed birds, not only occupies much valuable space, 
but is bewildering rather than instructive to the general 
student. But of course the non-exhibited collections in a 
large museum should be freely available to bona fide students 
