178 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
and investigators who may have need to consult them, and 
every well-ordered museum should have rooms in which 
such students or specialists may be accommodated while 
engaged in such work. 
But what of the exhibited collections? So far as the 
general subject is concerned, I should have typical examples 
of the various families arranged as Professor Flower very 
sensibly recommends, without overcrowding, and so that they 
can be well seen. Wherever any special interest attaches to 
a specimen, its label should be amplified into an explana- 
tory note, and geographical distribution should be indicated 
by a free use of the little coloured maps now so extensively 
used for that purpose in various museums at home and abroad. 
If that is done, I hardly see the necessity for occupying space 
by large geographical groups or arrangements, upon which 
Mr A. Russell Wallace and others seem to put so much stress. 
And besides typical specimens illustrative of classification, all 
the animals, or other natural history objects which ordinary 
people are likely to read of in books of travel or popular natural 
history works, should be as well represented as possible. 
And I should also be pretty liberal in the exhibition of such 
objects as shells, even though my friend Professor Herdman 
may despise them as boards of books with their insides torn 
out, for the reason that many most excellent people collect 
shells, and are naturally desirous of having them named. 
For it must be borne in mind that there is a large class of 
students who can learn a very great deal through a glass case 
without ringing the curator’s bell and demanding to see the 
specimens keptinreserve. Andina large museum there should 
be exhibited as complete as possible a collection of British 
animals, while in a smaller or country town museum there ought 
to be a similar collection of the animals of the district around. 
Though there is no use in showing to the public endless rows 
of foreign passerine birds, or hawks, or squirrels, on perches, yet 
every intelligent lover of nature should have the opportunity 
of seeing, without trouble, named specimens of the birds, 
beasts, fishes, and shells of the land of his birth or adoption, 
or of the district in which.he lives, for these are things which 
he may come across in his walks, or of some of which he may 
