188 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
it may be most convenient to take. For this plan I claim 
the following advantages :— 
1. That it brings recent and fossil organisms sufficiently 
close together to show that they all form parts of one great 
system, and to emphasise the fact that paleontology is not a 
distinct science from zoology, while it does not confuse the 
minds of those who may only wish to study the details of the 
living forms. 
2. It lays before the student, as it were, a series of 
tableaux showing the phases, so far as the geological record 
has revealed them to us, through which each great class of the 
animal kingdom has passed from ancient to modern times. — 
3. It enables the student who consults the collection 
from a geological standpoint, to see at a glance the leading 
orders, families, and genera of each great class of animals in 
each great geological period. But for the especial benefit 
of the geologist, this arrangement should be supplemented 
by a purely stratigraphical series of leading or characteristic 
fossils, the proper place of which is along with rock-forming 
minerals, rock-specimens, geological models, etc., in a purely 
and truly Geological collection. 
A few words now as to educational or type collections. 
In every large museum in a town which is a centre of 
education, there should be an educational or type collection, 
whose function is to aid students of zoology in acquiring the 
rudiments of their subject; and it should be arranged, not 
merely for the benefit of those who are cramming for 
examinations, but of those who may be studying the subject 
from the mere love of it. In many of its essential features 
that collection should be like that proposed by Professor 
Herdman, though not so large, nor need it be arranged in the 
form of a tree, for that might be very inconvenient as regards 
available space; and besides that, as I once heard remarked, 
Professor Herdman’s cases would have to be put on castors, 
so that they might be shifted occasionally to suit the ever- 
shifting opinions of evolutionists as to the mode of branching 
of the said tree itself. 
This collection should contain, in the first place, a set of . 
well-prepared and properly labelled specimens illustrative of 
