62 LIFE OF FLOWER 



referred to elsewhere, it may be mentioned that it was 

 during the work on the Index Museum the discovery of 

 the absence in certain groups of birds of the fifth cubital 

 quill-feather was made ; a fact now familiar to naturalists 

 under the title of diastaxy, or aquintocubitalism. 



A special feature of the vertebrate section of the 

 Index Museum was the attention devoted to the mount- 

 ing of the skins of the mammals exhibited. In an 

 address delivered to the British Association in 1889, 

 Flower referred to " the sadly neglected art of 

 taxidermy, which continues to fill the cases of most of 

 our museums with wretched and repulsive caricatures 

 of mammals and birds, out of all natural proportions, 

 shrunken here and bloated there, and in attitudes 

 absolutely impossible for the creature to have assumed 

 while alive." And he was determined that the speci- 

 mens of this nature in the section of the museum under 

 his own immediate superintendence should be the best 

 of their kind, and should serve as models for the 

 renovation of these in the zoological galleries which he 

 had determined to undertake so soon as the opportunity 

 was afforded. 



Neither was he less particular in regard to labels de- 

 scribing the exhibits. In the address already referred to, 

 he had written that " above all, the purpose for which 

 each specimen is exhibited, and the main lesson to be 

 derived from it, must be distinctly indicated by the 

 labels affixed, both as headings of the various divisions 

 of the series and to the individual specimens. A well- 

 arranged educational museum has been defined as a 

 collection of instructive labels, illustrated by well-selected 

 specimens." Most, if not all, of the descriptive labels in 



