VII 



THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY 221 



all probability it would not be very difficult, were 

 the demand sufficient, to organise collections of 

 such objects, sufficient for all the purposes of 

 elementary teaching, at a comparatively cheap 

 rate. Even without these, much might be 

 effected, if the zoological collections, which are 

 open to the public, were arranged according to 

 what has been termed the &quot; typical principle &quot; ; 

 that is to say, if the specimens exposed to public 

 view were so selected that the public could learn 

 something from them, instead of being, as at 

 present, merely confused by their multiplicity. 

 For example, the grand ornithological gallery at 

 the British Museum contains between two and 

 three thousand species of birds, and sometimes 

 five or six specimens of a species. They are 

 very pretty to look at, and some of the cases are, 

 indeed, splendid ; but I will undertake to say, 

 that no man but a professed ornithologist has 

 ever gathered much information from the col 

 lection. Certainly, no one of the tens of thousands 

 of the general public who have walked through 

 that gallery ever knew more about the essential 

 peculiarities of birds when he left the gallery 

 than when he entered it. But if, somewhere in 

 that vast hall, there were a few preparations, 

 exemplifying the leading structural peculiarities 

 and the mode of development of a common fowl ; 

 if the types of the genera, the leading modifica 

 tions in the skeleton, in the plumage at various 



