Dec. 14, 1876] 



NATURE 



145 



' It has been suggested to me on this occasion to give a few 

 hints as to the class of objects best adapted for display in such 

 museums, and the best method of preserving them, especially 

 illustrated by the specimens contributed to the Loan Collection, 

 and having been a collector of specimens and a curator of some 

 kind of museum all my life, at all events since I was nine years 

 old, I do not speak without some experience. As the time at 

 my disposal will be limited, I shall say nothing of the prepara- 

 tion and preservation of specimens intended for microscopical 

 investigation and demonstration, as that is a special branch of 

 the subject, on which there are numerous excellent treatises, and 

 which is considered in other lectuies of the present course. I 

 shall therefore confine myself to objects visible to the unassisted 

 eye, and mainly to those derived from the animal kingdom, as 

 having come most fully within the scope of my own experience. 



Whether it has arisen from a mistaken impression that museum 

 specimens are scarcely legitimate objects for this exhibition, or 

 whether from the too general neglect on the part of those in 

 charge of collections, of expenditure of labour, ingenuity, skill, 

 and taste, in effecting improvements in arranging, displaying, and 

 preserving the objects under their care, this department of the 

 Exhibition is, on the whole, not very satisfactorily represented, 

 and, compared with some others, puts in rather an insignificant 

 appearance. And yet properly preserved and displayed speci- 

 mens are essentially "scientific apparatus;" the preparing of 

 such specimens is a most valuable aid to the cultivation of 

 biology, and it is to be regretted that such an opportunity as 

 that now presented of comparing the merits of different pro- 

 cesses and of different materials used in the art, has not been 

 more fully taken advantage of. 



j In considering the subject of museum specimens, it will be 

 onvenient to treat, first, of the methods of preservation in a 

 iry state, afterwards of the methods of preserving animals or 

 Darts of animals in some kind of fluid, and lastly, to speak of 

 he reproduction, by means of casts and models, of such objects as 

 annot be conveniently preserved in other ways. 



The first method is applicable only to certain parts or tissues 

 )f the animal body ; either those like the bones of vertebrates, 

 hells of molluscs, chitinous integuments of articulata, &c., 

 vhich are in their natural condition so hard and dry, that they 

 mdergo no material change when completely deprived of all 

 he water contained in their substance, or those like skins, 

 loUow viscera, &c., which may be kept in shape until they are 

 Iry by filling them with some stuffing material, or distending 

 hem with air. Attempts have frequently been made to preserve 

 oft and fleshy tissues, as the muscles, in a dry state, but by all the 

 rocesses hitherto adopted they eventually lose so much of their 

 orm and substance as to be of little value as representations of 

 ctual and natural objects. Such parts of the body, and the 

 /hole of the soft-bodied invertebrates, can only be successfully 

 reserved in a fluid medium. 



The best known and most generally practised method of pre- 



srvation in a dry state is that intended to give an exact idea of 



le whole animal when living, by means of its skin, and the 



arious tegumentary appendages, as fur, feathers, scales, horns, 



c, attached to it, removed from the body, and then mounted 



y means of internal supports and paddings, or "stuffed," as it 



familiarly called. The art of preserving animals in this man- 



er is called " taxidermy." Although an art of really great 



oportance for the study of natural history, and one essential, 



I fact, to its proper diff'usion among the masses, it is almost 



irepresented in the present collection, the only exceptions being 



nong the "Apparatus for Instruction in Physical Science, con- 



buted by the Committee of the Pedagogical Museum of 



ussia." The examples sent by this committee, though ex- 



|emely interesting as illustrations of an admirable system of 



actical school leaching, and quite equal to the average level 



en in most public museums, are of no especial merit as works 



art, or as showing improvement over the ordinary methods. 



fciat this level should be so low is extremely to be regretted ; 



it as long as curators of museums are contented to fill their 



ses with wretched and repulsive caricatures of mammals 



d birds, out of all natural proportion, shrunken here and 



aated there, and in impossible attitudes, it will be difficult to 



t it raised. There may be seen occasionally, especially in con- 



lental museums and in private collections, where amateurs of 



dstic taste and good knowledge of natural history have devoted 



mselves to the subject, examples enough to show that an 



imal can be converted after death, by a proper application of 



ddermy, into z. real life-like representation of the original, 



perfect in form, proportions, and attitude, and almost, if not 

 quite as valuable for conveying information on these points as 

 the living creature itself. 



The injurious effect of a low standard of perfection in one 

 branch of art upon another is curiously seen in the drawings 

 of birds often introduced into pictures by some of our most 

 accomplished artists. I could point out in the present Royal 

 Academy exhibition several examples of birds introduced into 

 landscapes, and therefore evidently intended to be representations 

 of living and moving creatures, carefully copied from miserable 

 specimens of "stuffing" of the lowest order. The fact is that 

 taxidermy is an art, resembling that of the painter, or rather the 

 sculptor ; it requires natural genius as well as great cultivation. 

 One of the obstacles to its improvement seems to be that few 

 people have knowledge enough of the subject to judge of the exe- 

 cution of the taxidermist as they do of the painter or sculptor. 

 And yet to curators of natural history museums this know- 

 ledge should be indispensable. But then they must give up 

 the conventional low standard of payment for "bird stuffing" 

 which now prevails. The artist should be able to devote far 

 more time to the manipulation of each subject than at present, 

 and, moreover, be able to compensate himself for the time he 

 must spend in the study of the anatomy of the dead, and of 

 the form, attitudes, and manners of the living. I have often 

 thought that if a Landseer or a Wolf could have devoted himself 

 to taxidermy, what glorious specimens we should have, and how 

 different then would be the effect of a visit to the " bird gallery " 

 of one of our great museums to that which it now produces. 

 How much of nature would then be learned while admiring the 

 art ! And why should this not be ? Simply because no one, at 

 least no one in charge of a public museum, thinks of paying for 

 a stuffed bird more than some ridiculously inadequate sum. 

 It may be said that our natural history museums have not funds 

 for such a purpose. If so it is of course a subject to be regretted, 

 and ought to be remedied ; but it is not exactly the case. A few 

 really good specimens are far better than an infinity of bad ones. 

 Let the same amount of money, judiciously laid out on skill 

 and labour, now expended on a hundred specimens be con- 

 centrated on ten, and a far more valuable and instructive 

 museum will be produced. The remaining specimens for com- 

 pleting the series for advanced students of the subject, should be 

 kept as skins in drawers, in which state they are in every respect 

 preferable to badly-stuffed specimens. They can be handled or 

 examined without damage, and they do not mislead or disgust. 



Next to the skin, the part of vertebrate animals most com- 

 monly preserved is the skeleton, the bones being, in fact, the 

 most imperishable and easily preserved of all the tissues. The 

 facilities, therefore for the study of osteology are very great, 

 and it has especial importance in comparison with that of any 

 other system, inasmuch as large numbers of animals, all in fact 

 of those not at present existing on the earth, can be known to us 

 by little else than the form of their bones. 



These remarks, however, only apply to the skeleton in its 

 ossified sX.iX^, when the bone-tissue is so strongly impregnated with 

 salts of lime, as to resemble, in its properties, rather a mineral 

 than an animal substance. Many of the most important problems 

 of anatomy relating to the skeleton, either the adult skeleton of 

 the lower vertebrates, or the developing skeleton of higher forms, 

 can only be worked out on fresh specimens or wet preparations. 

 The ossified bones, which alone constitute what is popularly called 

 the skeleton, can be studied best from dried specimens. 



An osteological collection for teaching purposes should contain 

 a certain number of mounted skeletons of the most characteristic 

 types of vertebrate animals; i.e., skeletons with all the bones 

 joined together in their natural relations, and placed in such an 

 attitude as the animal ordinarily assumes when alive. 



In this way the student acquires a general idea of the con- 

 struction of the framework of the body, the proportions and rela- 

 tive positions of the various parts. But in such skeletons much 

 that is important to know is inacessihle to examination. One 

 bone more or less overlies and hides another, and the articular 

 ends, or those parts that come in contact with each other at the 

 joints, are entirely concealed. Although general comparisons of 

 form and proportion can be made with other skeletons, de- 

 tailed comparisons of bone with bone are impossible. This 

 applies more especially to skeletons articulated upon the plan 

 almost universally adopted until the last few years, in which 

 all the parts are immovably fixed to each other. It is to a 

 large extent obviated by the method I shall refer to presently, 

 but still, for the complete study of osteology, it is very desirable 



