270 B ibliographical Notice. 



advantage of its inertia than by appealing to reason. Again : what 

 balm may the Curator always lay to his smarting soul when he 

 learns that even in the Metropolis of the Empire a request to the 

 Treasury for an addition to the permanent museum-staff may be 

 met with the penny-wise suggestion that the way to keep down 

 expenditure on staff is to close the door on acquisitions. The 

 far-off Curator will also be consoled to know that even in the 

 Imperial Metropolis the estimates for accommodating zoological 

 collections are usually pronounced to be extravagant by high official 

 persons with quill and inkhorn. 



The words of the wise are as goads, so that we may profitably 

 attend to some of those questions of museum policy upon which the 

 author has here set his seal. The strait path of the assistant is to 

 conserve his own proper collection, with a single eye to cataloguing 

 it when it is big and broad enough ; but he must have licence to 

 revel in the rare stuff brought in by intelligent travellers, for 

 nothing hereafter hardens the enthusiastic collectors heart against 

 the Museum more than to find his treasures reposing on a back 

 shelf. Again : as to museum catalogues, the only kind that is any 

 use to the world at large — also bringing in a manifold return to 

 the museum — is the descriptive monograph, of which (we must and 

 shall add) the author's ' Catalogue of Fishes ' is a noble example. 

 Or, regarding exchanges : dear as they may be to fancy, in practice 

 they by no means always bring rare and refreshing fruit in their 

 train ; they make great inroads on time and they rarely give satis- 

 faction to both sides : better is it to give away authentic duplicates, 

 without money and without price, to all respectable institutions that 

 apply for them. Or again : the idea of a Museum as a collection 

 of labels illustrated by specimens is by no means divinely inspired. 

 Is the long suffering public, overfed with print from its youth up, 

 never to escape long descriptive labels ? The better way is to 

 show forth things, and to relegate the talk to simple guide-books. 



These are a few of the treasures of old experience that we extract 

 from this rich little book. There are other things that might be 

 noticed, such as the theory and practice of purchase of collections, 

 the science of encouraging attendants, the art of labelling, the 

 conduct of a departmental library, the segregation of specimens 

 preserved in spirit, and the supreme effort — an epic in itself — of 

 transferring the collections from Bloomsbury to Cromwell Koad. 



We may conclude this brief and inadequate notice with a reference 

 to the Preface, which states with official impartiality that the work 

 is by Dr. A. Giiuther, F.R.S., formerly Keeper of the Department 

 of Zoology, and that the Index has been made by Mr. G. J. Arrow, 

 Assistant in the Department of Zoology. The former Keeper has 

 played such a part, and has gained such a place in our hearts, that 

 he may say with Horace " Mitte supervacuos honores." A. A. 



