PREPARATION AND PRESERVATION 



OF 



OBJECTS IN NATURAL HISTORY. 



THE use of Museums or Collections of objects in Natural His- 

 tory to the successful prosecution of the study is very apparent ; 

 and it has long been an object of scientific men to collect the 

 animal, vegetable, and mineral productions of the different parts 

 of the world, for comparison and examination. Besides the 

 knowledge of the family characters and structure of the indivi- 

 duals which such collections afford, and the facility of compar- 

 ing that structure with what is related of the habits of the 

 animals themselves, and their uses, even as a matter of general 

 interest, a Museum of Natural History affords to the most ca- 

 sual observer much of what he desires to know. It is not every 

 one who has an opportunity of examining the productions of 

 nature in the respective countries to which they are indigenous ; 

 few can have seen very many of them in their native haunts ; 

 and still fewer in visits to distant places, either on business or 

 pleasure, are possessed of time and talents equal to the inves- 

 tigation of the thousands of animal, vegetable, and mineral 

 bodies that claim the attention of the naturalist. It is only 

 when these are brought together in museums, prepared with 

 a simulation of life, and displayed in families of congenerous 

 structure, that one is aware of the number, importance, and the 

 vast variety of organic and inorganized bodies. Even the vul- 

 gar and uninformed never fail to express pleasure and wonder 

 at being in contact with forms so various and from parts of the 

 world so distant, and seeing in their proper shapes many animals, 

 details of whose habits have embellished the tale of the traveller, 

 or formed an episode in the page of the historian. To the man 

 of science and of liberal education Museums afford an inte- 

 rest of a higher kind ; for there are accumulated specimens of 

 all those articles in their natural state, an exchange of which 

 between distant nations constitutes the chain that connects 



4 



