II NATIONAL MUSEUMS 39 



at the prospect of success in his labours guaranteed by such 

 an unprecedented mass of material. But after a few weeks 

 the scene had changed. He was pacing up and down the 

 room, wringing the same hands in despair at the hopeless- 

 ness of solving the tangled problems of the variation according 

 to age, sex, season, and locality, the geographical distribu- 

 tion, and the limits and relationship of any single species, 

 owing to the absolutely insufficient number of properly 

 authenticated specimens at his command. Every zoologist 

 will recognise this as a scarcely exaggerated description of 

 what he meets with at every step of his work. Except, 

 perhaps, for some special and limited groups, which may be 

 taken up in private collections, a national museum alone can 

 possibly attempt to bring together the materials required for 

 such exhaustive work ; but it is undoubtedly the duty of all 

 national museums to endeavour to do this. There should be, 

 in every great nation, one establishment at least where such 

 problems may be attacked with some prospect of success, and 

 the only conditions upon which collections for this purpose 

 can be maintained are, that they should be so arranged as to 

 occupy the smallest possible space compatible with their 

 proper preservation and convenience of access, that they 

 should be removed from all the deteriorating influences of 

 light and dust, and at the same time be perfectly available 

 for the closest examination by all those whose knowledge is 

 sufficient to enable them to extract any information from 

 them. This means that they cannot be exhibited in the 

 ordinary sense of trie word ; although it must not be supposed 

 that they are on that account in less need of orderly and 

 methodical arrangement. There is certainly a danger of 

 collections which are not generally exhibited becoming 

 neglected, and degenerating into the condition of mere accumu- 

 lations of rubbish. Anything of the kind is absolutely 

 incompatible with the true requirements of specimens kept 

 for research. They specially need to be arranged in an 

 orderly and methodical manner, and to be thoroughly well 

 catalogued and labelled, so that each may be found directly it 

 is wanted, and they must be frequently inspected to see that they 

 are free from moth or other deleterious influence. The object 



