vi THE BOOTH MUSEUM, BRIGHTON 71 



position to devote any large portion of our scanty leisure to 

 their study. For this latter purpose I have no hesitation in 

 saying it would be difficult to imagine a collection so complete, 

 and so admirably arranged and displayed, as the one in which 

 we are. I purposely avoid comparison with the beautiful 

 series, showing the nesting habits of birds, now being 

 arranged in the National Museum in London under the 

 supervision of Dr. Giinther, because the objects of the two 

 are in many respects different, as are also the methods in 

 which they have been carried out. We must recollect that 

 this collection was formed by one who was an intense lover of 

 bird-life, one who spent the greater part of his own life, night 

 and day, summer and winter, in watching their manners and 

 actions in their native haunts, and who knew from his own 

 keen observation exactly what were their favourite sur- 

 roundings, what kind of soil or of rock, or of tree or of flower, 

 each species would be most likely to be found among or near. 

 Most collections contain only the birds themselves. Here we 

 have not only birds, but the home in which the birds dwelt, 

 most carefully and accurately reproduced, and on such a scale 

 and in such a manner as has never been done anywhere 

 before. As for the birds themselves, not only are they the 

 finest and best specimens of their kind that could be procured, 

 and in many cases showing various stages of plumage, at 

 different ages and different seasons of the year, but far more 

 care, knowledge, and artistic skill has been expended on their 

 mounting than is generally the case either in museums or in 

 private collections. The art of taxidermy, though quite an 

 old one in Europe, extending back certainly three or four 

 hundred years, has made very little progress until very recent 

 times, and even now, though there is so great a development 

 of nearly all branches of art, it has had far too little atten- 

 tion bestowed upon it. Very few people seem to know the 

 difference between a really well-mounted bird or mammal and 

 an inferior one, but there is as much difference between them 

 as between a picture of a lion by Landseer or Kosa Bonheur, 

 and a picture of the same animal depicted by a village artist 

 on the sign of a public-house. And yet so little do people 

 understand this, that they go on filling museums and collections 



