88 THE MUSEUM OF THE vn 



are arranged on shelves over the floor cases on the western 

 side of the western museum, contiguous to the series of human 

 osteology, to which they form the natural sequel. 



JSTo portions of the structure of vertebrate animals can be 

 preserved with greater facility than the bones and teeth. 

 Moreover, the skeleton being the framework around which 

 the rest of the body is built up, gives, more than any other 

 system, an outline of the general organisation of the whole 

 animal, and it has this special importance, that a large number 

 of species all those in fact which are not at present existing 

 upon the earth can be known to us by little beyond the 

 form of the bones. Osteology has, therefore, always had 

 many votaries, as a special branch of study, and it is one 

 which finds much favour in the eyes of curators of museums, 

 from the satisfactory manner in which it can be illustrated by 

 specimens. Hunter's osteological collection was considerable, 

 quite in advance of any other in this country. The two small 

 whales (Balcenoptera rostrata and Hyperoodon rostratus) which 

 formed part of it were almost the only skeletons of animals 

 of their order which existed in any museum at the time of his 

 death. This fact alone shows the marvellous change that has 

 taken place within less than a century in the facilities for the 

 study of comparative anatomy. How great the contrast to 

 what may now be seen here in the College of Surgeons, in the 

 British Museum, in Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Dublin, 

 in a score or more of museums on the European continent, 

 in America, even in Australia and New Zealand ! Eichly 

 supplied osteologial collections have sprung up in every con- 

 siderable centre of scientific culture over the world ; but as 

 ours was one of the first in point of time, we may also claim 

 for it a high position in point of completeness. Others, such 

 as that at the British Museum, the Jardin des Plantes at 

 Paris, and the famous Leiden collection, may be larger, but 

 this is because the College Museum has been designedly 

 limited rather to selected illustrations of all the most im- 

 portant modifications of structure, than to numerous examples 

 of closely allied species, which can only be looked for in a 

 purely zoological museum. When important forms have 

 become extinct, their characters are shown by their fossilised 



