54 LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 



that he must acquire the same knowledge of their anatomy that a 

 great sculptor possesses of the human frame ; that he must be per- 

 fectly acquainted with their general outline ; that he must yet further 

 be versed in the exact curvatures and proportions of the several parts; 

 that he must be familiar with their attitudes, movements, and physi- 

 ognomy. " Enter a museum, and you will probably," he said, "find 

 that what was once a bird has been stretched, stuffed, and wired by 

 a common clown." A plan which preserved the contour of every 

 muscle, the convexities and concavities, the delicate lines of expres- 

 sion, the elasticity of surface, the truth and freedom of posture, was 

 useless to stuffers who were ignorant of nature's pattern. The 

 curators of museums, who have the power to commence a reform 

 by encouraging study and observation, are usually themselves mere 

 closet-naturalists. Immured among moth-eaten and distorted speci- 

 mens, they come to think that the form of an animal is of little 

 consequence. Not a few of them have barely any knowledge of 

 anatomy, and to them all animals are alike in their internal organisa- 

 tion, for all contain straw. They take more delight in spying a spot 

 of colour upon the wings of birds, or the hides of beasts, and in 

 establishing what .they are pleased to call a new species, than in 

 contemplating the marvellous conformation, internal and external, 

 of the animal world. No wonder that they espouse wild theories 

 to account for the origin of species they have themselves invented. 

 The time, nevertheless, must come when some great museum will 

 do for the outside of animals what the Hunterian Museum of the 

 Royal College of Surgeons does for their internal structure, and then 

 Waterton's discovery will obtain the credit it deserves. 



The second journey of Waterton terminated in 1817. He came 

 back to England, stayed a few months, passed over to the Continent, 

 again returned home, and continued to yearn for the distant forests 

 of Guiana. He sailed for the New World in February 1820, and on 

 arriving in Demerara, he>. established himself in a ruined house, 

 formerly the home of his friend Mr Edmonstone. Here he once 

 more gave himself up to the passion which possessed him, the 

 pursuit of Natural History. He scrutinised the habits of the creatures 

 in their native wilds, carefully studied their anatomy, and applied 

 his knowledge to endowing their skins with the form and animation 



