ADDRESS TO BIOLOGICAL SECTION, BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 425 
The student can take the specimens (if not too bulky) from one 
department to the other; he may examine them in the gallery 
without interference on the part of the public; or he may have all 
brought to a private study, and, in fact, be in the same position 
with regard to the use of the collections as those who have charge 
of them. A plan which has been already initiated in the old 
building will probably be further developed in the new, viz., to 
distribute in the paleeontological series such examples of important 
living types as will aid the visitor in comprehending the nature 
and affinities of the creatures of which he sees only the 
fragmentary remains. 
With regard to the further arrangement of the collections in 
the new building, it has long been understood that the exhibition 
of all the species, or even the majority of them, is a mistake; and 
that, therefore, two series of specimens should be formed, viz., one 
for the purposes of advanced scientific study—the study-series, 
and the other comprising specimens illustrative of the leading 
points both of popular and scientific interest; this latter—the 
exhibition-series—being intended to supply the requirements of 
the beginner in the study of natural history, and of the public. 
As the zoological collections are better adapted for exhibition than 
the others, the following remarks refer principally to them. The 
bulk of our present exhibition-series is the growth of many years, 
and to convert it into one which fulfils its proper purpose is a 
gradual and slow process; nor can it be expected to reveal its 
character until it has been removed into the new locality. The 
exhibition will be probably found more liberal than may be 
deemed necessary by some of my fellow-labourers ; but if a visitor 
should, on leaving the galleries, “take nothing with him but sore 
feet, a bad headache, and a general idea that the animal kingdom 
is a mighty maze without plan,” I should be inclined to believe 
that this state of bodily and mental prostration is the visitor’s, 
and not the curator’s fault. The very fact that the exhibition- 
series is intended for a great variety of people renders it necessary 
to make a liberal selection of specimens, and I simply follow the 
principle of placing in it all those objects which, in my opinion, 
the public can understand and appreciate, and which therefore 
must contribute towards instruction. The public would receive 
but an inadequate return for keeping up a National Museum if 
they were shown, for instance, a dozen so-called “types” of the 
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