426 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
family of parrots or humming-birds; they require a good many 
more to see what Nature can produce in splendour and variation 
of colour, in grotesqueness of form; or to learn that whilst one of 
these groups of birds is spread all over the countries of the 
tropical zone, the other is limited to a portion of a single continent. 
To render such an exhibition thoroughly useful two additional 
helps are required, viz., a complete system of explanatory labels, 
and a popularly-written and well-illustrated handbook, which 
should not only serve as a guide to the more important and 
interesting specimens, but give a systematic outline of the all-wise 
plan which we endeavour to trace in God’s creation. 
There is one part of the Museum which I intend to treat in a 
different manner from the rest, and that is the collection of 
British animals. For the same reasons for which I have in a 
former part of this address insisted on District Faunas being 
fully represented in Provincial Museums, I consider a complete 
exhibition of the British Fauna to be one of the most important 
objects of the National Museum. Its formation is, strange as it 
may appear to many of you, still a desideratum, and a task which 
will occupy many years. It will not be easy (especially when you 
are in danger of infringing an Act of Parliament) to form a 
complete series of British birds showing their changes of plumage, 
their young, their eggs, their mode of nidification; it is a long 
work to collect the larve and chrysalides of insects, and to mount 
the caterpillars with their food-plants; and we shall require the 
co-operation of many a member of the British Association when 
we extend the collection to the marine animals and _ their 
metamorphoses. But all the trouble, time, and labour spent will 
be amply repaid by the direct benefits which all classes will derive 
from such a complete British collection. 
My time is becoming short, and yet I find that I am far from 
having completed the task I had set myself. Therefore let me 
briefly refer only to a few points which of late have much agitated 
those who feel a direct or indirect interest in the progress of the 
National Museum. 
In the first place we must feel deeply concerned in everything 
relating to the conservation of the collections. If the objects 
could speak to you as they do to those familiar with their history, 
many of them would tell you of the long hours of patient inquiry 
spent upon them; many might point with pride at the long pages 
