76 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



country, but have been acknowledged and appreciated by students 

 of all nations. 



The reputation which he has enjoyed, and the respect which 

 he has justly earned, have been due to various causes ; partly 

 to his natural ability and command of languages, partly to his 

 method of study, and partly again to the splendid opportunities 

 which he enjoyed for prosecuting his studies in a museum 

 which, mainly through his instrumentality, has become one of 

 the finest in Europe. 



By the agency of well-trained Dutch collectors in Japan, the 

 Dutch Indies, and various islands of the Malay Archipelago, the 

 most valuable collections found their way to his study, and were 

 systematically examined and described, and eventually arranged 

 in the wonderful Museum at Leiden, of which he was appointed 

 Director in 1858, on the death of his predecessor in that of&ce, 

 the eminent naturalist, Temminck. 



No collections could have been turned to better account, for 

 they furnished materials for the most important memoirs on the 

 zoology of countries previously little explored by zoologists, and 

 led Prof. Schlegel to acquire the comprehensive knowledge and 

 sound views of classification which were subsequently made 

 manifest in so manj^ of his published memoirs. 



Perhaps no work relating to the zoology of the East (unless 

 it be Jerdon's ' Birds of India ') has been more frequently 

 consulted than Temminck and Schlegcl's ' Fauna Japonica ' ; 

 while no Museum Catalogues (if we except those of our own 

 British Museum) have been found more useful by students than 

 the eight volumes known as the ' Museum des Pays Bas ' put 

 forth by the untiring industry of Professor Schlegel. His 

 appreciation of a large series of every species collected for him 

 was well known, and went far to establish that confidence which 

 was expressed in the opinions so often asked of him by fellow- 

 workers. The acquisition of so large a number of specimens 

 of each species as he possessed, collected at difi'erent seasons 

 and in various localities, prevented him from falling into the too 

 common error of making new species out of mere examples of 

 individual variation, while it enabled him at the same time to 

 note and fully describe the limits of variation in any given 

 species of which a sufficient number of examples were available 

 for examination. 



