110 


MR. BENTHAM’S ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 
TO THE LINNEAN SOCIETY 
(Continued from page 94) 
RESERVED specimens have the great advantage over living 
ones, that they can be collected in infinitely greater numbers, 
maintained in juxtaposition, and compared, however distant the 
times and places at which they had been found. They are often 
the only materials from which we can obtain a knowledge of the 
races they represent ; although still consisting of individuals only, 
they can, by their numbers, give better ideas of species and other 
abstract groups than the almost isolated living ones ; and their 
careful preservation supplies the means of verifying or correcting 
descriptions or delineations which have excited suspicion. Their 
great drawback is their incompleteness, and the impossibility of 
deriving from them all the data required for the knowledge of a 
race or even of an individual. It is owing to the frequency with 
which characters supplied by preserved specimens, although of 
the most limited and unimportant a nature, have been treated as 
sufficient to establish affinities and other general conclusions which 
have proved fallacious, that the outery I have alluded to has been 
raised against museums and herbaria by those very theorists 
whose speculations would fall to the ground if all the data sup- 
plied by preserved specimens were removed from their founda- 
tion. 
In respect of these deficiencies, as well as in the means of sup- 
plying them, there is a great difference between zoological and 
botanical museums. Generally speaking, zoological specimens 
show external forms only ; botanical specimens give the means 
of ascertaining interaal structure ; * and asa rule the characters 
most prominently or most frequently brought under the observer's 
notice acquire in his eyes an undue importance. Ience it is 
that external form was for so long almost exclusively relied upon 
for the classification of animals, whilst the minutice of internal 
structure were at a comparatively early period taken account of 
by botanists, while palwontologists are still led to give absolute 
weight to the most uncertain of all characters—outline and ex- 
ternal markings of deciduous organs. External form is, however, 
really of far greater importance in animals than in plants ; the 
number, form, size, and proportions of limbs, the shape and 
colour ofexcrescences, horns, beaks, feathers, hair, &c., in animals 
may be reckoned almost absolute in species when compared with 
the same characters in the roots, branches, and foliage, and,. to 
a certain extent, even in the flowers of plants. In plants, local 
circumstances, food, meteorological conditions, act readily in 
modifying the individual, and producing more or less permanent 
races of the lowest degree (varieties) ; whilst animals in these re- 
spects are comparatively little affected, except through those slow 
or occult processes by which the higher races, species, or genera 
in all organisms are altered in successive ages or geological 
periods. Even relative position of external parts, so constant in 
animals, is less so in plants. Animals being thus definite in out- 
line, and a very large proportion of them manageable as to size, 
their preserved specimens, carcases, or skins can be brought 
together under the observer’s eye in considerable numbers, ex- 
hibiting at once characters suflicient for the fixation of species ; 
whilst, with a few rare exceptions, a whole plant in its natural 
shape can never be preserved in a botanical museum. And, 
although good botanical specimens have a general facies, often 
sufficient to establish the species if the genus is known, yet the 
most experienced botanists have often erred in their determina- 
tions where they have been satisfied with external comparison 
without internal examination, 
Identification of species is, however, but a small portion of the 
business of systematic biology, and for higher purposes the classifi- 
cation of species, and the study of their affinities, the pre-eminence 
of ordinary zoological over botanical specimens soon fails, those 
characters distinguished by Prof. Flower as adaptive are propor- 
tionately more prominent, and the essential ones derived from 
internal structure are absent; and not only do the former thus 
acquire undue importance in the student’s eyes, but arguments 
in support of a favourite theory have not unfrequently been 
founded on distortions really the result of bad preparation, al- 
though supposed to be established on the authority of actual 
specimens, and therefore very difficult to refute. Mounted skins 

* By fxternal structure is here meant the morphology of internal organs 
or parts, usually included in the comparative anatomy of animals, not the 
microse »pical structure of tissues, which is more especially designated as 
vegetable anatomy. 


NATURE 


[| Fune 8, 1871 

of vertebrata, showy insects in their perfect stage, shells of 
malacozoa, corals, and sponges, necessarily form the chief portion 
of a museum for public exhibition ; but science and instruction 
require a great deal more; museum collections really useful 
to them should exhibit the animal as far as possible in all its 
parts and in all the phases of its life. This necessity has been 
felt in modern times, and has resulted in the establishment of 
Museums of Comparative Anatomy, amongst which that of our 
own College of Surgeons has certainly now taken the lead. But 
I have nowhere seen, except on a very small scale, the two 
museums satisfactorily combined. The idea, however, is not a 
new one ; several zoologists have expressed their opinions on the 
desirableness of such an arrangement, which il is to be hoped 
will be duly considered in the formation of the new National 
Zoological Museums about to be erected at South Kensington, 
for the double purpose of exhibition and science. The require- 
ments of the gazing public are sure to be well provided for, and 
there is every reason to believe that the exertions of scientific 
zoologists will not have proved useless, that we shall in the por- 
tion devoted to science and instruction see the skins of vertebrata 
preserved without the artist’s distortions, accompanied, as far as 
practicable, by corresponding skeletons and anatomical prepara- 
tions, as well as by the nests and eggs of the oviparous classes ; 
insects with their eggs, larvee, and pupx; shells with the 
animals which produce them, &c., always with the addition, as 
far as possible, of the collector’s memoranda as to station, habits, 
&c., in the same manner as herbarium specimens are now fre- 
quently most carefully completed by detached fruits, seeds, 
young plants in germination, gums, and other products. 
Here, however, will arise another source of false data to be 
carefully guarded against—the mismatching of specimens, which 
in botany has probably produced more false genera and species 
than the misplacing of garden labels. The most careful collectors 
have in good faith transmitted flowers and fruits belonging to 
different{plants as those of one species—the fruits perhaps picked 
up from under a tree from which they were believed to have 
fallen, or two trees in the same forest with similar leaves, the one 
in flower the other in fruit, supposed to be identical, but in fact 
not even congeners, and the mismatching at the various stages of 
drying, sorting, distributing, and finally laying in the specimens, 
have been lamentably frequent. Collectors’ memoranda, if not 
immediately attached to the specimens or identified by attached 
numbers, have often led the naturalist astray, for collectors are 
but too apt, instead of noting down any particulars at the time 
of gathering, to trust to their memory when finally packing up 
their specimens. And so long as reasoning by analogy was 
never allowed to prevail over a hasty glance at a specimen and 
the memoranda attached to it, false genera and species arising from 
these errors were considered indisputable. J/agw//ana of Cava- 
nilles was, till recently, allowed materially to invalidate the 
character of Tropceolec, overlooking the strong internal evidence 
that it was founded upon the fruit of one natural order carefully 
attached to a poor flowering specimen of another. 
Zoological museums and botanical herbaria differ very widely 
in the resources at their disposal for formation, maintenance, and 
extension of their collections. Zoological museums are by far 
the most expensive, but on the other hand as exhibitions they 
| can draw largely on the general public, whilst herbaria must rely 
mainly upon science alone, which is always poor ; both, how- 
ever, may claim national assistance on the plea of instruction as 
well as of pure science, and for practical or economic purposes 
the herbarium is even more necessary than the museum. The 
planning the new museums so as best to answer these several 
purposes for which they are required, has, we understand, engaged 
the attention of the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction 
and the Advancement of Science, and our most eminent zoolo- 
gists have been consulted ; any further observations on my part 
would therefore be superfluous, If our Government fail in their 
arangements for the promotion of science, it will not be for want 
of having its requirements laid before them. 
I am unable to say what progress has been made of late years 
in zoological museums, my notes on Continental ones were 
chiefly taken between the years 1830 and 1847, and would there- 
fore be now out of date, It would, however, be most useful if 
some competent authority would undertake a tour of inspection 
of the more important ones, as in the great varicty of their internal 
arrangements many a useful practical hint might be obtained, 
and we much want a general sketch of the principal zoological 
and botanical collections accessible to science, showing in what 
branch each one is specially rich, and where the more important 

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