62 Arranging Museum Cases for Birds. 



'' stuffer ' can only caricature nature's feathered beauties, and 

 many of our most charming birds are destined to haunt us 

 like a feather-be-decked gargoyle, until that grand day arrives 

 when the moth and rust doth corrupt, or, what would truly 

 be a god-send, when the thieves break through and steal ; 

 though usually thieves are not sufficiently imbecile to take 

 sawdust- or ' tow '-stuffed birds. 



Why cannot taxidermists aaopt some definite scale for 

 their cases ? A foot — the ordinary twelve-inch foot — should 

 be a good basis, the measurement to be of the outside of the 

 case. Thus, a case for an average-sized small bird could be 

 a foot square, or a foot high by i| feet broad. Slightly larger 

 birds could be in cases 18 inches square, or 18 inches by 2 

 feet. Larger sizes of 2 feet, 2\ feet, 3 feet, and so on, could 

 be adopted. In this way, no matter how large a collection 

 grows, the cases can be easily arranged together, and can be 

 finished off in a straight line at the top, bottom and sides. 

 By adopting some such definite series of measurements for a 

 case, a few inches extra can always be given, with advantage 

 to the exhibit. When the beak, top of the head, tail and 

 feet respectively almost touch the four sides of the case, (as 

 for instance, the Bustard in the middle of the bottom row of 

 fig 1), the most likely impression made on the mind of a juvenile 

 visitor is that the curator is trying to see how long the bird 

 can remain in its cribbed cabined and confined state before it 

 dies of suffocation ! It leaves the same evil thoughts in 

 one's mind that exist when one hears a lark trying to sing in 

 its cage of six or eight inch sides. And museums or private 

 collections should not cause such thoughts. 



Some time ago, I had to arrange a large collection of cases 

 of birds ; hence these tears. Mr. and Mrs. Wickham Bo\nton 

 presented to the Hull Museum the enormous collection of 

 British birds formed by the late Sir Henry Boynton, a well- 

 known Yorkshire naturalist; About the same time, we ac- 

 quired the fine series of Yorkshire-obtained* birds formed by 

 Mr. Riley Fortune, F.Z.S., of Harrogate. We already had 

 the well-known collection of the late Henry J. Robinson Pease. 

 In additk ji was a typical series such as one finds in the museum 

 of a city like Hull, where specimens had accumulated for thiee 

 quarters of a century. Among them were some good ones, 

 and several of local interest. There was also the usual assort- 

 ment one gets about spring-cleaning time, mindful of the old 

 wool-work pictures with which our mothers and aunts whiled 

 away their winter evenings. f 



* This sounds better than ' shot.' 



t I have one in mind particularly ; it shows a wall-eyed sparrow-hawk 

 perching on a well-blooming- red rosebush — a thing of beauty and a joy 

 for ever ! 



Naturalist, 



