THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM MAGAZIXE. 



27 



MUSEUM GROUPS. 



By THE EDITOR. 



Until comparatively recent times, the 

 animals shown in museums were mounted 

 in uniform rows, as single exhibits. Some 

 daring innovator might go so far as to 

 display a bird perched on a twig, or a 

 mammal crouching on a bit of rock-work, 

 but groups in the modern sense were 

 scarcely thought of until about fifty years 

 ago. Now museums vie with one another 

 in their efforts to display, not only the 

 animals themselves, but their environment 

 also, in the most realistic manner. 



The earliest attempt to realise the habitat 

 group idea was made by Mr. E. T. Booth, 

 of Brighton, England, who made a collec- 

 tion of Britisli birds, and mounted them, 

 with accessories, to reproduce more or less 

 closely the surroundings in which they 

 were obtained. The first bird group was 

 installed in the British Museum through 

 the instrumentality of Dr. R. Bowdler 

 Sharpe. and a number of attractive ex- 

 hibits of this kind, showing the birds in 

 their native haunts, usually accompanied by 

 their nest and eggs, now adorns the Bird 

 Gallery of that great institution. These 

 groups are comparatively small, but are 

 constructed with great fidelity ; the actual 

 soil, stones, grass, shrubs, and even inci- 



dental dead animals, were transported 

 bodily to the museum, and there assembled 

 in the exact manner of their occurrence. 



This painfully exact "restoration" method 

 has been improved upon by Dr. Frank M. 

 Chapman, of the American Museum of 

 Natural History, New York, where the 

 finest examples of group exhibits are to l)e 



These animals and birds were all biought from the 

 Antarctic by Sir Ernest Shackleton and Sir Douglas 

 Mawrson, and presented by those explorers to the 

 museum. The small picture shows the group under 

 construction. In nature the birds would not pose 

 with such unconcern if they discovered a seal emerg- 

 ing from a "blow-hole," but would make hurried 

 undignified departures. 



DWELLERS OF THE ANTARCTIC CONTINENT. 



