TBANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. — DEPT. ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY. 595 



even if the old departmental division were abandoned for one corresponding to the 

 principal classes of the animal kingdom, each of the new departments would still 

 continue to keep, for consideration of conservation, those different kinds of objects, 

 at least locally, separate. The necessity of this has been so much felt in the British 

 Museum, that the Trustees resolved to store the spirit-specimens at South Ken- 

 sington, in a building specially adapted for the purpose, and separated from the 

 main building, as the accumulation of many thousand gallons of spirits is a source 

 of danger which not many years ago threatened the destruction of a portion of the 

 present building in Bloomsbury. 



1 could never see that by the juxtaposition of extinct and living animals the 

 student would obtain particular facilities for study, or that the general public 

 would derive greater benefit than thej' may obtain, if so inclined, from one of the 

 numerous popular books ; they would not be much the wiser if the Archaopteryx 

 were placed in a passage leading from the reptile- to the bird-gallery. And it cer- 

 tainly cannot be said that the separation of living and extinct organisms so univer- 

 sally adopted in the old museums, has been a hindrance to the progress of our 

 knowledge of the development of the organic world. This knowledge originated 

 and advanced in spite of museums-arrangements. What lies at the bottom of the 

 desire for such a change amounts, in reality, to this, that museums should be the 

 practical exponents of the principle that zoologists and botanists should not be 

 satisfied with the study of the recent fauna and flora, and that paleeontologists 

 shoidd not begin their studies or carry on their researches without due and full 

 reference to living forms. To this principle ever}'' biologist will most heartily sub- 

 scribe ; but the local separation of the various collections in the British Museum 

 will not offer any obstacles whatever to its being carried out. The student can 

 take the specimens (if not too bulky) from one department to the other ; he may 

 examine them in the gallery without interference on the part of the public ; or he 

 may have all brought to a private study, and, in fact, be in the same position with 

 regard to the use of the collections as those who have charge of them. A plan 

 which has been already initiated in the old building will probably be further 

 developed in the new, viz., to distribute in the palseontological series such examples 

 of important living types as will aid the visitor in comprehending the nature and 

 affinities of the creatures of which he sees only the fragmentary remains. 



With regard to the further arrangement of the collections in the new building, it 

 has been long understood that the exhibition of all the species, or even the majority of 

 them, is a mistake ; find that, therefore, two series of specimens should be formed, viz., 

 one for the purposes of advanced scientific study — the study-series ; and the other 

 comprising specimens illustrative of the leading points both of popular and scientific 

 interest ; this latter — the exhibition-series — being intended to supply the require- 

 ments of the beginner in the study of natural history, and of the public. As the 

 zoological collections are better adapted for exhibition than the others, the follow- 

 ing remarks refer principally to them. The bulk of our present exhibition-series is 

 the growth of many years, and to convert it into one which fulfils its proper 

 purpose, is a gradual and slow process ; nor can it be expected to reveal its character 

 until it has been removed into the new locality. The exhibition will probably 

 be found more liberal than may ',be deemed necessary by some of my fellow- 

 labourers ; but if a visitor should, on leaving the galleries, ' take nothing with him 

 but sore feet, a bad headache, and a general idea that the animal kingdom is a 

 mighty maze without plan,' I should be inclined to believe that this state of bodily 

 and mental prostration is the visitor's, and not the curator's fault. The very fact 

 that the exhibition-series is intended for a great variety of people, renders it 

 necessary to make a liberal selection of specimens, and I simply follow the principle 

 of placing in it all those objects which, in my opinion, the public can understand and 

 appreciate, and which therefore must contribute towards instruction. The public 

 would receive but an inadequate return for keeping up a National Museum if they 

 were shown, for instance, a dozen so-called ' types ' of the 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 



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