596 KEroRT— 1880. 



zone, the other is limited to a portion of a single continent. To render sucli an 

 exhibition thoroughly useful, two additional helps are required, viz. a complete 

 system of explanatory labels, and a popularly written and well-illustrated hand- 

 book, which should not only serve as a guide to the more important and interesting 

 specimens, but give a systematic outline of the all-wise plan which we endeavour to 

 trace in God's creation. 



There is one part of the Museum which I intend to treat in a different manner 

 from the rest, and that is the collection of British animals. For the same rea- 

 sons for which I have in a former part of this address insisted on District Faunas 

 being fully represented in Provincial Museums, I consider a complete exhibition of 

 the British Fauna to be one of the most important objects of the National Museum. 

 It:) formation is, strange as it may appear to many of you, still a desideratum, and 

 a task which will occupy many years. It will not be easy (especially when you are in 

 danger of infringing an Act of Parliament), to form a complete series of British 

 birds showing their changes of plumage, their young, their eggs, their mode of 

 nidification ; it is a long work to collect the larvie and chrysalides of insects, 

 and to mount the caterpillars with their food-plants; and we shall require the 

 co-operation of many a member of the British Association when we extend the 

 collection to the marine animals and their metamorphoses. But all the trouble, 

 time, and labour spent will be amply repaid by the direct benefits which all classes 

 ^ill derive from such a complete British collection. 



My time is becoming short, and yet I find that I am far from having completed 

 the task I had set to myself. Therefore let me briefly refer only to a few points 

 which of late have much agitated those Avho feel a direct or indirect interest in 

 the progress of the National Museum. 



In the first place we must feel deeply concerned in everything relating to the 

 conservation of the collections. If the objects could speak to you as they do to 

 those familiar with their history, many of them would tell you of the long hours 

 of patient inquiry spent upon them ; many might point with pride at the long 

 pages written about them — alas ! not always with the even temper which renders 

 the study of natural science a delight and a blessing ; others would remind you of 

 having been objects of your wonder when you saw them depicted in scientific 

 books, or in some household work ; whilst not a few could tell you pitiful tales of 

 the enthusiastic collector who, bra^•ing the dangers of a foreign cHmate, sacrificed 

 health or life to his favourite pursuit. Collections thus obtained, thus cherished, 

 representing the labours of thousands of men, and intended to instruct hundreds of 

 thousands, are worth preserving, displaying, and cultivating. No cost has been 

 spared in housing them ; let no cost be spared in providing proper fittings to 

 receive them, a sufficient staft' to look after them, and the necessary books to study 

 them. 



"What we chiefly require in a well-constructed exhibition-case is that it should 

 be as perfectly dust-proof as possible, that it should lock well and easily, and yet 

 that it should be of a light structure. Everyone who has gone through a gallery 

 of our old-fashioned museums, must have noticed how much those broad longi- 

 tudinal and transverse bars of the wooden frame of the front of a case interfere 

 with the inspection of the objects behind them, hiding a head here, a tail there, or 

 cutting an animal into two more or less unequal portions. Ill-constructed cases 

 have brought zoological collections as mucli into bad repute as bad stuffers ; and 

 if it be thought that a pound could be saved in the construction of a case, that 

 pound will probably entail a permanent expense of a pound a year. Now, all the 

 requisites of a good exhibition case can be obtained by using metal wherever it 

 can be substituted for wood ; and, although its use is more expensive than that of 

 wood, you will join with me in the hope that no mistaken desire of economy will 

 prevail now as the time has arrived to furnish our priceless collections with 

 adequate fittings. 



TProbably all of those present are aware that the formation of a Natural History 

 Library has been urged almost from the very first day on which the removal of 

 the Natural History collections to South Kensington was proposed. But the cost 

 and extent of such a library have been very variously estimated. And I am 



