THE BRITISH MUSEUM, VOL. IV. 399 



logue completed wifcliin any reasonable period, they must afford 

 Mr. Sharpe material assistance, and put at least half a dozen 

 competent men under his direction. As it is, every one knows 

 that Mr. Sharpe's services have been very inadequately recog- 

 nised ; that he has neither received any material assistance 

 nor any reasonable advancement as a reward for his exception- 

 ally good and hard work; and I must say 1 shall be surprised 

 if, after the discouragement he has met with, Mr. Sharpe con- 

 tinues to labour day and night, as he has done in the past, to 

 bring out these Catalogue volumes ; and, unless the authorities 

 of the British Museum amend their ways, I myself do not in the 

 least believe that this Catalogue will be completed within 50 

 years. 



One point more : If the British Museum authorities were 

 well advised, they would keep the type of all these volumes 

 standing, and year by year, print off corrected editions, so that 

 in every group the British Museum Catalogue might always 

 represent the exact state of our knowledge up to date. This 

 system of keeping the type standing is, I find, far preferable 

 to stereotyping, when large and constant additions are likely to 

 be made. It only involves the initial outlay on a good many 

 tons of type, and plenty of space in the basement (which the 

 Museum authorities certainly have, or at least used to have,) 

 in which to store away the forms. 



Allan Hume. 





By Capt. G. E. Shelley, &o., &c. 



Second Notice. 



On a former occasion (Vol. V., p. 67,) we noticed the £rst 

 three parts of this splendid monograph. Since then the pub- 

 lication has been proceeding pretty steadily ; but owing to some 

 mistake somewhere, it is only quite recently that we obtained 

 Part IV, though Parts V and VI reached us long ago. It is 

 these three parts only that we propose to notice on the present 

 occasion. We hope at an early date to receive six more parts 

 which, We understand, will have been published by the close of 

 the year, and shall then notice these also in detail. 



Even admitting the superior claims of the Humming Birds 

 and the Birds of Paradise, the Sun-Birds, as a group, certainly 

 comQ third in the order of beauty ; and the drawings which 

 illustrate this present work, and which shew how Mr. Keulmans 



51 



