xevi REPORT—1858. 
commensurate with the greatness of the nation and the peculiar national 
facilities for such perfection. : 
But, in order to receive and to display zoological specimens, space must be 
had ; and not merely space for display, but for orderly display : the galleries 
should bear relation in size and form with the nature of the classes respect- 
ively occupying them. They should be such ‘‘as to enable the student or 
intelligent visitor to discern the extent of the class, and to trace the kind and 
order of the variations which have been superinduced upon its common or 
fundamental characters.” In the British Museum one gallery permits this to 
be done in regard to the class of Birds.‘ To show how the mammalian type 
is progressively modified and raised from the form of the fish or lizard 
to that of man; to illustrate the gradations by which one order merges 
into another; to impart to the visitor, by the arts of arrangement and juxta- 
position, a knowledge of his own class akin to that which he derives 
from the collection of birds, would require a corresponding Mammalian 
Gallery*.” - 
The same is to be said of the classes of Reptiles and Fiskes, and of the 
Molluscous, Articulate, and Radiate Provinces. 
An osteological collection is as indispensable to the illustration of the Ver- 
tebrata as a conchological one is to that of the Mollusca. Nor should the 
size of any of the skeletons be a bar to the obtainment of adequate space for 
the Osteological Collection in the National Museum of Natural History. 
The very fact of the Whales being the largest animals that now exist, or 
have at any period lived upon the earth, is that which makes it more 
imperative to illustrate the fact and gratify the natural interest of the public 
by the adequate and convenient exhibition of their skeletons. 
In like manner, in the Paleontological collections or galleries of Fossil 
remains, the restoration of every extinct species, however bulky, should be 
carried out where practicable. 
The locality of such adequately-sized Museum concerns the administrator 
and the public convenience. Reasons for its association with Ethnological 
Antiquities and the National Library have been assigned in a memorial to 
H. M. Government, and by the Deputation of cultivators of Science to the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and these reasons have been commented on in 
a late Number of the ‘Quarterly Review.’ 
Iam most concerned in advocating the pressing necessity of adequate space 
for the National Museum of Natural History, wherever administrative wisdom 
may see fit to locate it. And, wherever that Museum may ultimately stand, 
it is the duty of the Representative of Associated British Science here to 
urge that the Curator of each class of animals should have assigned to him 
the charge of delivering a public course of lectures on the characters, prin- 
ciples of classification, habits, instincts, and economical uses of such class. 
* “ Report to the Trustees of the British Museum from the Superintendent of the Natural 
History Departments, 7th January, 1857,” Parliamentary printed P aper, 379, p. 23 (1858), 
