THE TECHNOLOGIST. [Oct. 1, 1864. 



110 ON MUSEUM ARRANGEMENT 



preciable in their eyes. It was not, however, the unenlightened public 

 only who insisted on this unlimited display, there were also some 

 leading scientific men who called for it on the ground that th e curator 

 might be induced to keep specimens out of sight, in order to make use 

 of them for the enlargement of his own scientific reputation, while the 

 scientific public were debarred the sight of them, and that valuable 

 specimens might thus be kept, as the phrase was, in the cellars. 

 But any such imputation would be completely nullified by the plan 

 I have proposed, of placing all the specimens in the scientific collec- 

 tion, in boxes or drawers appropriated to them, and rendering them 

 thus at once and readily accessible to students at large. And I may 

 observe, that the late Mr. Swainson, who was the first to raise the cry, 

 lived to find that it was far more useful to keep his own extensive col- 

 lection of bird skins in drawers, like his butterflies and his shells ; and 

 that most scientific zoologists and osteologists are now convinced that 

 the skins of animals unstuffed, and the bones of vertebrata, unmounted, 

 and kept in boxes, are far more useful for scientific purposes than stuffed 

 skins or set up skeletons. So also with reference to my proposal for the 

 arrangement of the museum for the general public. I find that those 

 who are desirous of exhibiting their specimens to the best advantage are 

 gradually adopting similar plans. Thus, when Mr. Gould determined 

 the exhibition of his magnificent collection of humming-birds, he at once 

 renounced the rank and file system, and arranged them in small glazed 

 cases, each case containing a genus, and each pane or side of the case 

 showing a small series of allied species, in a family group of a single 

 species. When lately at Liverpool, I observed that the clever curator, 

 Mr. Moore, instead of keeping a single animal on each stand, has com- 

 menced grouping the various specimens of the same species of mammalia 

 together on one and the same stand, and thus giving far greater interest 

 to the group than the individual specimens afforded. In some of the 

 continental museums also I have observed the same plan adopted to a 

 limited extent. In the British Museum, as an experiment with the view 

 of testing the feelings of the public and the scientific visitors, the species 

 of the nester parrots and of the birds of paradise, a family of the gorilla, 

 and of the impeyan pheasants, and sundry of the more interesting single 

 specimens, have been placed in isolated cases, and it may be readily seen 

 that they have proved to be the most attractive cases in the exhibition. 

 I now exhibit a case of insects received from Germany, in which the 

 plan I have suggested is fully carried out. You will perceive that in 

 one small case are exhibited simultaneously, and visible at a glance, the 

 egg, the larvae, the plant on which it feeds, the pupa, and the perfect 

 moth, together with its varieties, and the parasites by which the cater- 

 pillar is infested ; such cases, representing the entire life and habits of 

 all the best known and most interesting of our native insects, would be, 

 as I conceive, far more attractive to the public at large than the exhibi- 

 tion of any conceivable number of our allied or cognate species, having 



