88 The Origin and Development of Museums. [ February, 
paper. The collection contains dried plants, Indian nuts arranged 
on a string (a horrid poison), a branch of a plum-tree with one 
hundred and twenty plums, weighing thirteen and one quarter 
pounds, horns of the unicorn, monstrous horns of other animals, 
a stuffed lynx, whose open mouth and red tongue made him look 
very ferocious, the cranium of a wolf, the bone of his tongue and 
wind-pipe, a rodent animal from Moscow, some birds, the cranium 
of a swan, a nautilus with carved shell, monstrous heads formed 
by shells, minerals, money, medals, crystals, the sword of Ziska, 
a Turkish pipe, vases of terra sigillata, fire-proof cloth of asbes- 
tos, jewels, guns, old stone hatchets, corals, Indian ink, fucus 
growing on a stone, and _petrefactions. | 
I have enumerated purposely the contents of one collection of 
this time, and have chosen this particularly because it seemed to 
be the most interesting, as the description of it was reprinted four 
times in the years immediately following. A rich and partially 
classified catalogue of John Tradescant’s collections was published 
in England by his son; but one will not be surprised to find such 
a heading: “Some kinds of birds and their eggs,” and among 
them “ Easter-eggs of the Patriarch of J erusalem,” and * the claw 
of the roc bird, which, ‘as authors report, is able to truss an ele- 
phant.” ; 
As numerous other collections of this period were arranged in 
a similar manner, I prefer to mention only one more, that of 
the Jesuits in the Collegium Romanum at Rome, because the cat- 
alogue printed in 1678 shows the interior rooms in which the col- 
lection was arranged. As Italy was at this time still the leading 
country of the world in fashion and culture, and the order of the 
Jesuits influential and powerful, the arrangement of their collec- 
tion may be considered as.a fair example for others in that cent- 
ury, which certainly more or less imitated it, but never surpassed 
it. We find large, vaulted galleries, connected with vaulted rooms, 
the floor covered with inlaid marbles, the ceiling with allegorical 
pictures. The arrangement of the exhibited objects shows a kind 
of refined taste, and is agreeable to the eye ; the taller and more 
prominent objects being arranged by themselves in the middle, 
as, for instance,a number of Egyptian obelisks, on the top of each 
of which were placed emblems of Christianity. Busts and other 
objects were placed on columns along the wall, the spaces between 
them being provided with shelves bearing smaller objects. Pict- 
ures and astronomical maps fill the upper part of the wall, and 
heavier things, such as a crocodile, are suspended from the ceil- 
