
890°] Scientific News. ffi 
SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 
The Natural History Museum, Florence.—Florence, mag- 
nificently rich in works of art, is by no means poor in scientific col- 
lections, since among its public museums are included not only a 
splendid archæological one in the Via Colorura, well provided with 
Egyptian curiosities, and containing what is probably the most com- 
plete collection of Etruscan remains to be found in Italy or in the 
world, but also a Musia di Storia Naturale, attached to a school 
founded by Victor Emmanuele for instruction in the Natural Sciences. 
The last-named museum is strongest in a point which is one of the 
weakest in all our American museums—in anatomical preparations in 
wax, representing the leading features in animal structure from the 
infusoria to man. In other respects this museum, though well arranged 
and tolerably complete, has no very salient features. The articulates 
have several small rooms, none too well lighted ; the stuffed mammals 
are not very prominent ; birds and their nests fill a large, well-lighted 
hall; fishes and reptiles occupy two halls and a gallery ; but the 
interest for one accustomed to such collections commences with the 
osteological specimens, and culminates with the extensive series of 
preparations exhibiting the soft parts. 
After leaving the purely osteological section, the visitor reaches that 
devoted to the lower animals—if it is now allowable for any man to 
declare that the human species, with all its long history of culture and 
inheritance of intelligence, is superior to creatures the highest of which 
resemble him in bone and muscle. Prominent among the animal 
preparations are exceedingly large scale models of the radule of 
various gastropods, models of Lumbricus, Hirudo, and other worms, 
showing the internal structure ; magnified infusoria, with sections of 
the same; a very complete set of the anatomy of the torpedo, espe- 
cially of the electric organs ; sectional models of sharks and bony 
fishes ; a set showing the anatomy of the common fowl, male and 
female, the growth of the egg in the ovary and uterus, and its devel- 
opment into a chick ; the anatomy of the cat, male and female ; and 
that of the sheep. 
The most complete portion of the collection of models is, however, 
that relating to human anatomy. The osteology, the splanchology, 
the digestive, circulatory, respiratory, lymphatic and generative 
systems are here exhibited in the fullest manner possible without actual 
dissection ; and every organ connected with each of these systems is 
treated to several models, representing 1t in various positions or in 
