THE RISE AND PEOGEESS OP TAXIDERMY. 15 



tlie finest and most extensive collection in tlie world, wHle in 

 reptiles and fisli we were again beaten by Paris. In proof of tbe 

 growing interest taken in natural history, we find that in 1860 

 the number of visitors to the natural history department 

 was greatly in excess of all the other departments ; and at the 

 present time the attendance has greatly increased, as also 

 the objects exhibited, a fact patent to all who will take the 

 trouble to visit the British Museum, or to inspect the official 

 catalogues published from time to time, a synopsis of which 

 cannot at present be given owing to their extent and variety ; 

 but we can assume, I think, that we have as complete a natural 

 history collection as is to be found in any of the museums of 

 the world.* 



Though taxidermy flourished, as we see, for some years 

 previous to the Great Exhibition of 1851, yet that decidedly 

 gave a considerable impetus to the more correct and artistic 

 delineation of animals, especially in what may be called the 

 grotesque school instituted by the Germans, which, though 

 it may perhaps be decried on the score of misrepresenting 

 nature in the most natural way possible, yet teaches a special 

 lesson by the increased care necessary to more perfectly render 

 the fine points required in giving animals that serio-comic 

 and half-human expression which was so intensely ridiculous 

 and yet admirable in the studies of the groups illustrating 

 the fable of " Reinecke the Fox," which were in the Wurtem- 

 burgh Court, class XXX., and were executed by H. Ploucquet, 

 of Stuttgart. These groups, or similar ones, are now to be seen 

 in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. 



In nearly all of these groups the modelling and the varied 

 expressions of hope, fear, love, and rage, were an immense 

 step in advance of the old wooden school of taxidermy; 

 specimens of which are still to be found in museums — stiff, 

 gaunt, erect, and angular. Copies of those early outrages 

 on nature may still be seen in the dreary plates of the any- 

 thing but " animated " work of " poor Goldie/' who. as Boswell 

 said, " loved to shine " in what was least understood. 



' Some idea of the extent of the National Natural History Collections may be gathered 

 from the pages of the recently-published British Museum " Catalogues," 1874-82, where, in 

 rriany instances, the number of specimens of a certain o der of birds contamed in the 

 Museum falls very little short of the ascertained number of species for the whole of the 

 world. 



