314 PEACTICAL TAXIDERMY. 



which, may be briefly summarized as representing the eocene, 

 miocene, and pliocene formation of cases ; space has been wasted, 

 or not utilized as it might be, and the result is a confused 

 jumble of odds and ends, consequent on some persons con- 

 sidering that the end and aim of a museum should be the 

 preservation of " bullets " collected by " Handy- Andy " from 

 the field of " Arrah-na-Pogue," " My Grandfather's Clock," and 

 so on. This is certainly not the mission of any museum, nor 

 should it lay itself out with avidity to collect disjointed scraps 

 of savage life, such as portraits of the "ladies" who ate cold 

 missionary, and who — horresco referens I — " drank his blood."* 

 Such a museum object as this, awfully, yet ludicrously, reminds 

 me of that showman who enticed his audience in with — 

 " Here you'll see the Duke of Yellington at the battle of 

 Yauterloo, with the blood all a-runnen down his 'fut,'" or of 

 poor little "Totty"(in "Helen's Babies"), who loved to hear 

 about " B'liaff " and his headlessness, and the sword that was 

 all " bluggy." This is, I think, one of the mistakes which most 

 museums fall into. They collect a vast quantity of rubbish 

 utterly useless to anyone but a schoolboy or a showman, and 

 in consequence they find valuable space wasted to make way 

 for tops of teapots, bits of leather,t Kaffirs' or Zulus' knives 

 made in Sheffield, native ornaments, in beads and brass, made in 

 Birmingham, and such-like niembers of the great family of 

 "curios." All such as these should be firmly and respectfully 

 declined without thanks. 



I have spoken, in somewhat sacrilegious terms, of imitation 

 of the worst points of the old British Museum and of South 

 Kensington (I don't mean the new Natural History Galleries, 

 but artistic South Kensington) ; but perhaps I may be forgiven 

 when I state that I consider, and always considered, the 

 weakest part of our old natural history galleries at Bloomsbury 

 was the arrangement of all the mammals, birds, &c., in that 

 provokingly " fore-and-aft " manner (spoken of before), on unin- 

 teresting stands or perches (hat-pegs) such as the skeletons in 



* A fact: 



t When I first came to the Leicester Museum I was requested to present to the Museum 

 and enclose in a suitable receptacle— No. 1, a piece of thick leather, which the donor thought 

 " just the right thickness lor the heel of a boot ; " and No. 2, a teapot lid with no particular 

 history, only that— aa the dame who brought it phrased it— "maybe it's summat old." 



