494 A walk through the Nat. History Museum at Florence. [May, 
the changes through which they have passed, is demanded before 
a system can be made, perfectly adapted to the illustration of the 
infinite modifications of the living. How widely has expanded 
the range of the science that was once thought only worthy of 
triflers and silly enthusiasts! It has become co-extensive with 
the origin and destiny of all things, its limits are time, its range 
the universe ; its philosophy, all-comprehensive, is bound up with 
human progress and human destiny. 
But we will not longer detain the visitor anxious to advance. 
From enormous crustaceans we proceed directly to mammifers 
and the skeletons of birds, &c. Not such is the order of nature, 
we observe, and retire upon our philosophy to wait until evolu- 
tion shall have prepared for us the system that will show us how 
from the lower forms sprang fishes, from fishes reptiles, from rep- 
tiles birds, and how from batrachians were produced higher forms, 
culminating in mammifers and eventually in bimana and hence 
man. We gladly acknowledge that an outline of this system hes 
been effectively foreshadowed. 
In a large room the birds, ever pleasing, are displayed g ad- 
vantage, not being crowded into limited space, as is our unriva’ 
collection in the “Academy of Natural Sciences ” in Philadelphia. 
In another section Dr. Enrico Hillyer Giglioli, professor of oi 
ogy in the “ Royal Institute for Superior Studies,” and director 
the Museum of Zodlogy, has prepared and arranged in a pa 
noble saloons, a nearly complete exhibition of the fauma of Italy: 
This is the first of its kind for an entire kingdom that I 
seen, and I found it a very striking and rich treat.’ 
he present date 
of these ther 
need com 
1 This grand central collection of Italian vertebrates contains, att 
(May, 1883), 22,331 specimens of 1139 species of Italian animals. 
are 1500 mammals representing 108 species, and the collection 1s P 
twenty-one species, and this number includes every known species nN | Feo | 
Finally, there are the vast number of 14,048 specimens of fish, represe : 
lection of 554 species, which is pronounced nearly complete. ocean fauni 
To Professor E. H. Giglioli we are indebted for the discovery of pe er 
in the Mediterranean. It was during his researches in the steamer disposal, Ù” 
government vessel commissioned for deep-sea dredging, placed at nie 
he made the important discovery above stated in August, 1878. ‘ 
of this discovery appeared in Mature of 25 Aug. of that year, 
published in the “ Acts of the Third International Geographical T 
Venice, 1881. 
e | 
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