86 Zoology. 



Expers Hargiitus nunc Picos ordinat omnes, 

 Hartertusque sagax Cypselidas numeral. 

 Multum etiam pensse Shelleyi profuit ardor, 

 Multum Saundersi mens operosa dedit. 

 Claras ab Italia jam Salvadorius adstat, 

 Et tandem Grantus fine coronat opus." 



When I first came to London, in 1863, I was full of en- 

 thusiasm for ornithology, and by the time that I was appointed 

 the first Librarian of the Zoological Society in 1867, I was 

 already writing my " Monograph of the Alcedinidse" and had 

 occasionally to visit the British Museum to examine types and 

 specimens of rare Kingfishers. No one of the present generation, 

 who visits the Zoological Department at the present time, can 

 have any conception of the difficulties under which we worked in 

 the days of the old British Museum. At the end of the 

 Egyptian Gallery there was a series of rooms, to which one 

 descended by some downward steps in a dark corner. The rooms 

 in which the members of the Zoological Department worked, had 

 been originally intended for cellars or store-rooms — windows had 

 to be knocked in the walls — and in the gloom of this under- 

 ground dungeon many of the Catalogues of the collections were 

 compiled. In this " Insect room," as it was called, the assistants 

 were crowded together, and there was no space for spreading out 

 any series of birds for study. 



It was under such circumstances that the " Catalogue of 

 Birds " was begun . Dr. Sclater, in reviewing one of my 

 early volumes of this work, commenced his article as follows 

 (Nature, vol. 16, 1877, pp. 541-542): "If the visitor to the 

 British Museum will pause at the foot of the staircase leading 

 up to the Paleontological gallery and look carefully into the 

 obscurity in the right hand corner he will perceive a door with a 

 brass plate on one side of it. On entering this door and 

 descending (with care) a flight of darkened steps, he will find 

 himself in the cellar, which has for many years constituted the 

 workshop of our national zoologists. Two small studies parti- 

 tioned off to the left are assigned to the keeper of the department 

 and his first assistant. The remaining naturalists are herded 

 together in one apartment commonly called the ' Insect-room, 7 

 along with artists, messengers, and servants. Into this room is 

 shewn everybody who has business in the Zoological Department 

 of the British Museum, whether he comes as student to examine 



