﻿MODE OF ARRANGING SPECIMENS. 



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baric taste, however, is now exploded, at least in all 

 collections intended to be really useful and instructive. 

 The admirable plan upon which the noble collection of 

 birds in the Garden of Plants at Paris is arranged, has 

 been adopted both at the British Museum v the Zoolo- 

 gical Society, and the Liverpool Institution. Each 

 specimen is mounted on a wooden stand, and then 

 arranged on narrow shelves in ordinary glass cases, the 

 whole interior of which is painted of a rose-coloured 

 white, for the purpose of bringing out the birds in re- 

 lief. These stands are made, of course, of different 

 sizes and heights, to suit the different sized birds. 

 The best we have seen are turned in France ; and if a 

 large quantity are wanted, it might be as well to pro- 

 cure them, if possible, from Paris, as the custom-house 

 duty is not high. A more simple, and equally effi- 

 cacious, plan, is to mount the bird upon a proper sized 

 natural twig, and then insert the end into a slab or 

 block of wood, sufficiently heavy to stand firm. For 

 woodpeckers, a roundish block should be preferred, 

 as more suited to the natural attitudes of these birds ; 

 and for such as walk only upon the ground, the stands 

 should be made of slabs of wood of different sizes, and 

 about an inch thick, neatly whitened: on a label in 

 front may be printed the generic and specific name, the 

 English name, and the country inhabited by the bird : 

 the specimen is then fit to be placed in the case. The 

 shelves should be as narrow as possible, in order to ad- 

 mit of as many rows of birds as the case will conve- 

 niently hold, and also to prevent the more backward 

 ranges from being enveloped in shade : they should not 

 be fixed as ordinary shelves, but moveable, like those 

 in the generality of bookcases, so that their positions 



nearly all the errors in that paper, in regard to matters of fact, may be 

 fairly attributed to the miserable state in which this very collection is ar- 

 ranged. The birds are perched upon dark branches, one half obscuring 

 the light from the other. The specimens cannot be taken out for examin- 

 ation, and they happen to be deposited in a particularly gloomy room. 

 When will the Society expend about 20/. in making these specimens fit for 

 scientific examination ? We candidly confess we would not have under- 

 taken to describe them in their present state. 



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