6 



him a broader view of the Birds, both living and fossil : he will 

 not even there find every species, but such forms alone, with 

 the necessary preparations in the way of skeletons, &c., as will 

 give liim a good general idea of the class of Birds. Should he 

 wish to get some idea of the Avi fauna of North America, he 

 will pass to the room containing the Faunal collection of that 

 resfion, and there he will find the Birds characteristic of North 

 America. When the other Faunal rooms are completed, he 

 may pass from one room to another, and become successively 

 acquainted with the characteristic Birds of Australia, Africa, 

 India, &c. Of course, as far as possible, repetitions will be 

 avoided in the faunal and systematic rooms, but this must of 

 necessity be a work of time. This plan obviates the crowding 

 together into one space of the whole collection of Birds, which, 

 when arranged in the old way, merely satiates the visitor, and 

 teaches him nothing. Of course, in such limited space (inten- 

 tionally so restricted), only the characteristic groups of Birds 

 can be placed on exhibition, and the rest of the collection is 

 safely stored in drawers, where the skins are readily accessible 

 and can be used for study. The intention is to carry on this 

 plan for all the classes of the animal kingdom. There will re- 

 main unprovided for, as far as zoological collections are con- 

 cerned, only the Marine Fauute, it being impossible to connect 

 them properly with any of the great terrestrial realms. It is 

 therefore proposed hereafter to devote the main floor of two 

 rooms, one to the Pacific Ocean, the other to the Atlantic Ocean, 

 and to show in these the geographical distribution of marine 

 animals, and as far as possible, by special collections, something 

 also of the bathymetrical distribution. We hope eventually to 

 carry out this double plan for the Palaiontological Department, 

 making one arrangement by Periods and another by Palseonto- 

 logical Series for the different classes. For the proposed loca- 

 tion of the other collections, I will refer to the plans published 

 with the Report of 1875. 



The plan formerly proposed of labelling each room, so that 

 the visitor should always know what he is looking at, has been 

 carried out in all the rooms thus far opened to the public. Thus 

 the visitor — on entering the Synoptic Room, for instance — finds 

 the walls of the room labelled Synoptic Collection of the 

 Animal Kingdom." He further finds each case labelled with 



