GENERAL ARRANGEMENT OE ITS CONTENTS. 
17 
until tlie year 1857. A great step was then made by severing 
tliem from this incongruous connection, but they were placed 
in a separate department for which the name of " Geology " Geological 
was reserved.* The result is that there are now two distinct department, 
zoological and botanical collections in the building, one con- 
taining the remains of all the animals and plants which have 
lived through successive ages of the world's history from the 
earliest dawn of life down to close upon the present time, and 
the other containing only those living at the particular period 
in which we dwell. Notwithstanding the many objections 
which may be urged against this primary division of living 
things, it is one which prevails largely in Museums, and which, 
owing to the difficulty and expense of rearranging extensive 
collections, and reorganising the staff in charge of them, will 
probably be retained for some time to come. 
Besides the four above-mentioned departments, into which the Introductory 
collection is divided for the purposes of custody and administra- Collection, 
tion, each of which is under the charge of an officer called " keeper " 
and a special staff of assistants, there is a fifth, at present under 
the immediate supervision of the Director, and arranged in the 
Central Hall, which is intended to be an introduction to all the 
others. The formation of this has only recently commenced, 
and owing to the difficulty of procuring the most illustrative 
specimens when required, and the time needed for their pre- 
paration and arrangement, some years must elapse before it 
can be completed. 
When the last-named collection is more fully developed, the The specimens 
whole of the specimens contained in the Museum, whether thre7series 
Animal, Vegetable or Mineral, will be arranged in three distinct 
series, each having its definite end and purpose. 
I. An Elementary or Introductory Series, by which the Introductory 
study of every group should commence, in which the leading °^ 
features of the structure, and, as far as may be, the development 
of the various parts of some of its most typical members, are 
demonstrated in a clear and simple manner, and the terms used 
* Palaeontology, or the study of ancient living beings, would have been a 
more appropriate designation, as Greology, tbe science whicli investigates tlie 
history of the earth, and the changes which its surface has undergone in 
attaining its present condition, h^s a much wider scope. 
C 
