SUPPLEMENTARY COLLECTIONS. 
79 
owing to the disastrous effects of exposure to light upon the 
many preserved natural objects, would ultimately lose almost 
everything that now gives them value. This portion of the 
collection must, in fact, be treated as are the books in a library, 
and only used for consultation and reference by duly accredited 
students.* 
In some parts of the Museum the reserve collections are con- 
tained in drawers beneath the cases in which the corresponding 
exhibited portion is placed. This applies principally to the 
palseontological specimens, the shells, and the minerals. The 
reserve birds and insects have special rooms devoted to them, 
and the extensive series of reptiles, fishes, and other animals 
preserved in spirit, are kept for the purposes of safety in a 
separate building behind the Museum. In the Botanical 
Department the reserve collections are kept as usual in the 
well-known form of an Herbarium, or Hortus siccus. 
The great bulk of the specimens being arranged in these Supplemeu- 
three series, supplementary collections for facilitating the study ^o?8.^°^^*'" 
of the distribution of animals and plants, and perhaps also of 
minerals, in space and in time would be advantageous. The first, 
constituting a geographical series, might show by illustrative 
examples the leading characteristics of the fauna and flora 
of each great region of the earth's surface; the second, or 
geological series, would give examples of the fossil remains 
found most abundantly in each formation, arranged so far as 
may be in chronological order. 
The only attempt hitherto made at exhibiting a geographical Geographical, 
series in the Museum is the collection of terrestrial and fresh- 
water vertebrated animals of the British Isles, arranged in the 
pavilion at the west end of the Bird Gallery. It would be diffi- 
cult in the present building to find room for other geographical 
collections, however interesting and instructive they might be. 
With regard to geological collections, although the specimens Geological, 
in the department so called are mainly arranged not geologi- 
cally, or according to stratigraphical position, but according 
to their natural affinities, yet, in many cases, it has been 
found convenient to adopt a mixed arrangement, the specimens 
within each large natural group being classified according 
* For coiulitions as to ad mission and regulation, see p. 1)8. 
