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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
its stages, and were very extensive and interesting. M. 
Guerin-Meneville likewise obtains a medal for bis labours in 
the introduction into France of tbe silkworms of China, India, 
and Japan, more especially the Ailaute silkworm (Bomby,' 
cynthia), a hardy species, feeding upon Ailantlius ylandidosa , 
a hardy tree requiring little cultivation. It appears that more 
than a million of these trees were planted in France in 1861, 
and more than one hundred millions of seed sown, sufficient to 
cover 50,000 acres. This tree and silkworm are said to have 
already been successfully introduced into various parts of 
Europe, Africa, America, and Australia. 
Lastly, the Educational department contained many interest- 
ing collections and illustrations, by Messrs. Bartlett, Ashmead, 
Wilson, Damon, Wright, Robertson, &c., who in their different 
departments of Zoology and Physiology all obtained medals. 
We are now compelled to bring this survey to a conclusion. 
It cannot be said that zoology and the taxidermist’s art were 
badly represented, though doubtless, as in all other things, bad 
and good were mingled together. The preparation of animals, 
and then preservation for the museum, is a highly important 
art, perhaps not sufficiently recognized : it demands at once 
manual skill, experience, taste and knowledge of natural 
history, the first being useless if it be not guided by the last. 
Nothing is more pitiable than to see nature violated by the 
hands of an ignorant stuffer, as was sometimes the case in 
the late Exhibition, and false ideas derived from such abortions 
are more easily received than eradicated. The preparation of 
animals is certainly an art -which is undergoing improvement — 
more taste is shown in the accessories, more grace and nature 
are imparted to the form, and more life to the object from 
which real life has departed ; and had all the zoological col- 
lections been arranged together, as was the original plan of 
the Commissioners, a comparison of the different performances 
of the taxidermist would probably have led to useful results 
by stimulating the skill and energies of the inferior workmen : 
but the exigencies of the Exhibition imperatively demanded 
that everything should be geographically arranged, and it was 
found impossible to make an exception even in the Natural 
History department, where it seemed most desirable. 
