46 
NATURE NOTES. 
These columns were again divided horizontally by beading, 
thus leaving little spaces three inches by two, in each of which 
a specimen was placed, with its name and special use affixed. 
It was a great interest to me to read about all these medical 
drugs, to learn where they were obtained, and how prepared 
and used, and many a happy hour has been spent in explaining 
about them to the hundreds of poor people who come from 
dreary homes in London to spend long summer days in my 
place. My own visitors, too, often plead for a chat in the 
Museum when kept indoors by wet weather. 
The next case contains a little of everything, and is intended 
to show how teachers in schools may be greatly assisted by 
having specimens of whatever they are speaking upon to show 
the children, and be thus helped to retain their attention. I 
have made several of these “Object Lesson Cases” for Na- 
tional Schools, and always find them most gratefully received. 
As I have already fully described how these cases are made in 
a little book easily obtainable,* I will not here go into further 
details. 
I may create a smile when I speak of my “ Sculler}-,” as 
being the next object of interest we come to in the Museum, 
but what else can I call a collection of more than a hundred 
skulls? They are mostly those of birds, ranging from the eagle 
to the wren, and from the swan to the stormy petrel. I think 
there is a word to be said for the intelligent study of bone 
structure. The skull of a bird neatly prepared, white as ivory, 
perfect and delicate in its fragility, is a really beautiful thing, 
and a single glance at it will tell us a good deal about the life 
history of the bird. 
The long bill of the snipe with a sensitive spongy process at 
the tip, shows us it is a bog-feeder plunging its beak deep into 
the soft soil to find the worms on which it lives. The aquatic 
birds have not only broad flat bills suited to their needs, as fish, 
insect and vegetable feeders, but as in the case of the shoveller 
duck, there are sometimes fringy processes on either side of the 
beak somewhat like the whalebone of one species of the huge 
cetaceans, possibly for sifting and retaining its food in a similar 
way. The heads of eagles, owls, and other rapacious birds, 
show at once that their sharp hooked beaks are intended for 
tearing the flesh of their victims. A little knowledge of this 
kind is useful when one has obtained some new bird as a pet, 
for it is easy to guess from the shape of the beak what food will 
be most suitable for it. 
I once picked up a dead swallow, and with great care it was 
at last prepared whole and fastened to a card ; a truly wonderful 
little skeleton it proved to be, so fragile and delicate that a care- 
less touch would crush it in a moment, and yet when alive, th^ 
Home Work for Willing Hearts, third edition, S.P. C. K. 
