MODE OF aBBANGING SPECIMENS. 275 
baric taste, however, is now exploded, at least in all 
collections intended to be really useful and instructive. 
The admirable plan upon which the noble collection of 
birds in the Garden of Plants at Paris is arranged, has 
been adopted both at the British Museum, the Zoolo- 
gical Society, and the Liverpool Institution. Each 
specimen is mounted on a wooden stand, and then 
arranged on narrow shelves in ordinary glass cases, the 
whole interior of which is painted of a rose-coloured 
white, for the purpose of bringing out the birds in re- 
lief. These stands are made, of course, of different 
sizes and heights, to suit the different sized birds. 
The best we have seen are turned in France ; and if a 
large quantity are wanted, it might be as well to pro- 
cure them, if possible, from Paris, as the custom-house 
duty is not high. A more simple, and equally effi- 
cacious, plan, is to mount the bird upon a proper sized 
natural twig, and then insert the end into a slab or 
block of wood, sufficiently heavy to stand firm. For 
woodpeckers, a roundish block should be preferred, 
as more suited to the natural attitudes of those birds ; 
and for such as walk only upon the ground, the stands 
should be made of slabs of wood of different sizes, anti 
about an inch thick, neatly whitened: on a label iii 
front may be printed the generic and specific name, the 
English name, and the country inhabited by the birtl : 
the specimen is then fit to be placed in the case. The 
shelves should be as narrow as possible, in order to ad- 
mit of as many rows of birds as the case will conve- 
niently hold, and also to prevent the more backward 
ranges from being enveloped in shade : they should not 
be fixed as ordinary shelves, but moveable, like those 
in the generality of bookcases, so that their positions 
nearly all the errors in that paper, in regard to matters of fact, may be 
fairly attributed to the miserable state in which this very collection is ar- 
ranged. The birds are perched upon dark branches, one half obscuring 
the light from the other. The specimens cannot be taken out for examiii- 
atinn, and they happen to be doiiosited in a particularly gloomy 
VViien will the Society expend about 2(V. in making these specimens fit for 
scientific examinatiou ? we candidly confess wc would not have under- 
taken to describe them in their present state. 
