PROCEEDINGS—PERTHSHIRE SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCE. Ill 
3. The Peter Redpath Museum, M‘Gill University, Mon¬ 
treal, owes its chief interest to its connection with its dintinguished 
Hon. Curator, Sir J. W. Dawson, whose valuable collection of fossils 
it contains. Amongst these I was interested to notice a number of 
Scotch specimens, sent by Mr. James Reid, Blairgowrie, who has to¬ 
night been proposed as a member of this Society. Mr. Reid had given 
me an introduction to Sir William, who was much interested to hear 
what our Society was doing. The building consists of one main 
rectangular hall, with a gallery, lighted from the roof. The cases 
are not of very modern construction. The main floor is devoted 
entirely to geology and the gallery to zoology. In the latter, what 
interested me most was the very fine collection of shells formed by 
the late Dr. Philip Pearsall Carpenter. These were beautifully 
mounted on plate-glass tablets, resting on black velvet, which re¬ 
lieved the brilliant colours of the shells. The names were written 
on the glass with white ink. 
4. The Museum of the Natural History Society of 
Montreal.— This is an old museum, and its collections are some¬ 
what heterogeneous, but it has served a good purpose as the home 
of the local Natural History Society. This Society is about the same 
size as our own, and appears to be doing very similar work. It is 
the only Society of the kind in Canada that publishes Transactions, 
its publication being The Canadian Record of Science. 
5-6. The National Museum, Washington, and the Smith¬ 
sonian Institution, Washington.— These two are now under the 
same management, and are therefore practically departments of one 
museum. The buildings are distinct, but are within a stone’s throw 
of each other. In Washington the kindness I received from the 
officials even exceeded—if that were possible—what I had experi¬ 
enced elsewhere. They explained that the Museum was a Govern¬ 
ment Institution, and that one of its functions was to give information 
to all who wished it, but this explanation did not account for the 
amount of personal attention I received. Amongst other favours, 
they furnished me with detailed drawings of some of the cases, for 
the guidance of our Building Committee, as well as Reports, &c. 
In this Museum the Curators seem to have paid special attention 
to the construction of cases, and especially to the adaptation of cases 
to particular kinds of specimens. This applies to the materials of 
which the cases are made ; the height, with relation to the eye-line; 
the colouring of the backgrounds, with relation to the colour of the 
specimens; the angle of slope of the glass, with relation to the angle 
of incidence of the light; and similar problems. It may be that the 
results arrived at may not prove to be the best possible solutions, 
but they are valuable as being the outcome of much forethought and 
practical experience. The backgrounds of dark maroon struck one 
as novel, and perhaps a trifle dingy, but certainly they formed an 
admirable foil to such specimens as corals, light-coloured minerals, 
skeletons, &c. One form of case which I had not seen before, and 
which struck me as particularly useful for certain purposes, was one 
combining, in a modified degree, the properties of our table and up- 
