Natural History Museum, London

“ His leisure was devoted to natural history, and his writings did much to further the study of zoology in England. The zoological articles in the Penny Cyclopaedia were written by him, and a series of articles contributed to Fraser’s Magazine were reprinted in 1848 as Zoological Recreations, and were followed in 1852 by Leaves from the Note-book of a Naturalist. He was one of the founders of the Zoological Society of London, and a large collection of shells which he formed was ultimately bought by the British Museum. He died in London on the 27th of February 1859. ”

“ Even the educated visitor fresh from the country does not immediately realise the fact that he is free at any time to walk the marble halls of the National Gallery, to hear the fountain plashing in the Pompeian hall of the riverside palace raised by Sir Henry Tate to modern British Art, or to follow the strange instincts and laws of Nature in the beautifully arranged Natural History Museum of Kensington. ”

“ He formed a collection of natural history specimens at the cost of many thousands of pounds, and under the title of the London Museum and Institute of Natural History admitted the public freely in 1807 and for many years afterwards. ”

“ The "popular parts" of the Natural History Museum are to remain open, though it is still felt by the Government that, at a time when the practice of frugality is incumbent upon everybody, the spectacle of stuffed animals may tend to have a demoralising effect upon the young. ”

“ It affords glimpses into the mysteries of the Animal Kingdom, with all its varieties, its wonders, its traceable progresses, its past and extinct forms, its promises of future developments. Then the mineralogical galleries afford the general visitor a peep at the formations of the earth; the various developments of minerals; the natural state of ores and stones which most men see only in their manufactured state. From the mineralogical tables the visitor stepped aside to examine the wondrous revelations of extinct animal life recovered from the bowels of the earth ”

“ Without doubt there are no helps to the study of Biology, or rather to some branches of it, which are, or may be, more important than natural history museums; but, in order to take this place in regard to Biology, they must be museums of the future. The museums of the present do not, by any means, do so much for us as they might do. I do not wish to particularise, but I dare say many of you, seeking knowledge, or in the laudable desire to employ a holiday usefully, have visited some great natural history museum. ”

“ Our readers need not be told that the Zoological Society is partly on the plan of the Museum of Natural History at Paris, except that the latter is supported by the Government, the Gardens are indiscriminately opened to the public, free of cost, and the Museum on stated days; and when we add that the names of Fagon, Duverney, Tournefort, Vaillant, De Jussieu, Buffon, Daubenton, Fourcroy, Desfontaines, De Lamarck, and Cuvier, occur in its list of professors, they will not be surprised at the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle being the richest of its kind in the world. ”

“ Since then these collections, with additions of similar character, have formed by far the most important feature of the British Museum. But in the mean time archaeology has become a science.
Within recent years the natural history collection has been removed in toto from the old building to a new site far out in South Kensington, and the casual visitor is likely to think of it as a separate institution. The building which it occupies is very modern in appearance as in fact. ”

“ A third museum is found to be full of stuffed birds, eggs, and nests; some of the birds stuffed in their natural surroundings are very beautifully done. The zoological library adjoins. A fourth museum, built in 1894, contains a large collection of stuffed animals and a collection of shells. Here is a huge skeleton of an African elephant, with good tusks, and a stuffed giraffe; a whole unmounted hippopotamus skin, and a stuffed quagga, now extinct.
Close by this museum are some pens containing zebras and wild asses. The new bear house, built in 1897, contains a fine collection. ”

“ Then there are the squirrels and the trees on the Common; the flowers, bees, butterflies, and even the schools of goldfish, in the pond of the Garden—enough of life, insect-life, plant-life, bird-life, fish-life, for more than a summer of lessons.
Nor is this all. One block beyond the Garden stands the Natural History Museum, crowded with mounted specimens of birds and beasts, reptiles, [Pg 43] fishes, and shells beyond number—more than you can study, perhaps. You city folk, instead of having too little, have altogether too much of too many things. ”

“ To give a life-like representation, attention is also paid to artistic "mounting." By this is meant the surrounding of specimens with appropriate accessories, and it is well exemplified by the new work shown in the natural history museum at South Kensington, where, for example, birds are arranged as in a state of nature, feeding or flying to their young, sitting on their eggs, swimming in miniature pools, or preening their feathers whilst perched lovingly side by side, and surrounded by exquisitely modelled foliage and flowers. ”

“ The natural history collections contained in the museum of science, although the institution was only founded in 1896, are large and important, and are particularly rich in mineralogy, geology, paleontology, botany and zoology. The entomological collections are among the most important in the new world. The conchological collections are vast, and the paleontological collections are among the most important in America. ”

“ The Museum and Hall of the Natural History Society, in Peter-street, can only be entered on presenting an order from a subscriber. The Museum is very rich in almost every description of natural history; we believe in ornithology it is particularly so; its collection of British birds is said to be unequalled, and its entomological department is becoming exceedingly extensive. ”

“ Her botanical garden is the only one for instruction of any consequence in the Union, and its director, Asa Gray, is the chief of American botanists. In the Museum of Comparative Zoology, founded by Louis Agassiz and sustained by his son, Alexander Agassiz, Cambridge possesses the most productive, and in some respects the completest, museum of animal life in the United States, while it offers to the laboratory student of natural history advantages which he can find equalled nowhere else in the whole world. ”

“ According to the 'Globe,' a subterranean laboratory has been opened at the Museum of Natural History, which is situated in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. It has been created in order to study the influence of darkness on animals, and discover by experiment how animal species are thus modified. ”

“ One may well dream in this zoological museum, amid the staring glass-eyed skins of an inferior brotherhood—of the long, long time ago when the fossils, which are now scattered here and there, to assure us of their former vitality, moved about the world, before they were stricken with universal death, and buried by nature, deep in her teeming bosom, to flourish presently in the veins of plants—the plants to die again, and be dug, long ages after, from our deep coal-fields. ”

“ According to Huxley's views a complete system demanded a triple museum for each subject, Zoology and Botany, since Geology was sufficiently provided for in Jermyn Street—one typical or popular, "in which all prominent forms or types of animals or plants, recent or fossil, should be so displayed as to give the public an idea of the vast extent and variety of natural objects, to diffuse a general knowledge of the results obtained by science in their investigation and classification, and to serve as a general introduction to the student in Natural Science" ”

“ Between these museums a grand Museum of Natural History is to be built. The university has excellent collections in geology in charge of Professor Beyrieh, and in paleontology under the care of Professor Dames. Among them may be seen the second specimen of the archæopteryx, which cost three thousand dollars. It has the advantage over the specimen in the British Museum of possessing a head, and of showing its fore-limbs, the fingers of which are not united as in existing birds. ”

“ Whilst we should patriotically aspire to render the local collection as perfect as possible, I would not by any means have the usefulness of museums stop here. Comparing any local collection with a general collection, it will, of course, be found that many important groups of 'animals, vegetables, and minerals, are but imperfectly represented, whilst others are altogether blank. There is, consequently, great danger of very limited and inadequate notions of the great system of Nature being formed by the student who confines his attention to local natural history. ”

“ The collection of antiquities extends even into the garden, where several of the larger statues and a shrine are exhibited. The upper story of the museum is devoted to natural history, and here the distinguished director, Dr. Arthur Willey, has arranged groups of animals to give the visitor an adequate picture of the wild life of Ceylon. Alcoholic and dried specimens are well displayed and labeled, and even living specimens are interspersed, as in a case containing leaf-resembling insects. ”

“ The English natural history museums are such hopeless failures; at any rate, in so far as they attempt to instil a love of Nature. They are so gloomy, and the stuffed, unnatural creatures in glass cases are to me positively revolting. I believe every healthy boy gets the same impression and comes from them into the fresh air with a feeling of “escape.” ”

“ Many Londoners will recall an odd character, an aged print dealer who used to sit alone, like a hoary spider in its web, in his little shop in Great Russell Street, close to the British Museum, and another of similar type, who may still haunt a better known landmark, the old "naturalist's shop" in Oxford Street, not far from Tottenham Court Road and but a minute's 12 walk from the spot where most of Audubon's Birds were engraved. Both had seen the naturalist walk the streets of London and had known him in business relations. ”

“ Much valuable scientific information was accumulated, new facts concerning the glacial phenomena of South America were obtained, careful observations of the temperature of the water and deep-sea soundings were regularly made, and great collections of fishes, reptiles, mollusks, and other specimens of natural history were gathered, a large portion of which were added to his museum in Cambridge. ”

“ We put them in the most life-like attitudes we can, with bits of grass and bush, and painted landscape behind them: by doing this we give people who have never seen the actual animals, a more vivid idea concerning them than we know how to give by any other means. We have not room in the British Museum to give a loose rein to realism in the matter of accessories, but each bird or animal in the collection is so stuffed as to make it look as much alive as the stuffer can make it—even to the insertion of glass eyes. ”

“ Britain had been making unwonted strides in the improvement of its Museum, at the very time when most of the Continental States had allowed their fine Museums to remain almost stationary. In mammals, birds, and shells, the British Museum had placed itself in the first rank. Only in reptiles, fish, and crustacea, could even Paris now claim superiority. Those classes had there engaged for a long series of years the unremitting research and labour of such naturalists as Cuvier, Dumeril, Valenciennes, and Milne-Edwards; and their relative wealth of specimens it will be hard to overtake. ”

“ When the boys left this museum, they went to another and saw a wonderful collection of fossil animals, skeletons, birds, minerals, precious stones, and other natural specimens, but as they were not learned men, they could only walk about and stare, enjoy the little knowledge of natural history they possessed, and wish with all their hearts they had acquired more. ”

“ The Royal Horticultural Society maintains gardens at Wisley, Surrey, and has an exhibition hall in Vincent Square, Westminster. The exhibitions of the Royal Agricultural Society are held at Park Royal, near Willesden. The Zoological Society maintains a magnificent collection of living specimens in the Zoological Gardens, Regent’s Park, a popular resort.
Museums, Art Galleries, Libraries.—In the British Museum London possesses one of the most celebrated collections in the world, originated in 1753 by the purchase of Sir Hans Sloane’s collection and library by the government. ”

“ Within the last six months the society has laid vulcanite walks through the garden, built a monkey-house, and made other provision for a large number of beasts and birds from all parts of the world. A small collection has already been made, which will this summer be added to by importations from Africa, Asia, and Australia. There will be a large aquarium, and it is intended to institute courses of popular lectures on Natural History. ”

“ The American Museum of Natural History, on Central Park West, contains vast collections of stuffed animals, birds, reptiles, fishes, shells, and fossils. The main lecture hall will seat 1000 persons. Museums of great interest are maintained also by the Historical Society, Columbia University, and the Lenox Library, the last named having a fine picture gallery. ”