n effect which is, to say the least, depressing!

Well, you will say, you have fallen foul of the fundamental principles
of nearly all museums--black cases, and animals on "hat-pegs." What do
you propose?

I propose, in the first place, mahogany, walnut, or oak cases; and, in
the second place, the pictorial mounting of all specimens, and not
only do I propose it, but I claim in the Leicester Museum to have done
on a large scale what has hitherto been applied to small matters only.
First, as to the wood; I delight in oak, and, although I know how much
more liable it is to "twist" than first-class mahogany, yet if of good
picked quality, dry and sound, and properly tongued and framed, there
is not much to fear, and its light and elegant appearance is a great
gain in a large room, added to this it improves by age and is
practically indestructible.

Now for the pictorial mounting of specimens; and here let me say that,
for any person to lay down a hard-and-fast line as to what natural
history specimens should be, or should not be, collected by provincial
natural history museums as a whole, is about as sensible a plan as
saying that a nation as a whole must drink nothing but beer or nothing
but water. It is apparently forgotten that general principles cannot
apply to museums ranging in size from 20 ft. by 12 ft. to that of
Liverpool with its several large rooms, each one larger than the
entire "museum" of small towns.

I think it may be laid down as a common-sense proceeding that, if a
provincial museum consists of only one or two rooms of the size above
given, the managers should strictly confine themselves to collecting
only the fossils, animals, and plants of their own district. If,
however, like Leicester, they possess a zoological room 80 ft. in
length by 40 ft. in width, and of great height, together with smaller
rooms, then the proposition to strictly confine themselves to local
forms is unwise in the extreme. How would it be possible to fill so
much cubic space with the few specimens--even if extended
unwarrantably, and elaborately mounted--which many years of arduous
collecting might obtain? Taking the list of vertebrates of any midland
county, how many of them do we find could be collected if we left out
of count the "accidentals?" Here is a list: Fishes, 26; reptiles, 10;
birds, 110; mammals, 26 (the fox being the largest of these).
[Footnote: About 80 only, of the 110, breed in any given midland
district.]