rocks as an
example. Is it real science--or what is it--which would label syenite
a "Leicestershire" rock? Such queries and replies could be multiplied
ad infinitum, for it will be observed that I have said nothing about
the mammals, where the loss of space and want of cohesion in such a
group as the carnivora--best represented of all in "local"--are
patent. The fishes--fancy a "local" salmon! yet they occasionally run
up the rivers.

But I need not enlarge on this, further than to say that under this
"elastic" system it was gravely proposed to pictorially mount the
"local" freshwater fishes under the sea fishes, not because it was a
direct violation of the physics of salt and fresh water, but because
the "local" division must come in its place at the bottom of the range
of cases! I had almost forgotten to say that these precious divisions
were to be made self-evident to the bucolic intellect even, by means
of colour--thus, "Local" was to be brownish-red rock; "British,"
green; and "Foreign," blue; and these colours were, without reference
to any artistic considerations such as the laws of contrast in colour,
or light and shade, to be rigidly adhered to, and to be carried in
distinct, if "wavy" bands, all around the room.

Fortunately, it was pointed out that shelves of wood would carry out
that idea more effectually than playing with science and art in such a
manner, therefore these absurd propositions were promptly discarded.
And now, having described what I take to be the evils to be guarded
against in plain or "pictorial" mounting, if founded on such lines as
those in the scheme I have called "A," I will briefly sketch out what
I take to be the lines of the museum of the future.

I must confess I had thought a great deal of arranging the vertebrata
in zoo-geographical order, in a manner founded on a. R. Wallace's
great and concise work on the "Geographical Distribution of Animals."
It seemed to me a fairly comprehensive and scientific, certainly a
novel, method of treatment, and I had gone so far as to sketch out
several of my groups, when I was confronted by difficulties, and saw
that it was not a system which was thoroughly coherent throughout the
whole of the collections, and I finally abandoned it, on the advice of
Dr. Sclater, the originator, I believe, of the "zoo-geographical
divisions."

I wanted a system which might be carried out throughout the whole
biological collections, and this end was best gaine