Notes on zoological museums / by J.E. Gray.

  • John Edward Gray
Date:
[1864]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on zoological museums / by J.E. Gray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    afford the greatest possible amount of information in a moderate space, and to be obtained, as it were, at a glance. On the other hand, the scientific student requires to have under his eyes and in his hands the most complete collection of specimens that can be brought together, and in such a condition as to admit of the most minute examination of their differences, whether of age, or sex, or state, or of whatever kind that can throw light upon all the innumerable questions that are continually arising in the progress of thought and opinion. Every scientific student requires the cases to be opened, to allow him to examine and handle the specimens, and in the stuffed state this cannot be often done without injury ; and an artist always requires them to be taken out of the case for his purpose. In the futile attempt to combine these two purposes in one consecutive arrangement, the modern museum entirely fails in both particulars. It is only to be compared to a large store or a city warehouse, in which every specimen that can be collected is arranged in its proper case and on its proper shelf, so that it may be found when wanted; but the uninformed mind derives little instruction from the contemplation of its stores, while the student of nature requires a far more careful examination of them than is possible under such a system of arrangement, to derive any advantage; the visitor needs to be as well informed with relation to the system on which it is based as the curator himself; and consequently the general visitor perceives little else than a chaos of specimens, of which the bulk of those placed in close proximity are so nearly alike that he can scarcely per- ceive any difference between them, even supposing them to be placed on a level with the eye, while the greater number of those which are above or below this level are utterly unintelligible. To such a visitor, the numerous species of rats, or squirrels, or sparrows, or larks that crowd the shelves, from all parts of the world, are but a rat, a squirrel, a sparrow, or a lark; and this is still more especially the case with animals of a less marked and less known type of character. Experience has long since convinced me that such a collection so arranged is a great mistake; the eye, both of the general visitor and of the student, becomes confused by the number of the specimens, however systematically they may be brought together. The very extent of the collection renders it difficult even for the student, and much more so for the less scientific visitor, to discover any particular specimen of which he is in quest; and the larger the collection, the greater this difficulty becomes. Add to this the fact that all specimens, but more especially the more beautiful and the more delicate, are speedily deteriorated.
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