NATURAL HISTORY AT SOUTH KENSINGTON.
THE President of the Museum Association, which has been holding its annual meeting at Newcastle, protests once more against the current notion that "museums should be made receptacles for any sort of portable property, as Mr. Wemmick would have said, which may be presented to them?, This idea is certainly not encouraged in the national museums in London. The result of the care now exercised in the col- lection and exhibition of their contents is that these, in place of being among the dullest, have become among the most popular of the public institutions of London. This is especially noticeable in the case of the Museum of Natural History at South Kensington. In 1889, Sir William Flower, addressing the British Association at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, gave shortly his view of what the arrangement of such a museum should be. "Its object must be two-fold : first, to form and arrange collections as extensive as possible, for students and naturalists to consult ; and, secondly, the exhibition of collections for the general population of the country, who, without having the time or the opportuni- ties to make a profound study of any branch of science, yet take a general interest in its progress, and wish to possess some knowledge of the world around them, or, at least, of some portions of it." The attendance of some half-million persons during the past year is evidence that the "general population" appreciate what has been done to make their half of the Museum interesting and attractive. What they do not, perhaps, appreciate is that the selection and exposition of their share of modern museums is probably a work of more thought and mental labour than the collection and cataloguing of the vast number of specimens which lie ready for scientific use in the drawers of the "research " department. To say and show enough, and not too much, to supply the main principles and leading examples of structure and growth without overcrowding and without omission, to select what is essential and striking, and to reject all that is unessential, however tempting for exhibition, is part of the work so demanded. Then the general plan must be adhered to, and this must be based on a grasp of general principles, and then expressed in the terms of which the nature of "graphic natural history," and the limits of museum space permit. The form and the method selected for the develop- ment of this modern conception of what the public side of a natural history museum should be, are seen in the central hall of the new building in Cromwell Road. Below the seated statue of Charles Darwin is the concrete presentation of the natural laws which he laid before the world. The progress of this "synoptic view" of the facts of evolution has been deliberate. It has been set out piece by piece. In parts it has not yet completed its story. But it has reached a point which justifies its claim to be the beat example of selective exposition of the leading facts of zoology in the museums of the world. From the skeleton of the horse and his rider, which stand side by side, not as reminders of common mortality, but as a concrete lesson in the unity of life, to the cases illustrating the growth and structure of plants, the order of thought is main- tained with a lucidity and simplicity unmatched by books, because the things seem to tell their own story. But they only do so in part. The saying that a museum should consist of "labels illustrated by specimens" is not forgotten. The " labels " in this series are the literature of this graphic natural history ; in this case models of concise statements of facts, or of the present knowledge of general laws, reduced to the simplest language and the fewest words. They might almost be studied, apart from their illustrations, as a collec- tion of the " axioms " and " definitions " of modern zoology. In the series exhibiting the structure of animals, perhaps the most alluring is that which deals with the birds. It extends from the modifications of the skeleton to the exquisite examples of the structure and development of feathers, extending from those best adapted as means of flight, or of bodily covering, such as those of the wild-duck, to the most elaborate gradation of ornament, in the selected feathers of the Argus pheasant and the peacock. From these last, which appeal to readers of the" Origin of Species "as a direct tribute to one of its most fascinating chapters, the mind naturally turns to the illustration of the facts of adaptation to environ- ment in the collection of desert birds, beasts, and reptiles, matching the colour of the rocks and sand, of variation in plumage, of albinism, melanism, and lastly of "mimicry." The additions made from time to time to the instances of mimicry already in the cases are a recurring source of wonder and pleasure to the visitors to the museum ; they are the "favourite pictures" in this epitome of natural history, written large, in the centre of the national museum.
Among the more general changes which render the zoological collections now so attractive, and their contents so suggestive, is the improvement in taxidermy (the stuffing of animals' skins). It was high time that something should be done to replace the "wretched and repulsive caricatures of mammals and birds out of all natural proportions, shrunken here and bloated there, and in attitudes absolutely impossible for the creatures to have assumed when alive," which were, and still are in many cases, the disgrace of zoological museums. It has been found possible, as Sir William Flower pointed out some years ago, to show that "an animal can be converted after death into a real, lifelike representation of the original, perfect in form, proportions, and attitude, and almost, if not quite, as valuable for conveying information on these points as the living creature itself." But it was also recognised that taxidermy is an art resembling that of the sculptor and painter. It required natural genius as well as careful cultivation, and it could never be permanently improved until it was paid for on a scale which would induce a man of capacity to devote him- self to it as a profession. South Kensington has been so fortunate as to secure the services of one or two "artists" in the profession of bird-stuffing, and though the examples of the work do not bear any proportion to the ancient and hideous effigies of birds and beasts which line the walls of many of the galleries, the contrast of beauty
and truth to nature, with ugliness and truth to nothing, is so evident as to enforce the conviction that a general change for the better is at hand. Meantime, the contrast between the old and the new idea of the preservation in life- like form of birds and animals, is not without interest. When the old bird-stuffers took any trouble at all in their work, they directed their attention to the exhibition of the beauties of plumage. Occasionally the subject lent itself to this treatment ; the best example is that of the Gould collection of humming-birds, which is in another sense a very creditable piece of work, for the cases were shown in the Exhibition of 1851, and are still beautiful, and little injured by time. The humming-birds were "set up" by Mr. Gould himself in polygonal cases of glass, so that the changes in the iridescent colours could be seen if the spectator moved to one side or the other. To show the plumage in perfection different attitudes are chosen and kept for different species. Thus the birds of one kind (Chrysolitus Moschilis) are all mounted directly facing the front of the case, because the chief seat of colour is in the throat and crest. The throats flash with the most brilliant deep orange, the crests seem burning with ruby red ; no gem, no metal, has such texture and such brilliant lights. But seen from the side, all these blazing gorgets change to lustrous green. Others have their chief beauty in the feathers of wings and tails, and these are all spread out for exhibition. Modern "bird-stuffing" aims first at showing the actual form of the bird, its attitude, and the set of its feathers ; and secondly, where that is desired, at giving some suggestion of the habits and surroundings of the birds in a state of nature. There are some three or four instances of the " reconstruc- tion " of a single bird, exhibited among the hundreds of old caricatures set in the cases of the bird galleries, which are models of what the former work should be. There are a Japanese crane, a grey "Stanley's crane," a brown condor, and a penguin, stuffed with that attention to the meek and deprecating custom of the penguin's back and "stoop," which makes him one of the most comic birds in nature. They are easily found, from their contrast to their surroundings. The more elaborate nature pictures which aim at showing the habits and common surroundings of the bird are mainly employed in the beautiful series of English birds and their nests which has been gradually increased till it has almost reached the limit of usefulness. Its concreteness as showing the true and natural setting, with the charac- teristic attitudes of the birds, could not be surpassed. In most instances the real nest, with a portion of the tree, bank, heather knoll, or wall in which it was set is given, with lifelike reproductions of the plants and flowers which sur- rounded it, even to the straggling shore weeds, set here and there among the shingle on which the eggs of the tern lie, or the rock plants which cling to the cliff by the peregrine's nest. The proper setting of the mammals, except in a few instances, such as that of the almost extinct rhinoceros, and a few African antelopes, remains for future treatment. It must in any case be a long and costly process, and one for which there is hardly space available. Should Parliament ever again find itself in a mood to spend freely on the de- velopment of the Museum of Natural History, an additior, delightful to the public, if possibly grudged by those wio have to secure the general completeness of the collections, might be made by representing the habits of some of the social animals, as those of the birds when nesting are shown in the bird galleries. A "real picture" of the beaver colony, with a section of their " lodges " and dam, would offer oppor- tunities for treatment by the artist in such work not excelled by similar records of bird-life.
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