whole case is enclosed by well-fitting glass doors. Every drawer or tray is distinctly labelled to show its contents, while a part of the room (or of an adjacent one) is devoted to a library of books specially treating of the groups stored in it. In such a room the student or specialist finds, close at hand, all that he requires, with ample light, and table-room on which to arrange and compare the specimens he may be studying. The general library is arranged on a similar plan, on tiers of shelves running across the room, with just space to walk between them, the cases being enclosed by open wirework doors; and it is a striking proof of the purity of the atmosphere in this suburb of Boston, that there was not the least visible accumulation of dust on books which had not been removed or dusted for several years. The fine trees which surround the museum for some distance no doubt greatly assist in preserving a dust-free atmosphere. The vast number of specimens thus conveniently stored can only be realized by seeing the tiers of cases in room after room, the collection being especially rich in fishes, radiate animals, and marine organisms generally. The advantages of the uniform interchangeable drawers are enormous, as they admit of the growth of the collection in any department and the re-arrangement of the several groups with the least possible amount of labour. To admit of this growth and re-arrangement, a case is here and there left empty; while even the transference of a large part of the collection from one room to another would be effected with ease and rapidity.

Rooms devoted to the Public.

Having thus seen the general character of the arrangements for students and specialists, let us proceed to examine the rooms devoted to the instruction and amusement of the general public. On entering the building the visitor finds opposite to him an open room, over which is painted in large letters, "Synoptic RoomZoology," and, when inside he finds, on several blank spaces of wall, an intimation that this room contains a Synopsis, by means of typical examples, of the whole animal kingdom. Two large wall-cases are devoted to the Mammalia; each Order being represented by three or four of its most characteristic forms, from the monotremes and marsupials up to the apes and monkeys. The rodents, for example, are illustrated by means of stuffed specimens and skeletons of an agouti, a porcupine, a rabbit, a squirrel, and a jerboa; the ungulates by a small tapir and a young hippopotamus, always accompanied by their skulls or skeletons. The birds are similarly represented, in one wall-case, by stuffed specimens and skeletons of all the chief types. Another case is filled with reptiles-fine examples of lizards and snakes in spirits, tortoises, alligators, toads, &c., while the fossil forms are shown by a small but very perfect oolitic crocodile, a Plesiosaurus, a beautiful slender lizard of Jurassic age, and a cast of the Pterodactyle with its wings. Another case contains some striking specimens of fishes, both in spirits and stuffed, with their skeletons, as well as some beautifullypreserved fossil fishes. The worms, sponges, and insects are exhibited in three more wall-cases, while the crustacea, radiata, and mollusca occupy two cases in the centre of the room, and over these is suspended a model of a gigantic cuttle-fish twenty feet in diameter.

The special features to be noted in this room are, that its contents and purpose are clearly indicated to every visitor, each group and each specimen being also well and descriptively labelled; that every specimen is good and perfect, well mounted, and beautiful or interesting in itself; that skeletons exhibiting the differences of structure, and fossils exhibiting some of the strange forms of earlier ages of the world, are placed along with stuffed specimens; and, lastly, that the specimens are comparatively few in number, not crowded together, and so arranged and grouped as to show at the same time the wonderfully varied forms of animal life, as well as the unity of type that prevails in each of the great primary groups under very different external forms. We here see that a room of very moderate dimensions is capable of exhibiting all the chief types of form and structure that prevail in the animal kingdom, and of thus teaching some of the most important lessons to be derived from the study of nature. It constitutes of itself a typical museum of animal life, and is more really instructive, as well as more interesting, than many museums which contain ten times the number of specimens and occupy far greater space. It may serve as a model of the kind of room which should form part of every local museum of Natural History, leaving all the remaining available space for the purpose of giving a complete representation of the local fauna and flora.

The visitor now ascends to the third floor, which is wholly devoted to exhibition rooms. He first enters the largest room in the building (about seventy feet by forty), in which is arranged a systematic collection of mammalia, of sufficient extent to exhibit all the chief modifications of form and structure without confusing the spectator by a vast array of closely allied species or badly preserved specimens. A large gallery surrounds this room, devoted to the systematic collection of reptiles, and on a level with this gallery is suspended a very fine skeleton of the Finback whale, about sixty feet long, in a position to be thoroughly inspected both from below and above. The other prominent objects are fine specimens, with skeletons, of the American bison, the giraffe, and the camel; skeletons of each of the five great races of man, and of the three chief types of anthropoid apes; and some casts of the large extinct Australian marsupials in the same cases with the skeletons of their comparatively small modern representatives. Four other rooms, each of the standard size-forty feet by thirty-are devoted to a similar representative collection of birds, fishes, mollusca, and polyps, respectively; while in galleries over these rooms are the collections of batrachians, crustacea, insects and worms, echinoderms, acalephs, and sponges. The most striking objects here are, perhaps, in the bird room, a grand skeleton of the Dinornis maximus, as compared with that of an ostrich; in the molluscan room, a model of the giant squid or calamary of Newfoundland, about twenty feet long, with two arms thirty feet in length, their dilated ends armed with powerful suckers; and among the lower forms the beautiful glass models of the sea-anemones and polyps.

This systematic collection differs from the usual collections exhibited in public museums in the following important points. It is strictly limited to a series of typical species, which may be from time to time improved by the substitution of better or more representative specimens, by alterations of arrangement, &c., but which are never to be extended, because they are already quite as numerous as the average intelligence even of well-educated persons can properly understand. The skeletons and fossil types are all exhibited in juxtaposition with the stuffed specimens. Each class of animals is exhibited by itself, with ample explanatory labels to teach the spectator what he is examining, and what are the main peculiarities of the different groups. Of course, in a comparatively new institution, the best and most illustrative species have not always been obtained, or the best and most instructive methods of exhibiting them hit upon. In all these matters improvements will be constantly made, while the space devoted to each class and the number of specimens exhibited will undergo no material alteration.

Illustrations of Geographical Distribution.

We will now pass on to the special feature of the museum and that which is most to be commended, the presentation to the public of the main facts of the geographical distribution of animals. This is done by means of seven rooms, each one devoted to the characteristic animals of one great division of the earth or ocean, which we will now proceed to describe.

Beginning with a room devoted to the North American fauna, we at once note its general characteristics, in its wolves, foxes, bears, and seals; its numerous deer and squirrels, its noble bison now approaching extinction, while a grand skeleton of the mastodon exhibits its most prominent mammal of the immediately preceding age. A closer examination shows us its more special peculiarities, its prong-horn antelope; its raccoon, skunk, and prehensile-tailed porcupine; with its numerous small carnivora and rodents. Several of these types are shown in the illustration (Fig. 2) from a photograph of one side of this room. Among its birds we notice the wild turkey, the black vulture or "turkey-buzzard," the fine ruffed grouse and crested quail, as characteristic features; while among the smaller birds its numerous woodpeckers, its

tyrants, and its prettily coloured thrushes, warblers, and finches are most prominent. Its reptiles and amphibia are characterized by numerous fresh-water tortoises, many curious lizards, the rattlesnakes, and other striking forms; many varieties of frogs, some of large size; and its very curious and interesting salamanders and other tailed batrachia. Its fishes are rich in fine and characteristic forms, and we notice specimens of the siluroid cat-fish, the