One of these cases illustrates the variations of animals under domestication, the particular specimens selected being chiefly the familiar pigeon, in its various forms, and the jungle-fowl with its multiform domesticated descendants.
Another case illustrates very strikingly the subject of protective coloration of animals. Two companion cases are shown, each occupied by specimens of the same species of birds and animals—in one case in their summer plumage and pelage and in the other clad in the garb of winter. The surroundings in the case have, of course, been carefully prepared to represent the true environments of the creatures at the appropriate seasons. The particular birds and animals exhibited are the willow-grouse, the weasel, and a large species of hare. All of these, in their summer garb, have a brown color, which harmonizes marvellously with their surroundings, while in winter they are pure white, to match the snow that for some months covers the ground in their habitat.
The other cases of this interesting exhibit show a large variety of birds and animals under conditions of somewhat abnormal variation, in the one case of albinism and the other of melanism. These cases are, for the casual visitor, perhaps the most striking of all, although, of course, they teach no such comprehensive lessons as the other exhibits just referred to.
The second of the novel exhibits of the museum to which I wish to refer is to be found in a series of alcoves close beside the central cases in the main hallway.
Each of these alcoves is devoted to a class of animals—one to mammals, one to birds, one to fishes, and so on. In each case very beautiful sets of specimens have been prepared, illustrating the anatomy and physiology of the group of animals in question. Here one may see, for example, in the alcove devoted to birds, specimens showing not only details of the skeleton and muscular system, but the more striking examples of variation of form of such members as the bill, legs, wings, and tails. Here are preparations also illustrating, very strikingly, the vocal apparatus of birds. Here, again, are finely prepared wings, in which the various sets of feathers have been outlined with different-colored pigments, so that the student can name them at a glance. In fact, every essential feature of the anatomy of the bird may be studied here as in no other collection that I know of. And the same is true of each of the other grand divisions of the animal kingdom. This exhibit alone gives an opportunity for the student of natural history that is invaluable. It is quite clear to any one who has seen it that every natural history museum must prepare a similar educational exhibit before it can claim to do full justice to its patrons.
A third feature that cannot be overlooked is shown in the numerous cases of stuffed birds, in which the specimens are exhibited, not merely by themselves on conventional perches, but amid natural surroundings, usually associated with their nests and eggs or young. These exhibits have high artistic value in addition to their striking scientific worth. They teach ornithology as it should be taught, giving such clews to the recognition of birds in the fields as are not at all to be found in ordinary collections of stuffed specimens. This feature of the museum has, to be sure, been imitated in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, but the South Kensington Museum was the first in the field and is still the leader.
A few words should be added as to the use made by the public of the treasures offered for their free inspection by the British Museum. I shall attempt nothing further than a few data regarding actual visits to the museum. In the year 1899 the total number of such visits aggregated 663,724; in 1900 the figures rise to 689,249—well towards three-quarters of a million. The number of visits is smallest in the winter months, but mounts rapidly in April and May; it recedes slightly for June and July, and then comes forward to full tide in August, during which month more than ninety-five thousand people visited the museum in 1901, the largest attendance in a single day being more than nine thousand. August, of course, is the month of tourists—particularly of tourists from America—but it is interesting and suggestive to note that it is not the tourist alone who visits the British Museum, for the flood-tide days of attendance are always the Bank holidays, including Christmas boxing-day and Easter Monday, when the working-people turn out en masse. On these days the number of visits sometimes mounts above ten thousand.
All this, it will be understood, refers exclusively to the main building of the museum on Great Russell Street. But, meantime, out in Kensington, at the natural history museum, more than half a million visits each year are also made. In the aggregate, then, about a million and a quarter of visits are paid to the British Museum yearly, and though the bulk of the visitors may be mere sight-seers, yet even these must carry away many ideas of value, and it hardly requires argument to show that, as a whole, the educational influence of the British Museum must be enormous. Of its more direct stimulus to scientific work through the trained experts connected with the institution I shall perhaps speak in another connection.