"Local species maybe distinguished as 'Native' and 'Casual, or Accidental.
"The latter might have a dark line above, and below the name on the label — thus, Stork, or be marked 'Casual — Spring,' or 'Casual — Autumn.'"
To this I objected that if the arrangement was to be "pictorial," the "spotty" appearance of labels, especially if of light tints, was destructive to the effect sought to be gained; that yellow is not distinct from white by gaslight; and that pink often fades to yellow; also that to colour-blind people these labels would have no significance whatever.
In addition, I submitted that there are educated people as well as people of the other class, and that the system of labels written with common names inside the cases is not only unscientific but ugly in the extreme, for these reasons — that there are many birds whose "English" names are just as puzzling as their scientific to the uneducated; whereas, for those who care to learn, the scientific name is a factor of knowledge.
Regarding their inexpedience and ugliness, such a word as the "Lesser - spotted -Woodpecker" with the marking underneath it of "Resident," would fill up a large label if it were to be read at any height or distance. Taking it as a whole, the proposition was behind the age, and was commonplace also.
To dispense altogether with the necessity for labels, I proposed that a chart might be made for every group--a picture, in fact, of the contents of each case, every bird numbered, and a list prepared, whose corresponding number would give the whole history of each specimen; but, in any case, the adoption of a mass of printed matter clumsily introduced amidst pictorial effects must be condemned.
That all this was practicable is now proved by the present state of the Leicester Museum, provisionally finished in its general zoological collections so far as the birds and fishes are concerned. [Footnote: That is to say, that many of the ill-mounted and old specimens will ultimately be replaced by better ones of the same species, and that some modelled foliage will take the place of many of the dried grasses, rushes, etc.., which are not quite truthfully arranged.]
The reference to species in the general collection is now managed as I proposed. (See list, on p. 337, of part of the Order Anseres, printed on sage-green cards.) This is, I contend, a great advance on the old system of labelling, which has this defect, that the labels, even if small, are "spotty" and obtrusive near the eye, and if placed 10 ft. from the floor, as they must be in many instances, it is impossible to read them unless both label and type be very large, which is an absurdity in a pictorially-mounted collection. [Footnote: When I first came to Leicester the birds, mounted on stands and perches 9 ft. from the floor, were labelled by slips of yellow paper pasted on the stands, the type being that known as Pica and Bourgeois!]
Fancy Ramiphomicron microrhynchum, Boiss. (one of the humming-birds), peeping over a label long enough to take his name — say, 3 in. x 1 in.!
Multiply this by fifty, and fancy a typical collection of pictorially-mounted humming-birds labelled in this manner! A well-known naturalist and scientific zoologist, personally unknown to me, to whom I wrote, advised, as usual, the labels to be of different colours as distinguishing marks. I sent him one of my lists and charts, and he wrote: "I return the printed description which seems to me admirably calculated to convey instruction in a becoming and sightly way. It is undoubtedly an advance upon labelling."