Abstract
THE newly-issued Report of the condition and development of the British Museum has, so far as biologists are concerned, a special interest. Its results may be considered as an index of the public feeling on the importance of the study of Natural History. Looked at in this light, we think that specialists in all the departments may feel hopeful. The acquisitions to the Zoological Department have been numerous (30,699 in all), over 6,000 being Vertebrata, “the majority being either entir animals preserved in spirits, or skeletons.” The spirit collection till recently has been much neglected, and all who have wished to prosecute their investigations into the more intricate details of zoology and comparative anatomy,—into points of myology, nerve distribution, &c., quite as important as, but much less easily arrived at than, osteo-logical characters—may justifiably look forward to the time when the national collection will contain, preserved in their entirety, examples of all reasonably-sized species.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
The Biological Department of the British Museum . Nature 12, 74–75 (1875). https://doi.org/10.1038/012074a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/012074a0