Shall be at my command: emperors and kings
Are but obeyed in their several provinces,

Nor can they raise the wind or rend the clouds;

But his dominion that exceeds in this,
Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man ;

A sound magician is a mighty god:

Here, Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a deity!

But it is power as conferred by knowledge, not as belonging to position, that he longs for, and this places him on a distinctly higher level than the Pope Sylvester of Hans Sach's story. Yet before the final step was taken, and Goethe's Faust given to the world, two more centuries had to go by. How long will it be before the ancient motif receives a new development? For my own part I incline to think that the eighteen century-old stock will never produce a blossom to surpass the one put forth within the memory of some few men yet living. Listen to the complaint of the Titan, the superhuman man of the eighteenth century! Nothing I can learn to me seems treasure ; Nothing can I teach with all my exertion For bettering the world or for men's conversionNor have I gotten gold or gear

Honour or glory, or men's fear

No cur would desire such life's endurance!

Therefore in magic I seek assurance

Haply from spirit-power or tongue

Is many a secret to be wrung

So I with bitter sweat no more

Need teach what I not know true for lore;

So I may know what forces keep

Earth's atoms bound in the deepest deep,

Behold all germs and operant forces,

And deal no more in vain discourses!

The only further development that I can imagine is the drama of a soul which shall voluntarily doom itself to hell for the salvation of others.

POSTSCRIPT.-The opening part of the above paper was written somewhat hurriedly, and shows more crude and fragmentary in print than I anticipated. The best that I can do now is to acknowledge its imperfect character, and hope that I may some day be allowed to return to the subject, when increased knowledge and wider reading shall enable me to do something like substantial justice to the subject. The theory-the main idea-that the story of the Temptation would, in the natural course of things, be followed by a "Faust-legend," is, I think, sound; the historical development, however, needs to be traced out much more exhaustively. The same may be said for the theory of the Babylonian and Persian origin of the underlying beliefs.

61

AN IDEAL NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM.

By W. A. HERDMAN, D.Sc., F.L.S., F.R.S.E.,

PROFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LIVERPOOL.

INTRODUCTORY.

It is a remarkable circumstance that the Darwinian theory of Evolution, which has exercised such a profound influence during the last quarter of a century upon almost all departments of thought, has apparently had little or no effect as yet upon the structure and the arrangement of Museums of Natural History. The Descent Theory, which has now become the central idea of modern Biology, and which has given an entirely new and more scientific aspect both to original investigation and to the teaching of the subject, seems to be utterly ignored by those institutions which are intended to give to the general public a correct representation of our present knowledge in regard to the various groups of animals and plants and their relations to one another.

In what respect is a museum better or higher than a mere collection of curiosities made by an amateur, or than the confused assemblage of heterogeneous objects seen on the shelves of the bird-fancier's shop, if it is not that in the museum the specimens are supposed to be arranged and labelled in a natural (that is, a scientific) manner? Now it is generally admitted amongst biologists that the only natural arrangement of animals or plants is according to their genetic affinities, and this when carried out gives rise to a branched or tree-like form,* which represents graphically at one and the same time the blood-relationships of the

* For example, see Herdman, "A Phylogenetic Classification of Animals," Macmillan, 1885.

different groups, and also their phylogenetic or ancestral history. Why is it then that museums do not follow this, the only correct method of classifying and arranging organic objects ? I believe the reason is simply that museums are costly institutions, most of which were already established before the Darwinian epoch. They are placed in buildings which it would be a serious matter to rebuild or to adapt, and which are for the most part quite unsuitable for the new genealogical arrangement, being generally in the form of a series of corridors and galleries, in which the specimens are arranged in linear series—a method known to all biologists as an absurd one, giving a totally erroneous idea of nature.

The great objection to a linear classification is not felt so strongly by those who have no special knowledge of biology; and I shall, therefore, make use of an illustration which may seem at first somewhat childish, but which will, I think, demonstrate clearly the unnatural character of a linear arrangement. Let us imagine that some intelligent animals, in some future geological period, found the fossil remains of the long extinct race of Man, of whose structure and appearance all knowledge had been lost; and let us further suppose that all the fossil men found were in fragments, the head, body, arms and legs being separated from one another. Now, how would the scientific museum curator amongst those intelligent animals arrange the fossil fragments so as to give a correct impression of the shape of extinct man ?

Of course the proper way would be to arrange them as shown in fig. 1, when the form produced is a branched one, resembling a phylogenetic arrangement of animals; but if he was bound down by tradition, or by the shape of his museum cases, to a linear arrangement of the fragments of man, he would produce the very unnatural forms shown in figs. 2 and 3. If the curator in question knew absolutely nothing of the relations of the fragments he was dealing with, then he might

turn out some such absurd arrangement as fig. 3; but, if he discovered the true positions of the various pieces, then the very best arrangement he could make in a linear series would be that shown in fig. 2, which everyone will admit gives a totally erroneous idea of the human figure. It is, however, no more unnatural than the best possible linear arrangement of plants and animals seems to the scientific biologist, and the order of the groups shown in some Natural History Museums is almost as absurd as the positions of the man's limbs in fig. 3.

It is no argument in favour of the existing state of affairs,

Fig. 1. Natural
or genetic
arrangement.

Fig. 2. Good unnatural

or linear arrangement.

Fig. 3. Bad unnatural or linear arrangement.

and no excuse for delaying the necessary changes in museums to point out the fact that in modern text-books of biology the linear classification is still adopted. That cannot be avoided. Books, unlike natural groups and museum cases, cannot spread in a dendritic manner. Their pages and chapters must follow one another in a continuous series.

Then again, the linear arrangement seen in museums is usually not even the best possible. The exigencies of space, and the size and nature of the specimens exhibited, seem to necessitate the placing together of groups of animals which are not at all closely related. In the Liverpool Free Public