rest from the public, for in 1765 we had a very good
collection of butterflies, and in 1769 the trustees acquired, by
purchase, a considerable collection of stuffed birds from Holland. The
restrictions on visitors were, however, vexatious, people of all
classes being hurried through the rooms at a tremendous speed--vide
Hutton, the Birmingham historian, who visited it in 1784, and relates
how he would fain have spent hours looking at things for which only
minutes were allowed. From this period up to 1816 (at which date the
valuable ornithological collection of Col. Montagu was purchased for
the nation at a cost of L11,000) the additions to the natural history
galleries were not many, probably owing to the troublous times;
however, when we had succeeded in breaking the power of Napoleon and
restored peace to Europe, naturalists and taxidermists found that the
public had then time and inclination to devote themselves to their
collections or works.

Accordingly, during the next twenty years many works (including those
before noted) were written on taxidermy, the most notable being by
Swainson, Brown, and that eccentric genius Waterton, whom we may call
the pioneer of our present system of mounting, and who, in his usual
caustic style, pointed out the very inferior way in which specimens
were then mounted.

At the end of his "Wanderings in South America" appeared a treatise on
Taxidermy, but, as he decried the use of arsenical preparations, and
mounted his birds without wires in a fashion peculiar to himself, his
system did not find favour in the eyes of the school of rigid
stuffing, who had not then worked out the present happy compromise
between his style and theirs. His patience must have been
inexhaustible; indeed, the Rev. J. G. Wood, who knew him well, has
told me of many instances in which he spent days in scraping out the
hands and feet of the larger apes until he got them as thin as paper,
and also of his delight when he invented the kid-glove substitute for
a peacock's face much to the astonishment of the reverend gentleman.
Of course; all these works on the preservation of natural history
objects and the labours of collectors directed the public mind to the
contemplation of natural history.

The British Museum at this time also--relieved of a few of the
restrictions on admission--became more popular, and in 1836 we find
the natural history collections were as follow: Mammals, species 405;
birds, species 2400;