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