Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/495

Rh that is worthy of consideration. The construction of the national railroads of Piedmont enriched its paleontological department with many unique and wonderful relics of the dark ages of geology; and, above all, in its director, Count Tommaso Salvadori, the Museum of Turin possesses one who is conceded to be, par excellence, the ornithologist of Italy, and who enjoys a world-wide reputation as among the first in this department of science. The collection of birds is, of course, well arranged and especially interesting in types. At the time of our visit, Salvadori's private room was literally strewed with many hundred specimens of birds-of-paradise, representing all but two or three species of this family, with series by the hundred of several species. These had been recently collected by two Italian travelers, one set belonging to the Italian Government, the other to the Civic Museum of Genoa, and referred to Salvadori for examination, and to aid him in his monograph of this family.

The Garden of Plants, in Paris, is an institution too generally familiar to require more than a passing mention. The new houses for the protection of the living animals are models in their contrivance, more especially the one for the reptiles and batrachians. The Ornithological Museum, though not of itself very extensive, is particularly interesting to scientific students as the depository of collections made by the several national exploring expeditious of France. Among these are many unique and typical specimens, not known to exist elsewhere in museums. The collection of eggs is also wonderfully interesting, is very large and well preserved, and contains not only many very rare kinds, but is especially noteworthy as possessing a large number of species not to be found in any other public collection, some of them laid by birds in confinement.

Leyden, in Holland, could not be passed by without at least a brief visit to the venerable Dr. Schlegel, and the far-famed museum under his charge. The time was, and that not immemorial, when this museum contained the largest collection of birds in the world. Even now it is surpassed by very few, and is still superior to all others in its representations of East Indian species. Its strongest point is its collection of monkeys, to which class of animals Dr. Schlegel has given great attention, and of this our ancestral family—according to Darwin—it possesses the surprising number of 1,500 different species. Dr. Schlegel, though of mature years, is still in vigorous health, a most charming old man, bright, cheerful, and affable, possessing an inexhaustible fund of conversation and knowledge, enriched by the careful observation of a long and well-spent life. His museum possesses a very rich collection of the eggs of the birds of Java and other East Indian possessions of the Dutch.

Of the British Museum, as a whole, it would be impossible to speak from competent knowledge, except with much more time than we could give to so endless a task. The writer will say that all he did or