On the extent and aims of a national museum of natural history : including the substances of a discourse on that subject, delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, on the evening of Friday, April 26, 1861 / by Professor Owen.

Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the extent and aims of a national museum of natural history : including the substances of a discourse on that subject, delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, on the evening of Friday, April 26, 1861 / by Professor Owen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    bonate of lime ai'e generally internal, rarely visible in the living colony; and as the delicate flesh shrinks in most preserving liquors, and loses colour in all, a true idea of these beautiful composite marine animals, with the polype-mouths expanded like the petals of a flower, can only be given by coloured models. The art of the colourist and modeller is still more essential to show the external characters of the lovely hyahne medusae, jelly-fish, and other forms of the floating Acalephes; for only the form, and that commonly contracted, can be studied in specimens preserved in liquor. The adjustment of the exquisitely sculptured sihcious shells of microscopic organisms to micro- scopes adapted to afford the casual visitor to a Public Museum the opportunity of contemplating them, must be restricted to a few of the most striking examples. Enlarged coloured drawings, with the degree of the magnifying power noted, may serve to exemplify the majority of the species. A special apartment, with an attendant accustomed to the use of the microscope, would be requisite in the Public Museum, in which the general view of living Nature was completed by a demonstra-