up some special branch, and illustrating it by a fairly complete and representative group of objects, may provide much useful information in a very agreeable form. The exhibits should be so arranged that the visitor glancing over them, should, as it were, be forced to unconsciously acquire some general, although perhaps not very profound, knowledge of objects exhibited. This is secured by orderly arrangement, without which the relation of any one object to another is obscured, the connecting links are lost, and the Museum is liable to degenerate into a mere collection of curios, which however interesting they may be individually, are, as a whole, well-nigh meaningless.
The Otago Museum, exhibiting the principal types of the animal kingdom, is essentially a zoological museum, and as such, and for neat and scientific arrangement, it probably takes the premier position in New Zealand. The method here adopted consists in arranging the members of the animal kingdom in order of their complexity and differentiation from an original structureless mass. The arrangement is according to nature; animals which are similar in structure are grouped together, and groups representative of successive degrees of development are placed in order as far as practicable.
To follow out this arrangement a start should be made on the desk cases of the upper gallery, commencing at the eastern side. Here will be found specimens of the lowest forms of animal life. The very lowest, being microscopic, are necessarily unrepresented by real exhibits; but instead, there are numerous enlarged models, which show, in an admirable manner, what complex and diverse forms these unicellular organisms assume. Many of the models represent for a mini feral, which by the accumulation of ages have formed the large chalk deposits now existing in England and elsewhere. But though these are by no means uninteresting, a far prettier sight is afforded by Venus's Flower Basket, its interwoven fibres forming an extremely delicate network, which at one end terminates in long shreds. This pure white closed tube is nothing but a skeleton, and though apparently very frail, its finely woven meshes, being formed of silica, are strong and firm to an astonishing degree, and well-nigh indestructible.
