ON NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS.
9
rather impatient of artificiality, and indeed the naturalistic idea
is even being extended from the Museum to the Menagerie. Just
as people are not satisfied to-day with seeing in our glass cases
stuffed birds perched in rows on monotonous stands of turned
wood, so they are getting rather tired of seeing wild animals
pent up in rows of cages ; and Mr. Hagenback is said to have
in view a scheme which will enable him in the near future to
exhibit the animals under conditions apparently approaching to
some extent those of nature.
At the present time there is displayed in the Upper Room of
the Forest Museum a small collection of Fossil Vertebrata,
representing the ancient fauna of the district ; but the question
is under consideration, whether it would not be expedient to
remove these objects to Stratford, and devote the space at
Chingford, which is but very limited, to illustrations of the fauna
and flora of the Forest as they exist to-day.
Whilst the Chingford Museum makes natural history its
most prominent feature, it has always sought—and quite
legitimately—to illustrate the early archaeology of the district,
especially the Prehistoric ages. Hence we find in the Banqueting
Hall the interesting collection of relics which were dug up
from the two Forest camps—the camp at Amesbury Banks
explored by our Club in 1881, and Loughton, or Cowper's
Camp, examined in the following year, both probably of British
origin. Then again the same room contains the valuable group
of antiquities obtained by Mr. Chalkley Gould in the course of
his exploration of the Romano-British settlement at Chigwell,
and so well described in his Museum Handbook.(8)
The mention of antiquarian relics raises a suggestion which,
to some, may appear rather startling. Will the day ever come
when it will be possible to divorce these relics from the natural
history objects with which they are now associated, so that the
works of art may be shewn in one building and the works of
nature in another? It is true that Sir Thomas Browne, that
grand old East Anglian worthy, quaintly says that "All things
are artificial, for nature is the art of God." But taking words as
common-place people like ourselves use them, there seems
ample justification for separating, under certain conditions, the
(8) "Notes upon the Romano-British Settlement at Chigwell, Essex." By I. Chalkley
Gould, Essex Field Club Museum Handbooks, No. 2, 187.