ON NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS. 19
Even in the Essex Museum, though far from being large, an
attempt has been made in a small way to carry out this dual
scheme. A case stands, for example, in the Hall, containing
both living and fossil forms of the Cephalopoda. Several fossil
Nautili are here placed by side of the recent Pearly Nautilus;
and some typical Ammonites are to be found close by ; whilst
a group of Belemnites keeps company with spirit preparations of
the calamaries and the cuttle-fishes of the Essex coast. In the
Gallery, again, will be found a very instructive case of certain
extinct animals associated with their living representatives.
But whilst these series are arranged to illustrate in some
measure the biological side of Palaeontology, the bulk of the fossils
will be found arranged, as is usual elsewhere, on a chronological
system. By disposing them in Stratigraphical sequence, the
student gets a notion of the fauna and to some extent of
the flora at successive periods of geological history. To Mr. W.
H. Dalton the Club is much indebted for having expended
a great deal of labour on the arrangement of the Fossils, and
especially for writing a Handbook18 descriptive of the Pliocene
fossils which have rendered East Anglia geologically famous,
and of which, notwithstanding the ravishes of denudation to
which Mr. Spiller has lately called attention, Essex can still
boast a characteristic example in those shelly sands of Walton-
on-the-Naze, which are believed to represent the oldest part
of the Red Crag.
From this rapid survey of the contents of the Essex Museum
and their arrangement, it will be seen how admirably the
objects for which the Museum was originally organized have
been so far carried out. The division into a Local and a General
Collection is well defined. This division is in harmony with the
views of most of those who have given thought to the Museum
question. Mr. John Hopkinson, for instance, in suggesting
to the Hertfordshire Natural History Society many years ago
a scheme for the formation of a County Museum, insisted on the
importance of dividing every Provincial Museum into two
parts—one representative of a definite district, generally a
county, and the other an educational department with a typical
collection chiefly for the purpose of teaching.19
18 A brief sketch of the Crag Formation of East Anglia. By W. H. Dalton, F.G.S.
Essex Field Club, Museum Handbooks, No. 4, 1900.
19 '" The Formation and Arrangement of Provincial Museums." Trans. Herts. Nat. Hist.
Soc. Vol. i. (1881), p. 193.