The wall cases of this gallery, to which the visitor’s attention should now be exclusively devoted, contain various zoological families.  In the first eight wall cases of the room are distributed the varieties of Bats.  These are placed here, away from the mammalia, on account of the pressure of room.  They are not to be mistaken as birds in any particular.  They are essentially mammalia, inasmuch as they produce their young in a breathing state and suckle them.  The bats of England and other cold climates remain in a torpid condition, and only spread their wings of stretched skin when the songbirds report the advent of the warmth of spring.  The visitor will notice amongst the varieties in the three first cases, the Brazilian bats, including the vampire bat (which has been known to attack a man in his sleep and suck blood from him), the remarkable leaf-nosed bats which are ranged upon the upper shelves, and the Indian and African varieties; and underneath are grouped the well-known horse-shoe bats of the eastern hemisphere.  In the next case (4) are the long-eared European bats, with ears like curled leaves; and the American, African, and Australian varieties.  The fifth case is filled with groups of the African and Indian taphozous; the South American tropical bats; and the West Indian chelonicteres and moormops.  The last three cases, devoted to the varieties of the bat (6-8), contain those sub-families which are known as Flying Foxes, from their great size.  These live on fruits, and inhabit Australia, and the southern countries of the eastern hemisphere.

The visitor’s way now lies westward into the second compartment of the northern zoological gallery; for in this room, as in the rooms through which he has already passed, he should confine his attention, for the present, to the wall cases, reserving the examination of all table cases for his return visit, on his way out.  And here the visitor may well pause to think upon the zoological travels he has already made, from the mammalia, which present the highest types of animal life; through the sub-families of birds, which form Cuvier’s secondary class of vertebrata, or animals with a back-bone; to the threshold of the room in which the tertiary class of back-boned animals are deposited.  This class includes the great families of

Reptiles,

of which there are no less than six hundred and fifty-seven varieties.  Reptiles are vertebrated animals belonging to Cuvier’s first great section, but distinguished from mammalia and birds, by their cold blood, their oviparous generation, and the absence of either feathers or hair from their bodies.  They take precedence of fish in the animal kingdom, having lungs for aerial respiration, and “a higher circulatory organisation than the exclusive inhabitants of the water.”  In the museum, Cuvier’s classification has been followed, with slight variations; that is to say, the reptiles have been re-divided into four classes:—­the Sauria, or Lizards (in which class some modern naturalists, as Merrem and others, include serpents); the Ophidia, or Serpents; the Testudinata, or Tortoises; and the Batrachia, or Frogs.  The lizards occupy the first ten wall cases in this room.