tortoise, in the first room of this gallery, is manufactured; and the seventh case (30) to felspathic substances, including amazon stone from the Urals, and Labrador felspar. The northern cases are numbered from 31 to 37 In the first case (31) are varieties of felspar; in the second case (32) are micaceous and other mineral substances; in the third case (33) are basaltic hornblende, tremolite, &c.; in the fourth case (34) are varieties of asbestus, which defies the action of fire; jeffersonite; jenite from the Elba, &c.; in the fifth case (35) are various pyroxenic minerals; in the sixth case (36) are various kinds of garnets, including the lime and chrome varieties; and in the 37th case are the silicates, including beryls, and the emerald.

Having brought his examination of the mineral kingdom to a conclusion, the visitor should notice the fossil zoophytes and shells from various deposits, arranged upon the other tables of the room. He will now leave the mineral kingdom, and advancing once more westward, will reach the fifth room of the gallery, which is entirely given up to various fossil remains.

FOSSIL FISHES.

The first object that will arrest the visitor's attention on entering this fine apartment is the gigantic skeleton of the extinct elk of Ireland, which towers above every other object, from its pedestal, placed in the centre of the room. It is seven feet in height, and eight feet in

length.

The southern wall cases and the southern table cases of this room are covered with the fossil remains of various fishes. These are important to the student as exhibiting high forms of animal life that existed at the time of the formation of the most ancient

strata in which organic remains have been discovered. The visitor will notice the perfect forms imprinted upon the various strata here exhibited.

In case 7 he will be struck with the fossil remains of some of the sauroids or lizard-like fishes, only two species of which survive to the present day, but which, in remote ages, abounded in the seas, and were particularly voracious. On the middle shelf of the wall case marked в the visitor should notice the fossil remains of the enormous and powerful carnivorous fish called the rhizodus; also the macropoma, like a carp in shape, in wall cases 13, 14; the fossil bremus in case 19; the extinct species of fossil carps, in cases 24, 25; the fossil pikes in cases 24-27; and the fossil herrings in the middle of cases 25-27. Having noticed these fossils the visitor should examine the wall case in the north-eastern corner of the room in which are deposited many bones of mammalia from the Sewalik Hills, including the teeth and jaws of an extinct species of camel; and the skull of the remarkable livatherium ; and on the top of the case are various bones of the same extinct monster. The tops of the southern cases display various fossil remains, including the head-bones of the asterolepis; the skull and antlers of the Irish elk; and various skulls of different kinds of oxen. The western wall case is filled with a curious collection of various fossil parts of an extinct species of rhinoceros found in this country, also skulls of the rhinoceros dug up in Siberia. There is something impressive in the effect-the atmosphere of this and the sixth rooms. As crowds of holiday people, inhabitants of an island in which no dangerous living animals now abide, wander amid the fossil remnants of ages when the most terrible monsters must have lived in British waters and crawled upon British ground, curious contrasts rise

in the brains of contemplative men. The mind wanders back to the age of reptiles-to times when no human footprint had sunk into the earth-and the great agents of nature were silently depositing in the congregating and shifting earths dead images of the prevailing life. Ages roll on as the reptiles give place to higher animal organisation developed in carnivora, the quickening blood warms, and then as the sovereign of all the grades of life, erect and gifted with reason, comes man. Something of this vast and half-told progress is shown in the range of fossil cases with which the visitor is engaged. He has passed the era of reptiles and fishes, and on entering the sixth and last room of the gallery, he will notice the higher series of fossils. The distribution of the

FOSSIL MAMMALIA

in this room is very striking; the central space being fully occupied by the cast of the wonderful megatherium of the Pampas, and the skeleton of the North American mastodon. The megatherium is described zoologically as having combined the characteristics of the armadillo, sloth, and ant-eater. In height it averaged eight feet ; its feet were a yard in length; and its claws were of terrible strength; it was encased in an impenetrable scaly armour; and it lived upon roots. The mastodon was of the elephant kind. But the gigantic tapir described by Baron Cuvier, or the dinotherium, supposed by the Baron to have reached the extraordinary height of eighteen feet, of which only partial remains have been found, and are here deposited, is the largest fossil mammalia yet discovered. It is said to have had the habits of the walrus. The southern wall cases of the room contain a fine collection of the fossil remains of

G

elephants and mastodons, chiefly from the Sewalik Hills of northern India. The third case (c) is filled with Brazilian fossils of varieties of the megatherium, monkeys, &c. On the right of the entrance from the fifth room are some fossil mammalia from Montmartre arranged by Cuvier. Having wandered about amid these suggestive wrecks of the remote past, the visitor should approach the central upright case placed against the western wall of this noble room. Here is a fossil of part of a human skeleton, the possession of which our geologists owe to the fortune of war-it having been found on board a French ship captured by an English cruiser. As the visitor will perceive, the skull is wanting, but this important part is said to lie in an American museum. However, the spine, the thigh bones, and the ribs are distinctly visible. This precious relic was extracted, with other human fossils, from the cliffs of Guadaloupe, about forty years ago. It is the skeleton of a savage slaughtered about one hundred and fifty years ago, and buried in the spot where it was found. As yet, the period when man first appeared upon the face of the earth is not told in geology. No fossil human remains have been found even in the ancient tertiary strata. The story of human life is revealed in other records, if not in the sepulchral strata of the earth's crust. In this very Museum, which the visitor now treads-in these cases of fossil bones which in themselves are common material enough, the lordly intellect that has traced their deep significance, proves that, of all animal types, man is the highest and the strongest-removed from the most powerful mammoth and megatherium-the bones of which he has re-fixed, that they may, as stones, tell the story of their wonderful characters when alive. A curious resurrection this, by Cuvier and others, of long ages ago, to be pondered

well.

Not a holiday matter, to be stared at-an hour's wonder-and then forgotten, as of no value in the markets of the living world; but a great and a serious science, with more romances in it than shelves of novels. To know something of the early state of the world which we enjoy to have some evidences given to us that before human animals began to play their part here, wonderful monsters, part mammalia, part birds, part reptiles, gambolled upon the scene; that wingless birds stalked upon marshy grounds; that strange and ghastly lizards crawled upon our fruitful Kent; and gigantic fish floated in our tranquil waters, but no beautiful humming birds, majestic lions, and graceful horses-only crawling and swimming life, everywhere preying, and the early sea-weed rising in the sea because the polypus wanted its food to think of these things is to have some knowledge. In these dim regions of the past, what glimpses are there of the great eternal laws, the natural progresses, the continual upward tendency of all things! And then, taking this revealed book of the past in his hand, how a man may sit and ponder on all that is to be -dream of times when some future geological hammer will be rapping at the clay about the stone relics of his bones, and a man will gaze upon his hardened anatomy with a mild and holy joy-when all that breathes and moves to-day will be entombed in ancient strata of the earth, and busy life will be carried on a hundred feet above the ruins of the present. These thoughts dwell happily with good men.

Hence, proceeding on his way, the visitor returns east from the sixth room into the fifth, and turns thence south, into the passage which leads into the western gallery of the Museum, and immediately into