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ON NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS.
A collection of fossils, constituting a Palaeontological department,
must form an important feature in every natural history museum.
Strictly speaking, it might be well to arrange the fossils in their
proper zoological and botanical order, alongside the recent forms of
life, thus showing the continuity that subsists between the several
groups. But to the geologist it is manifestly so important to classify
the extinct forms of life according to the succession of the beds in
which they occur, that practically a Stratigraphical arrangement will
always rule over one founded on purely zoological grounds. The
most convenient arrangement, therefore, appears to be that followed
in the galleries of the Museum of Practical Geology, which contain the
finest collection of British fossils in the world. The fossils are
there arranged stratigraphically in ascending order, with a subordinate
zoological classification; that is to say, all the fossils, from one set of
strata constituting a "formation," are placed together ; but this large
group is broken up into a number of smaller groups, each containing
fossils which are related among themselves by zoological characters.
Not only should the geological department contain characteristic
specimens of the rocks, minerals, and fossils of the district, but it
should also exhibit such illustrations of the geological structure of
the country as are afforded by accurate maps and sections. For-
tunately the national survey of the entire county has been completed.
. . . Surely, the available wall-space in the geological room could
not be better occupied than by this map, and the explanatory
sections. For purposes of public exhibition, these sections might be
advantageously enlarged, so as to form bold diagrams.
In addition, however, to the large official map and sections, it
would be instructive to exhibit a series of smaller maps, each
coloured in part only, so as to show at a glance the exact area of a
particular formation. This principle is carried out with excellent
effect in the Leeds Museum, under its accomplished curator, Professor
Miall.
At the head of the Palaeontological collection, among the fossils
of the uppermost, and therefore the most recent, deposits, will be
found the remains of our own species. The earliest of such relics