The history of this marvellous progress of animal life, so far as scientific men have gazed into its deep mysteries, is surely worth attention. Few have the courage and the enthusiasm to follow each footstep of the tiny ant at his complex labours,—few are the Hubers that dwell among us; but to us all is given the love of that knowledge which opens our eyes to a few of the mysteries that lie thickly on our path, in the formation of the gravel upon which we tread, the clouds that grandly glide above us, and the leaves that gather upon the trees. After all the labours of our learned men, we are only now pressing, with trembling footsteps, the avenue to the endless schemes, and systems, and wonders, that lie buried in and about our world. Still let all who enter our museum, go there with the resolve to accomplish something by their visit. Even in the common concerns of life; in the petty matters that wear away the brain at last; in the market-places of the world, this insight is not without its effect. The heart is humbled as the eyes open to the grandeur of the scheme, and to the consequent littleness of individual manhood; but again, the breast swells with the purest of all pride, when the thinker says to himself: I am the King—because the hero or highest type of the Articulata, Radiata, Mammalia, or any order of vegetable or animal life. All these great and complicated developments are the beautiful works of the Great Unseen, but I am His masterpiece. One may well dream in this zoological museum, amid the staring glass-eyed skins of an inferior brotherhood—of the long, long time ago when the fossils, which are now scattered here and there, to assure us of their former vitality, moved about the world, before they were stricken with universal death, and buried by nature, deep in her teeming bosom, to flourish presently in the veins of plants—the plants to die again, and be dug, long ages after, from our deep coal-fields. These thoughts towards nature, towards the marvellous records of an antiquity, the remoteness of which we cannot realise, will rise to the minds of all visitors who can see in the vast collection of animal life through which we have guided them, revelations of the endless forms and the endless beauties that pass often unnoticed, because not understood, under every step that man takes in the many journeys that lie between his hopeful cradle and his inevitable grave.
END OF THE FIRST VISIT.
VISIT THE SECOND.
On entering the British Museum for the second time, the visitor should ascend the great staircase, pass through the south, central, and mammalia saloons; traverse the eastern zoological gallery, and continue north, direct into the first room of the most northern gallery of the northern wing;—where the studies of his second visit should begin. His first visit was occupied in the examination of the varieties of animal life distributed throughout the surface of the globe. The greater part of his time on this occasion will be devoted to the study of the wonders that lie under the surface of the earth; of the revelations of extinct animal life made by impressible rocks; and of the metallic wealth which human ingenuity has adapted to the wants and luxuries of mankind. In the fossil remains he will be able to recognise traces of an animal life, of which we have no living specimens; of trees, the like of which never rise from the bosom of the soil at the present time. The lessons that lie in these indistinct, disjointed revelations of the remote past, are pregnant with matter for earnest thought to all men. They are part of our history—links that hold us to the sources of things, and recall us again and again to the condition of our universe, as it trembled into space, and as now we inhabit it—a great and marvellous globe, every grain of which has an unfathomable story in it. Philosophers have laboured long at the story of the earth; and their revelations have tended to settle it, in a form not unlike the following:—
Originally, within the space bounded by the orbit of Uranus, a gaseous matter was diffused at a high temperature. By laws, the origin of which we have not yet traced, the condition of the diffused heat was changed, and the particles of the gaseous matter, condensed and agglomerated by attraction, into a series of planets, of which our earth is the third in point of size. That the earth has undergone vast changes, is evident to the most superficial geological student. We are only able to investigate the crust of the earth, with all our ingenious boring instruments: but even in this crust we may trace a gradual change, and recognise the silent operations of nature in ages never counted by man. According to the popular theory, the earth must have been sixty times as large as its present size, and have cooled to its present dimensions, retaining still, in its unfathomable bowels, a burning heat. The conclusions of geologists, after long and patient examination, are, that certain rocks mark the age of the world—that, in fact, the crust of the globe consists of a certain number of strata, each belonging to a certain era, as the rings of a tree tell its years of growth. The more they test this theory, the more certain are they that the history of our globe may be accurately read in the strata which compose its crust. "A granitic crust, containing vast and profound oceans, as is proved by the extent and thickness of the earliest strata, was the infant condition of the earth. Points of unconformableness in the overlying aqueous rocks, connected with protrusions of granites, and other similar presentments of the internal igneous mass, such as trap and basalt, mark the conclusions of subsequent sections in this grand tale. Dates, such as chronologists never dreamed of—compared with which, those of Egypt's dynasties are as the latter to a child's reckoning of its birthdays—have thus been presented to the now living generation, in connexion with the history of our planet."[5] These changing masses have been discovered with remains of organic life wrapped in their particles, each mass enclosing a petrified museum of the life that flourished while it was in course of formation: thus not only have we distinct proof of extinct forms of animal and vegetable life, but we are also able to assign the dates of their existence.
The MOST EASTERLY ROOM of the NORTHERN MINERAL and FOSSIL GALLERY, is that to which the visitor's attention will be first directed. In this room, as in the next three, the table cases are devoted to the minerals; and the wall cases, along the southern side of the gallery, are filled with
FOSSIL VEGETABLES.
The wall cases of this room contain the various strata which have traces of vegetable life. The earliest vegetable life of which the geologist has found fossil remains is in the form of sea-weeds, specimens of which the visitor will notice in case 1. The grand harmony of the world's development is shown in this adaptation of the earliest vegetable life to that of the earliest animal life—the polypus drawing its sustenance from the sea-weed. In the next three cases the visitor will notice various remains of fossil ferns (in clay slate) and horse-tails, all indicating the former high temperature and moisture of the localities in which they are found, since they are of large proportions, and it is observable that these plants grow in bulk according as they near the tropics. That the ferns and club mosses have diminished with the decrease of temperature of the earth, is proved by comparing the fossil club mosses, which have been found as large as beech trees, whereas at the present time the most gigantic club moss rarely exceeds three feet in height. In the lower sections of the third, fourth, and fifth cases, the visitor may notice some fine specimens of polished fossil woods; but the varieties of vegetable fossils can hardly engage his serious attention for any length of time, unless he have some real knowledge of botany and geology; yet he may gather the solemn teaching that lies in those dark masses of early coal formation and clay slate, even though he be unable to explain the first principles of botanical science. He may notice, however, in the fifth and sixth wall cases, fossil specimens of extinct plants, including the sigillaria, which, when living, is supposed to have attained often to the height of seventy feet. Having noticed these vegetable remains, the visitor should cross to the northern wall of the room, and examine the sandstones upon which the tracks of an extinct animal called the chirotherium—and footprints, supposed to be of birds, are distinguishable.
The central object in the room is a tortoise found in Hindostan, near Allahabad. It is carved out of nephrite or jade, and is deposited upon a curious table of inlaid ancient marbles. Against the eastern wall are deposited some beautiful varieties of branched native silver from Norway; Lady Chantrey's specimen of part of a coniferous tree, semi-opalised; and a mass of websterite from Newhaven, Sussex. The table cases now remain for examination. These are devoted to varieties of