HISTORY OF THE COLLECTION.
Until nearly fifty years after the establishment of the British Museum, meteorite collections nowhere existed, for the reports of the fall of stones from the sky were then treated as absurd, and the exhibition of such stones in a public museum would have been a matter for ridicule; a few stones, which had escaped destruction, were scattered about Europe, and were in the possession of private individuals curious enough to preserve bodies concerning the fall of which upon our globe such reports had been given. Hence it happened that in 1807 not more than four meteoric stones were in the British Museum: three of them, Krakhut, Wold Cottage and Siena, had been presented in 1802-3 by Sir Joseph Banks; the fourth was a stone of the L'Aigle fall, presented in 1804 by Prof. Biot, the distinguished physicist. A fragment of the mass met with by the traveller Pallas had been presented by the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg as early as 1776; this, and the fragments of Otumpa and Senegal River, were long regarded by scientific men as specimens of "native iron," and of terrestrial origin.
In the year 1807, happily for the future development of the Mineral Collection, Mr. Charles Konig (formerly König) was appointed Assistant-keeper, and six years later was promoted to the Keepership of the then undivided Natural History Department; it thus came about that for thirty-eight years the senior officer of the Natural History Department of the Museum was one who had an intense enthusiasm for minerals and made them his own special study. It was in Mr. Konig's time that Parliament voted (1810) a special grant of nearly £14,000 for the purchase of the minerals which had belonged to the Rt. Hon. Charles Greville; with these passed into the possession of the Trustees fragments of seven meteorites, including Tabor, which had been acquired by Mr. Greville with the mineral cabinet of Baron Born. The increase of the Natural History Collections was such that in 1827 the Botanical, and in 1837 the Zoological, specimens were assigned to special Departments, after which Mr. Konig, as Keeper of "Minerals (including Fossils)," was left free to devote his attention to those parts of Natural History to which he was more particularly attached.
During Mr. Konig's Keepership, though numerous and excellent mineral specimens were acquired, no great effort was made to render the meteorite collection itself complete; at his death in 1851, 70 falls were represented by specimens. The following had been presented:—
Stannern: by the Imperial Museum of Vienna, in 1814.
Red River: by Prof. A. Bruce, in 1814.
Mooresfort: by Mr. J. G. Children, F.R.S., in 1817, and by Dr. Blake, in 1819.
Adare: by Dr. Blake, in 1819.
The large Otumpa iron, and a piece of the Imilac siderolite: by Sir Woodbine Parish, K.C.B., F.R.S., in 1826 and 1828 respectively.
Bitburg: by Mr. Henry Heuland, in 1831.