Bay VIII.
Bay IX.
In bay VIII, on the eastern side of the central hall, is displayed an exhibition illustrating trees, native to or grown in Britain. The winter and summer states are indicated by photographs, and the foliage, flowers, fruits, seedlings, and texture of wood and bark by specimens, models, and drawings. Bays IX and X are intended to illustrate the general characters of the great groups of the Vegetable Kingdom. Bay IX, in course of arrangement, is devoted to the Cryptogams (Ferns, Mosses, Fungi, Seaweeds, and Lichens).
At the back of the bay is a fine polished section of a buttress from the base of the Tapang (Abauria excelsa), the largest tree in Borneo, which attains a height of 250 feet.
Bay X. Seed-bearing Plants.
The last bay (No. X) is devoted to the Seed-bearing Plants, which are characterised by the formation of a seed—the result of the fertilisation of an ovule by the male cell which is developed in the pollen. The series begins on the left hand side with the Pteridosperms, an extinct group combining the characters of Ferns and Seed-plants and forming a link between them. Then follow the Gymnosperms (Cycads, Pines, Firs, etc.), in which the seed is borne naked on an open scale which generally forms, with others like it, the characteristic cone. Certain points in the development of pollen and ovule recall similar stages in the Fern group, and indicate that the Gymnosperms stand nearer to the Cryptogams than do the Angiosperms, the other and larger group of Seed-plants. The Gymnosperms are also the older group, and contain many extinct forms. In the Angiosperms the seed is enclosed in the fruit, and in the development of pollen and ovule almost all traces of a cryptogamic ancestry have been lost; the great development of the flower is a characteristic feature of the Angiosperms. The arrangement of the vegetative parts of the plant is based on its separation into root, stem, and leaf. In the right-hand wall-case the upper series of specimens illustrates the leaf, its form, veining, direction, the characters of its stalk and stipules, its modification for special purposes, and its arrangement on the stem and in the bud. Below, the stem and root are similarly treated, and above are some anatomical drawings. The display of the root is continued in the lower part of the opposite wall-case. In the central case the chief types of the flower with its parts, the fruit, and the seed are exhibited.
At the back of the bay is a large transverse section of the Karri tree (Eucalyptus diversicolor) of Western Australia, a species which grows to a height of 400 feet. The tree from which the section was cut was about 200 years old when felled.
The Introductory Collection of Minerals will be found in the gallery devoted to the Mineral Department (see [p. 90]).
The North Hall.
Domesticated Animals,[6] Hybrids, and Economic Zoology.