Of Fishes, the Museum contained, in 1862, about four thousand species. These were then represented, by way of public exhibition, irrespectively of the unexhibited stores, by about one thousand five hundred stuffed specimens, illustrating about one thousand species. The total number of recorded species, already at that date, amounted to more than eight thousand.
Of Reptiles, little more than two hundred and fifty species were publicly shown in the Museum Galleries, but its collections, unexhibited for want of space, were already much larger. The number of known species of Reptilia, in 1862, exceeded two thousand.
Coming to the Invertebrata, it appears that, in 1862, about ten thousand species of molluscs, illustrated by about one hundred thousand specimen shells, were publicly exhibited. |See, hereinafter, Chap. VI.| This, it will be remembered, was anterior to the great accession of the Cuming Collection, which already, in 1862, contained more than sixteen thousand species—and is the finest and most complete series ever brought together.
About forty-five thousand specimens of molluscs were, in 1862, stored in the drawers of the galleries and other rooms, or in the vaults beneath. These, on a rough computation, may have illustrated about four thousand five hundred species.
Within the two years only, 1860–1862, the registered number of specimens of Fossils was increased from one hundred and twenty thousand to one hundred and fifty-three thousand, but of these it was found possible to exhibit to the Public little more than fifty thousand specimens.
Growth of the Mineralogical Collections. 1858–1862.
Coming to the Department of Mineralogy, we find that the registered specimens had increased, within about four years, from fifteen thousand to twenty-five thousand. This increase was mainly due to the acquisition of the noble Allan-Greg Cabinet formed at Manchester. But large as this increase is, the national importance of the Mineralogical Collections is very far from being adequately represented by the existing state of the Museum series, even after all the subsequent additions made between the years 1862–1870. |Owen, Report, as above (1862).| A Museum of Mineralogy worthy of England must eventually include five several and independent collections. There must be (1) a Classificatory Collection, for general purposes; (2) a Geometrical Collection, to show the crystalline forms; (3) an Elementary Collection, to show the degrees of lustre and the varieties of cleavage and of colour; (4) a Technological Collection, to show the economic application of minerals—the importance of which, to a commercial, manufacturing, and artistic country, can hardly be exaggerated. Last of all, there is needed a special collection of an ancillary kind; that, I mean, which has been called sometimes a ‘teratological’ collection, |(Ibid.)| sometimes a ‘pseudomorphic’ collection. Call it as you will, its object is important. Such a series serves to show both the defective and the excessive forms of minerals, and their transitional capacities. These five several collections are, it will be seen, over and above that other special Collection of Sky-stones or ‘Meteorites,’ which is already very nobly represented in our National Museum.
CHAPTER IV.
ANOTHER GROUP OF ARCHÆOLOGISTS AND EXPLORERS.—THE SPOILS OF XANTHUS, OF BABYLON, OF NINEVEH, OF HALICARNASSUS, AND OF CARTHAGE.
‘She doted upon the Assyrians her neighbours, ... when she saw men pourtrayed upon the wall,—the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads; all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea.’
Ezekiel xxiii, 12–15.