284 Royal Institution. 



In the. progress of their labours for the improvement of 

 the Royal Institution, the managers and visitors have lately 

 had the pleasure of noticing the liberal donations already 

 made towards a mineralogical collection. They have now 

 the greatest satisfaction in announcing the receipt of a pro- 

 posal to raise a fund of 40OO1., in order to contribute fur- 

 ther towards forming, and connecting with the Institution, 

 an extensive and useful collection of minerals; so as to esta- 

 blish there, on a great scale, an assay office, for the im- 

 provement of mineralogy and metallurgy. 



The gentlemen to whom the public at large, and the 

 Royal Institution in particular, are indebted for this patri- 

 otic proposal, are the right honorable Charles Francis Gre- 

 ville, and Sir John St. Aubyn and Sir Abraham Hume, 

 barts. They observe, that the mining, concerns in this 

 kingdom are conducted by individuals with such advantages 

 of capital, and with such a degree of speculative enterprise, 

 as to exhibit those effects of combined chemical and me- 

 chanical powers applied to them, which no other country 

 in the world has hitherto been capable of producing; whilst, 

 at the same time, no other state is so deficient in the pro- 

 portionate means of rendering the knowledge of minerals 

 accessible to persons desirous of instruction. This defect 

 they impute l< to the want of an adequate public fund, to be 

 applicable, under the direction of mineralogists and che^ 

 mists, to the following purposes ;-r-viz, the formation of a 

 scientific collection of minerals on such a scale as to in- 

 clude all the latest discoveries ; — the arrangement of the 

 collection in a manner to exhibit all the interesting series 

 of mineralogical facts; — and the establishment of an assay 

 office, to be exclusively employed for the advancement of 

 mineralogy and metallurgy." 



The formation of such a collection of minerals, and the 

 foreign anc) domestic correspondence incidental to it, will, 

 they conceive, afford sufficient employment for the whole 

 time of a mineralogist of considerable talent; while the 

 Conduct of the assay office must require the continued at- 

 tention of a chemist of approved abilities. Hence, they 

 infer the expediencv of a considerable fund for the improve- 

 ment of mineralogy and metallurgy ; and hence, the ne- 

 cessity of an union of men of science, talent, and practical 

 experience, to direct the application of the fund to its ap- 

 propriate object. 



The proposal then proceeds to notice a suggestion, that 

 private collections of minerals might answer the desired ob- 

 ject 5 and that men of science have never been wanting to 



elucidate 



