598 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



of their arrangement and preservation. It is the only estab- 

 lishment of its kind in the world that has sufficient funds to 

 purchase whatever is considered of moment, and its growth 

 is consequently steady and rapid. As far as natural history 

 is concerned, the only institution in the United States that 

 could compete with it, as regards the same means of increase, 

 was the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, 

 Massachusetts, under Professor Agassiz's direction, and the 

 two museums were not unfrequently simultaneous bidders 

 for some specially desirable article or collection. 



NEW PHYSICAL LABORATORY AT OXFORD. 



JSfatare gives a very complete description of the magnifi- 

 cent new physical laboratory of the University of Oxford, 

 England, which was, on the 16th of June, formally presented 

 to the university by the Chancellor. The building has been 

 erected under the superintendence of Professor J. Clerk Max- 

 well, and contains many evidences of his genius, both in the 

 arrangement of the building and in the apparatus installed 

 therein. The external walls are two feet thick ; the founda- 

 tions being fifteen feet below the surface. The building con- 

 sists principally of three floors, and is surmounted by a tower 

 fifty-nine feet in height, and contains twenty-six large rooms 

 and numerous apartments, each specially adapted and de- 

 voted to experiments in certain departments of physical sci- 

 ence. In the magnetic room is placed the great electro-dy- 

 namometer of the British Association. The room used for 

 the experiments in heat at present contains an apparatus de- 

 vised by Professor Maxwell for determining the viscosity of 

 air. The galvanic battery is connected by properly insulated 

 wires with the lecture-room and other portions of the build- 

 ing. The battery which will be employed is, of course, in a 

 room fitted expressly thereto, and is of the style known as 

 Sir William Thomson's tray battery. The lecture-room will 

 afford accommodation for about one hundred and eighty stu- 

 dents, the seats for the class rising at an angle of about thirty 

 degrees, and three doors providing sufficient means of egress 

 for the audience. In the room allotted to experiments in 

 electricity of high tension an apparatus contrived by Mr. 

 Latimer Clark has been introduced for the purpose of keep- 

 ing the air of the room dry. This consists of a heated cop- 



