GEFMAN PALEONTOLOGICAL MUSEUMS. 829 



become a splendid city, with it3 fortifications replaced by spacious 

 boulevards, adorned with gardens, handsome houses, and palaces. Sci- 

 ence is destined to profit largely by these transformations. On one 

 side of the Hotel de Yille has been built the elegant Parliament-House, 

 and on the other side, as a pendant to it, the Palace of the University. 

 A little way from the Parliament-House, opposite the Imperial Palace, 

 have recently been completed the Museum of Fine Arts and the Mu- 

 seum of Natural History. The University and the Natural History 

 Museum are thus in the finest quarter of the city. 



The University building is nearly finished. It is a pleasure to be 

 a student in such a palace. Professor Suess, an eminent savant and a 

 member of Parliament, directs the geological collections ; and another 

 professor, not less accomplished, Professor Xeumayr, the paleontologi- 

 cal cabinets. The Museum of Natural Historv belongs to the court 

 (Hof Naturalien Museum). The emperor has just put at its head M. de 

 Hauer, who wasformerly director of the Geological Institute. M. Fuchs 

 is charged especially with the department of paleontology. I was told 

 that the fossils would be separated from living species, as they were 

 in the old museum, and that they would occupy six halls. The Hall 

 of Vertebrates is adorned with mural paintings representing the land- 

 scapes of the different geological epochs, with their most character- 

 istic animals and plants. These pictures are separated from one an- 

 other by statues which have paleontological attributes. One figure 

 holds an icthyosaurus, another the head of a dinotherium, another 

 a part of Cervus megaceros, another the head of a unitatherium, etc. 

 I only saw a few of the fossils, for they were all disarranged ; but, 

 among those which M. Fuchs was able to show me, I remarked skele- 

 tons of ZTrsus spel&us, a skeleton of Megaceros, and one of the quater- 

 nary goat, five specimens of the mastodon and dinotherium, and a 

 series of vertebrates from Maragha in Persia, of the same as:e as those 

 of Pikermi and those from Baltavar in Huncrarv which have been de- 

 scribed by M. Suess. Besides these collections, I visited by the court- 

 esy of M. Stur, the new director, the Geologische Reichsanstalt, which 

 the fossils being arranged according to both the geographical and the 

 geological order, is perhaps the finest collection of stratigraphic pale- 

 ontology in Europe. Particularly to be admired are the ammonites 

 from the trias of the Austrian Alps, respecting which M. de Mojsiso- 

 vics has lately made some interesting publications. 



I have not been in Pesth lately, but two learned Hungarian pro- 

 fessors, MM. de Hautken and Szabo, have assured me that, since I 

 last visited that city, its collections of geology and paleontology 

 have become very important. 



In Prague, Professor Fritsch conducted me to the place where the 

 foundations of a grand Bohemian Museum of Natural Sciences have 

 recently been laid. While awaiting the erection of this establishment, 

 a special provisory hall of paleontology has been built near the old 



