14 NATURAL SCIENCE. july. 



15 feet across, and its age, when cut down in 1892, has been com- 

 puted, by counting the annual rings, at 1335 years, which means that 

 it sprang from the seed in 557 a.d. It is somewhat appalHng to think 

 of the ages required for the action of Natural Selection in forms where 

 the life of the individual is prolonged to such an extent. 



The Museums' Association. 



The Museums' Association maybe said, in fashionable phrase, to 

 have arrived, when so eminent an authority as Hofrath Dr. A. B. 

 Meyer, Director of the Royal Zoological and Anthropologico-Ethno- 

 graphical Museum at Dresden, dedicates to it a handsome quarto, 

 with twenty plates, descriptive of the various improvements in 

 Museum fittings that he has introduced into his own Museum. This 

 volume, which is, by the way, the first number of a new publication, 

 the " Abhandlungen und Berichte," of the above Museum, describes 

 in detail and gives working plans of wall-cases, table-cases, skeleton- 

 stands, large spirit-tanks for exhibition purposes, cases of drawers, 

 cases and trays for eggs, nests and shells, a craniometer and a cranio- 

 phore, trucks and trollies and other minor aids to Museum exhibition. 

 In the construction of cases, trays, and drawers. Dr. Meyer's chief 

 peculiarity lies in the exclusive use of glass and iron, which render 

 the cases fireproof and, he contends, absolutely proof against dust. 

 A description of some of these cases has already been given by him 

 in the Report of the Museums' Association for 1891, and we hope that 

 some member of that body will lose no time in publishing an 

 English rendering of this very suggestive and practical paper. 



The Museums' Association is, at this our time of publication, 

 meeting in Dublin, and the address of the President, with which, 

 through the courtesy of Dr. Ball, we are in this number able to 

 present our readers, deals with the history of the Dublin Museums. 

 Meanwhile, there has just been published in the Proceedings of the 

 Liverpool Natumlisis' Field Club a very similar address by their 

 President, Mr. G. H. Morton, which relates the story of the Museums 

 of Liverpool. The present Museum, which has reached a very high 

 stage of development, through the exertions of the late Rev. H. H. 

 Higgins and Mr. T. J. Moore, was preceded by quite a different 

 Museum, belonging to the Royal Institution of Liverpool. Under 

 the care of William Swainson, T. Stewart Traill, Henry Johnson, 

 Francis Archer, and other well-known naturalists, the collections of 

 this Museum assumed considerable importance, and included a large 

 number of valuable type-specimens. " It was," says Mr. Morton, 

 " very useful to students of natural history, and a source of instruction 

 to the general public. For many years 30,000 persons visited it 

 annually on the free days." But with the rise of the present Free 

 Public Museum, and after the death of the curator, Henry Johnson, 

 a sad state of things ensued. " Neither the proprietors nor the 

 committee cared anything about the Museum, and it perished from 



