1916] The Ottawa Naturalist. 165 



The west hall was occupied by the tentative exhibit of 

 minerals. This exhibit was packed and removed in six hours, 

 or by 4 p.m., Friday, which was less than twenty hours after 

 the fire began. The costly cases in which these minerals were 

 exhibited had meanwhile been taken apart and placed in stor- 

 age. Rooms for the members of the Senate were made here. 



The west wing, which was being prepared for geological 

 and mineralogical exhibits, was cleared before Monday noon. 

 The Senate met at 8 p.m. on Tuesday in this new chamber, 

 which had been vacated by the museum within seventy-five 

 hours after it became known that the Senate would meet in the 

 musevim. 



The east hall, with invertebrate palaeontological exhibits, 

 similar in size to the other exhibition halls, contained thou- 

 sands of small and delicate specimens. These were all care- 

 fully wrapped, packed and taken away. Forty hours after the 

 beginning of the fire, all the museum specimens and cases 

 had been moved from this part of the building, which was 

 made into offices for the members of the House of Commons. 



Of the east wing, containing tentative vertebrate palaeon- 

 tological exhibits, three-quarters were cleared, and these ex- 

 hibits were stored, with those of the' other quarters, along the 

 walls of the southern half of the hall. This clearing involved 

 not only the moving of small exhibits in cases, but also of such 

 heavy fragile specimens as the titanotherium and the skulls 

 of dinosaurs and mammoths, yet it was all done within two 

 hours after this notification, that is by noon, or in less than 

 twenty hours from the time that the fire broke out. 



The ethnological specimens were taken out of the tower 

 hall, which was then fitted up and used before Friday noon as 

 a newspaper library corresponding to the one where the fire 

 originated. 



Before noon, that is within less than two hours after notice, 

 the tentative exhibit of Canadian archaeology, in seventeen 

 cases, covering three-quarters of the west hall, was cleared of 

 specimens and cases, while the tables upon which the cases 

 stood were left for the use of the members of parliament. The 

 specimens were transferred to sixty-eight trays and stored in 

 the archaeological laboratory in the basement. Meanwhile the 

 remaining quarter of the hall had been cleared of a tentative 

 exhibit of entomology in four cases. In this hall a place for 

 the press gallery staff to work, various offices for members of 

 the Senate, and offices for the Hansard staff, which records the 

 deliberations of the House, were made ready before Monday 

 noon. 



