58 



NATURAL SCIENCE. 



Jan., 



glass case of moderate depth. There is, therefore, scarcely a square 

 inch of waste room anywhere. The cases themselves are beautifully 

 fitted with mahogany, somewhat similar to those at the Natural 

 History Branch of the British Museum, though considerably improved. 

 The tops of the central cases are solidly constructed, and by this neat 

 device form, as it were, a central floor to the gallery above, occupied 

 by large specimens too bulky for the glass cases themselves. Additional 

 specimens, chiefly large fishes, are suspended from the roof at a level 

 with the eye of the visitor in the gallery, as shown in Fig. 2. 



Entering the museum on the ground floor, one finds the whole of 

 the right-hand portion devoted to birds, and the whole of the left- 



FiG. I.— The Koihschild Museum, Tring. 



hand half to mammals ; while upstairs in the gallery the typical 

 series of sponges, corals, molluscs, fishes, and reptiles are in the wall 

 case, and the insects, with crustaceans, occupy small boxes with 

 loose wooden doors (to exclude light), fixed to the hand-rail of the 

 gallery balustrade, as shown in the foreground of our illustration. On 

 the side galleries these boxes are hinged to permit of their being 

 lowered to hang parallel with the balustrade ; such an arrangement 

 not only allowing an uninterrupted view of the specimens placed on 

 the top of the central cases, but permitting the top-light to fall freely 

 on the ground floor. 



The whole of the exhibits in the Museum cases, with some 

 exceptions among the mammals and birds, form what Mr. Rothschild 



