xcli PROCEEDINGS OF THE 
the year 1849 he executed a deed of gift, making over his whole 
collection, as well as his library of books and engravings, to the 
University of Oxford, under certain conditions of a very liberal 
character, with reference to their being rendered available for pro- 
moting the study of natural history at Oxford. He still, however, 
continued annually to make large additions to the stores which he had 
thus assigned to the University. Thus in 1857 he secured the whole 
of Mr. Westwood’s collections of insects, books, and drawings; and 
subsequently he acquired Mr. Wollaston’s second and greatly en- 
larged collection of Madeira insects, the collection of Orkney birds 
formed by Mr. Hubbard during many years’ residence in those islands 
(unrivalled for the beauty of the specimens and the various groups 
of young birds, with their parents and nests), as well as the Bell 
collection of reptiles. By this means the University now possesses 
a collection of insects inferior only in extent to those in the national 
museums of London, Berlin, and Paris, and an entomological library 
unrivalled both in the number and rarity of its contents. 
Mr. Hope’s bounty, however, was not confined to natural history, 
since his donations to the University of Oxford comprise one of the 
largest collections of engraved portraits and topographical illustra- 
tions ever formed, together with several thousand volumes of biogra- 
phical, historical, topographical, and fine-art works, voyages, travels, 
&c., including the Jussieu collection of Academic Eloges, illustrating 
the collection of engravings, which cannot be considered as amount- 
ing, at the lowest estimate, to fewer than 200,000. Of these, the 
portraits cannot be fewer than 100,000, the topographical engravings 
from 60,000 to 70,000, and the natural-history engravings from 
20,000 to 30,000. There is, moreover, a considerable number of 
engravings of a more miscellaneous character, including many by 
the old masters. 
Mr. Hope’s latest donation to the University consisted of the 
remarkable collection of the works of British Essayists formed by 
his father, consisting of about 1200 volumes, many of the greatest 
rarity. 
In the year 1855 the first stone of the new Oxford Museum was 
laid, on which occasion the honorary degree of D.C.L. was conferred 
on Mr. Hope, whose various munificent donations were destined to 
be there deposited. 
In 1861 Mr. Hope further testified his devotion to the University 
of Oxford by founding and endowing a Professorship of Geology, 
with more especial reference to the Invertebrata, to which chair he 
nominated our distinguished colleague, Mr. Westwood, as the first 
