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- 


Fic. 1.—TuHE RotTuscHiILp 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 
