62 
he could not now dwell ; but, as opportunity offered, he wished it to be 
made much more complete than it was. It was devoted to the 
Igneous rocks, which were arranged in the three simple groups— 
Volcanic, Granitic, and Trappean. 
The room opposite was entitled Foreign Geology, and it contained 
the extensive Paris Basin collection, collected and presented by Mr. T. 
Davidson. This admirable collection showed by beautiful rock and 
fossil specimens, the various beds of this remarkable basin, from the 
Chalk up through the plastic clay, the marl, the gypsum, and other 
subdivisions, to the Post Pliocene, so that it really formed an epitome 
of the whole range of the Tertiaries. 
In this room were also some fine Mammal bones, including a very 
perfect head of the Hippopotamus from the Miocene of India ; but 
beyond a number of unarranged specimens from America, Tasmania, 
&c., there was little else to justify the title of Foreign Geology, and the 
question arose, was it desirable or otherwise in such a Museum as this 
to divide Geology into British and Foreign? Of course, to gentlemen 
engaged exclusively on the Survey and the study of the Geology of the 
British Isles, there was a great advantage in keeping the British collec- 
tion distinct, and there was a real gain in being able to take British 
Geology as a part of the whole, so as to learn what formations existed 
or did not exist in these islands, and to ascertain the various 
epochs and mutations of form, and of animal and vegetable life, to 
which they had been subject. At the same time it was a fair subject 
_ for discussion, whether we did not not lose as much as we gained by 
the separation, and whether they did not thereby increase the difficulty 
to the unlearned, and even to the diligent learner, of grasping the 
meaning and scope of Geology as a whole, and of looking, not at this 
or that particular country, but at the globe itself, as the theatre of geo- 
logical revolutions. 
If they were to represent Foreign Geology, how many foreign col- 
lections must they have? Take for instance the Miocene, since at 
present it was unrepresented in the British-room. In the Foreign-room 
they had the Miocene of the Paris Basin, the Miocene of Touraine, the 
Miocene of Malta, the Miocene of Germany, and the Miocene of 
India. Were all these to be kept as distinct collections, or would it 
not be more instructive if they all fell into their places in one compre- 
hensive series? Again, by simply dividing the Miocene from the 
