160 MIDLAND UNION GENERAL BUSINESS. 



VISITS TO LOCAL INSTITUTIONS, FACTORIES, &c. 



Few towns have advanced so rapidly as Nottingham has done 

 during the last few years. The members of the Midland Union 

 viewed with admiration the splendid Art Museum, which now occupies 

 Nottingham Castle, and over which they were conducted by the able 

 curator, Mr. Wallis. The School of Art is fitly housed near the 

 Arboretum — a beautifully laid out public garden, belonging to the 

 town. But the University College — a grand pile of buildings, having 

 the Natural History Museum on one side, and the Free Library on 

 the other — was considered the crowning-point of all. This fine 

 Institution is supported at a total cost to the rates of abovit £6,000 per 

 annum, but there can be no doubt that it will turn out the best invest- 

 ment ever made by the public-spirited inhabitants of Nottingham. 

 Many members visited one or other of the lace factories, and received 

 ideas as to the complexity and perfection of the machinery employed 

 which they will never forget. 



THE CONVERSAZIONE. 



The evening meeting was held in the Large Room and Lecture 

 Hall of the Mechanics' Institute. The local scientists and naturalists 

 had taken great pains to collect a most extensive and interesting series 

 of specimens illustrating nearly every branch of natural science ; the 

 members of the local soiree committee, too, must have worked extremely 

 hard to display the objects in so satisfactory a manner The principal 

 exhibitors were: — Mr. N. Allen, entomological specimens; Mr. T. S. 

 Bavin, section and cores of the boring for coal at South Scarle, 

 Lincolnshire ; Mr. F. Clements, historical maps, charts, &c., of 

 Nottingham, illustrations of book " From whence Nottingham Sprang," 

 antique brass clock, case of relics ; Mrs. Cowen, fossils from the chalk 

 and greensand formations ; Mr. E. S. Cowen, photographs of antiquities 

 near Nottingham, drawings of vibration curves, drawings of tesselated 

 pavement, at Barton, Notts ; Mr. P. J. Cropper, collection of fossils ; 

 Mr. B. S. Dodd, marine algse, hydrozoa, British and European mollusca; 

 Mr. W. J. Harrison, F.G.S., fossils in quartzite pebbles, specimens of 

 Cambrian rocks from Dosthill and Hartshill, in Warwickshire ; Mr. J. S. 

 Hedderley, drawings of British wild flowers ; Mr. F. Jackson, geological 

 specimens, antique bronzes, Roman plaque ; Mr. A. L. Kohn, minerals 

 and rocks of Auvergne, Central France, sketches uf extinct volcanoes, 

 scientific worthies ; Mr. L. Lee, cases of mounted specimens of 

 mammals, birds, &c., with some skeletons of the same ; Mr. J. Marriott, 

 Lias fossils of Leicestershire ; Mr. C. T. Musson, local land and fresh- 

 water shells, marine shells ; Mr. H. Pearce, F.G.S., F.L.S., glacially 

 striated stones, granite boulders, mineral specimens ; Mr. C. Perry, 

 local British insects ; Mr. G. B. Rothera, oi'ders of insecta, exotic 

 lepidoptera, iuvertebrata, sponges, sea-pens, corals, starfish, shells, &c., 

 specimens from the Lincolnshire coast (Skegness and Wainfleet), shells 

 from North Devon, rock specimens, pass of Llanberis during the 

 glacial period ; Mr. W. Rigby, bird's nests with eggs (local), gums and 

 resins, young crocodile, just hatched, in spirits, Crustacea ; Messrs. 

 Rose and Son, cases of herons, owls, grebe, fox, and teal, wild 

 ducks, and the osprey in their natural habitats, chimpanzee ; 

 Mr. J. Shipmau, specimens of the Keuper basement beds of Notting- 

 hamshire, Staffordshire, and Cheshire, fossiliferous pebbles of the 

 Nottingham Bunter sandstone, vegetable remains from the alluvium 

 of the Leen Valley, local geological sections, new geological map of 

 Nottingham; Mr. Louis Simon, half-horse power new noiseless gas 



