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the Natural and Phj'-sical Sciences in our great schools, it may be 

 further mentioned that the Board of Schoolmasters, with Dr. 

 Ridding, the principal of Winchester School, at their head, have 

 requested the opinion of the Board of the Natural Science School 

 at Oxford, as to the subjects most essential to be made elements 

 in general education, and that, amongst other suggestions made 

 by the latter body, is the formation of local Museums to be 

 attached to each of the great seminaries.* 



The progress of Zoological Science in North America is singu- 

 larly proved by the Annual Report made to the Trustees of the 

 Museum of Comparative Anatomy at Harvard College, Cambridge, 

 by Louis Agassiz, the Director, published at Boston, 1872. The 

 collection of all classes of animals which (by the liberality of the 

 Government in establishing a great National Museum) are being 

 accumulated at Harvard College, are especially extensive in the 

 Articulated Series, under the enlightened superintendence of Dr. 

 Hagen, whose comprehensive plan of arrangement, as set forth in 

 the preceding year's Report, is alluded to by M. Agassiz in a very 

 satisfactory manner, one portion of which, namelj^, the formation, 

 from the duplicates, of entomological collections for the Normal 

 Schools (which has been long adopted in France, and which 

 I have inaugurated at Oxford by sending a collection of British 

 Coleoptera to the College at Clifton) is deserving of imitation at 

 our National Museum. 



I may be allowed to direct your attention to another subject 

 which proves in a very satisfactory manner the extensive progress 

 making in the investigation of natural objects, owing in a great 

 degree to the employment of the microscope in a scientific manner. 

 I recollect the time when the objects selected for use in this 

 instrument were few in number, and of every character from a flea 

 to a grain of mustard-seed. Now we have microscopes made for 

 and used by the million, and not only have we several Micro- 

 scopical Societies — (a new one devoted to Human Histology has 

 just been formed) — but also Microscopical Journals and Transac- 

 tions, and even cheap weekly publications in which many excellent 

 microscopical objects have been for the first time illustrated. 



* I may perhaps here be allowed to mention that duriDg the very time that this 

 Address was be^ng delivered, a public meeting was being held in Lambeth, with the 

 view of establishing another branch of our great National Museum in the South of 

 London, 



