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AT THE MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 309 
museum at Kew is built, where the three principal rooms are 70 feet long by 
25 feet wide, and each accommodates 1000 c mdi em e iioi lighted 
eases, 6700 feet of wall room for pictures and for , besides 
two fireplaces, four entrances, and a well staircase, 11 feet each way. A cir- 
cular building, with cases radiating from the wall between the windows, would 
cepting the lighting of the cases. The proportions of the basement and first 
floor might be such as to admit of additional stories being added, and the roof 
be so constructed as to be removable without difficulty when an additional 
story was required ; furthermore, rectangular galleries might be built, radiating 
from the central building, and lighted by opposite windows, with buttress cases 
between each pair of windows. 
** In respect of its Natural History tiim the position of the British Mu- 
seum appears to me to be a disadvantageous one ; it is surrounded by miles of 
streets, including some of the principal eesti thoroughfares, which pour 
clouds of dust and the products of coal combustion into its area day and night. 
M J the Briti wW Gantt th hl m who 
ritish 
e in so short a time, formed this wonderful collection. For some years 
past it has been considered to be the finest in the world. This is due to the 
energy and ability of the keepers and curators; and in mentioning them, I 
would wish to pay a passing tribute to the merits of the venerable Dr. Gray, 
who has devoted his life to the development of his de epartment with a single- 
ness med purpose, liberality, and zeal, that are beyond all praise. 
n my own special science, the greatest advances that have been made 
uring the last ten years have been in the department of fossil botany and ve- 
mas eese In the past history of the globe, two epochs stand pro- 
ntly out—the Carboniferous and the Miocene—for the abundant material 
they afford, acd the light they consequently throw on the early condition of 
the vegetable kingdom. Why plants eine: " as so much more lavishly 
preserved during these than during som of t ing or earlier vem. 
gical record. Our knowledge of c 
berg, Brongniart, and Lindley and Hutton, has been 
€ and Unger on the Continent, and by Dawson in Canada, has received 
very i t accessions of late through the ON energy of Mr. Binney, of 
e rug who has devoted ced thirty years to the search for those rarely 
found specimens which exhibit the internal ecd ofthe plant. His elabo- 
rate unidad of the most abundant, and, till his researches, the least under- 
stood plant of the coal-measures, Calamites, has just appeared in the memoirs 
of the Palzeontographical Society ; and sen of Mr. Binney's materials having 
also formed the subject of a very rece and valuable paper (Seemann's 
* Journal of Botany,' 1867, p. 349) by Mr. ap sca er of the British Museum, 
I may quote their joint results as one. These show that Calamites is an actual 
