SIR HANS SLOANE. 75 



From that time to the present, it has been 

 gradually extended and increased by donations, 

 bequests, and purchases but to trace the pro- 

 gress of this increase belongs not to this work. It 

 has very recently been newly arranged and con- 

 siderably improved in every respect ;* and a very 

 copious and interesting account of its present 

 state may be obtained from the twenty-eighth 

 edition of the " Synopsis of the Contents of the 

 British Museum," published in 1834. 



We have already alluded to Sir Hans Sloane's 

 contributions to the Philosophical Transactions. 

 We shall enumerate the titles of those papers 

 connected with zoology. 



An account of the bird called the Condor of 

 Peru, from the relation of Captain Strong, who had 

 met with one on the coast of Chili, which measured 

 sixteen feet from tip to tip of the wings. Vol. 18. 



* As an evidence of the increasing taste for Natural 

 History among the public at large, it may Be noticed, 

 ' that the number of visiters to the collections of natural 

 history in the British Museum amounted, in the year 

 1810, to 15,000. The year following, upon the mode of 

 admission being changed, the number was doubled ; and 

 it has since that time constantly increased, amounting, in 

 1818, to above 50,000, and, in 1824, considerably exceed- 

 ing 100,000." Quarterly Review, vol. 34, p. 158. We 

 have no means of ascertaining the numbers since that date, 

 but have no doubt they have gone on increasing in at least 

 the same proportion. 



