Minerals. 351 



the Pavilion, at the eastern end of the Gallery ; the Isolated 

 Crystals and Crystal Models, at one time in some of the window- 

 cases, have been transferred to two Avail-cases at the western end 

 of the Gallery. 



Since 1880, the selection, registration, incorporation, labelling 

 and arrangement of the specimens, and the formation and cata- 

 loguing of the Departmental Library, have made great demands 

 on the staff of the Department, but time has been nevertheless 

 found for research on the specimens. For this purpose the 

 Department has been gradually equipped with an excellent set 

 of the most modern apparatus necessary for the physical and 

 goniometrical investigation of minerals, and good illumination has 

 been provided for use with the instruments ; the chemical laboratory 

 is no longer isolated from the Museum, but has been fitted up in 

 the building itself. 



As the purchase of entire systematic collections of minerals 

 generally involves the acquisition of many duplicate and inferior 

 specimens, only few such collections have been acquired by the 

 Trustees ; of these the more important have been the Hatchett 

 and the Cracherode Collections (1799), the Greville Collection 

 (1810), the Monticelli Collection (1823), the Allan-Greg Collection 

 (I860), and the Koksharov Collection (1865). 



Most of the mineral specimens in the Museum Collection have 

 been singly selected, each on its own merits, after direct com- 

 parison with specimens already acquired ; a collection of specimens 

 offered for presentation or sale to the Trustees is thus generally 

 represented in the Museum Collection by a merely miscellaneous 

 set of specimens, and in many cases by only a single one. 



All the collections and isolated specimens acquired since the 

 foundation of the Museum have been incorporated together to 

 form a single General Collection; in the course of this incor- 

 poration many thousands of duplicates and inferior specimens 

 have been set aside, and afterwards either presented to local 

 museums and institutions, or exchanged to mineral collectors and 

 foreign museums for specimens more useful to the British Museum, 

 or have been otherwise disposed of. 



Since the year 1837, when the General Register of specimens 

 was begun in each Department of the Museum, the mineral 

 specimens have been systematically numbered and entered 

 therein; the General Register thus gives a complete and 



