1856-1861. 



The year 1856, in which the " Zoological branch of the 

 Natural History Department" became a separate Department, 

 marks the commencement of a new era in its development 

 under Dr. Gray's Keepership. In the sixteen years during 

 which he had held this office, these collections had made such 

 progress, as regards growth and arrangement, that the British 

 Museum could well hold its own in a comparison with the most 

 renowned and older institutions of the Continent. These latter 

 may have excelled in one or more respects, such as the fuller 

 representation of certain faunas or orders of animals, or the 

 possession of the original material on which the older standard 

 works were based ; but the riches of the British Museum were 

 more evenly distributed over the whole range of the animal 

 kingdom, and, as far as the Indian and Australian Faunas were 

 concerned, the British Museum was, of course, facile princeps. 

 Donations always formed a large, generally the larger, proportion 

 of the annual increase of the collections, and as, for obvious 

 reasons, Birds, Shells, Insects especially Lepidoptera and 

 Coleoptera were the groups most popular with collectors, they 

 invariably preponderated. The reception of an annual separate 

 grant of money for purchases greatly assisted in regulating this 

 uneven increase : compared with more recent years, this grant 

 must be regarded as very liberal; from 1837-46 it averaged 

 about .1100 per annum, and rose to 1500 about the period 

 under consideration. The selection of the purchases offered 

 during the year was left entirely to the judgment of the Keeper 

 (subject to the sanction by the Trustees), and he was thus en- 

 abled to direct the main expenditure temporarily to any branch 

 of the collections which most needed it, effecting thereby greater 

 uniformity in their growth. 



The divergence in the use of the collections by the general 

 public, and by the select class of students, was indicated already 

 in Sir Hans Sloane's will when he directed that his collection 

 should " be maintained, not only for the inspection and entertain- 



