170 Miscellanies. 
ed with ground glass, through which the room is lighted. By a sim- 
ple but ingenious contrivance, these lights can be instantly obscured 
by shutters, at the command of the lecturer, whenever any experi- 
ments require to be performed in the dark. ‘The seats for the spec- 
tators, which are equally handsome and commodious, gradually de- 
scend from the level of the entrance hall towards the table of the 
lecturer, situated opposite the entrance and nearly on a level with the 
basement floor. The lower part of the lecture-room is rusticated, 
and the whole of the walls and part of the floor are in imitation of 
stone. On the right and left of the lecture-room, and communica 
ting with it, are spacious apartments, fifty one feet six inches long by 
eighteen feet six inches wide, for the collections in geology and min- 
eralogy; the former containing a suite of nearly ten thousand speci- 
mens of British rocks and fossils, arranged in the order of their posi- 
tion in the earth; the latter exhibiting above two thousand minerals, 
classed according to their chemical relations. At the back of the 
- lecture-room and connecting the two lateral rooms, is the museum 
for zoology, forty four feet by twenty two feet, in which the foreign 
and British quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fishes, shells, insects and ¢o- 
rallines, which the society possesses, are systematically displayed. 
These three rooms are lighted by plate glass sky-lights, and are ad- 
mirably suited to their purpose: they are at present only partially 
i up, as the funds of the society do not allow of more ‘being 
e. 
The front building has an upper story, containing three spaciols 
rooms, one of which is allotted to the use of the keeper of the mu 
seum, and another to the valuable collection of comparative anatomy 
the property of the curator of that department, James Atkinson, Esq, 
The whole of the building, except the basement, is peeled by ston® 
erected by Mr. Haden of Trowbridge, and by Mr. Pickersgill of 
York. Preparations are making for lighting the whole with gi 
A considerable part of the internal finishings have been executed 
under the gratuitous direction of Mr. Pritchett. The basement st0ly 
contains a laboratory ; accommodations for the lecturer, immediately 
communicating with the lecture-room ; a dwelling house for the sub- 
curator ; and a long gallery, containing the architectural fragments 
the abbey, discovered in the late excavations. A curious old fires 
place, belonging to the abbey, is preserved in its original position 1" 
one of the basement rooms, and forms a very interesting object e 
the antiquary. The room being necessarily nearly dark, a 4 light 
