422 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
nevertheless, the Government of the time decided upon severing 
the collections, and locating the Natural History in a separate 
building, as the more economical plan. 
The building was finished this year at a cost of £400,000, 
exclusive of the amount paid for the ground on which it is erected. 
It is built in the Romanesque, or round-arched gothic style, terra- 
cotta being almost exclusively employed in its construction. It 
consists of a basement, ground-floor, and two storeys, and is 
divided into a central portion, and a right and left wing. Its 
principal (southern) fagade is 675 feet long. As you enter the 
portal you come into a cathedral-like hall, called the “ Index 
Museum,” 120 feet long, 97 feet wide, and 68 feet high; behind 
this there is a large side-lighted room for the British Fauna. On 
each side of the hall there is a side-lighted gallery, each 278 feet 
long by 50 feet in width; seven other galleries of various widths, 
and therefore adapted for various exhibitions, join at right angles 
the long gallery of the ground-floor. The first and second 
storeys are occupied by galleries similar to the main gallery of 
the ground-floor. 
The collections are distributed in this building thus :—'The 
western wing is occupied by Zoology, the eastern by the three 
other departments, viz., the ground-floor by Geology, the first-floor 
gallery by Mineralogy, and the second-floor gallery by Botany. 
The central portion is, as mentioned above, divided into the room 
for British Zoology and into the “ Index Museum,” that is, “an 
apartment devoted to specimens selected to show the type- 
characters of the principal groups of organized beings.” The 
basement consists of a number of spacious, well-lit rooms, well 
adapted for carrying on the different kinds of work in connection 
with such large collections. 
There is no doubt that the building fulfils the principal con- 
dition for which it was erected, viz., space for the collections. 
The Zoological collections gain more than twice as much space 
as they had in the old building, the Geological and Mineralogical 
about thrice, and the Botanical more than four times. This 
increase of space will enable the keeper of the last-named depart- 
ment to bring the collections correlated with each other into close 
proximity, and to prepare a much greater number of objects 
for exhibition than was possible hitherto. The Mineralogical 
Department, already so admirably arranged in the old building, 
