660 EEPORT 1881. 



have at last been acquii'ed for due display and facilities of study of the subjects of 

 our ' Sections G and D.' 



Amongst the works of architectural art which adorn the metropolis, West- 

 minster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral stand supreme. Of later additions may 

 with them be named the noble example of the Perpendicular Gothic selected by 

 Barry for the Houses of Parliament, and I may be permitted to add, the new Law 

 Courts, which exemplify the more severe style of the Thirteenth-century Gotliic. 



Mr. Alfred Waterhouse, E.A., for the realisation of the plans and requirements 

 of our Museum of Natural History, has chosen an adaptation of the Round-arched 

 Gothic, Romanesque, or Romaic of the twelfth century. No style could better 

 lend itself to the introduction, for legitimate ornamentation, of the endless beautiful 

 varieties of form and surface-sculpture exemplified in the animal and vegetable 

 kingdoms. But the skill in which these varieties have been selected and combined 

 to produce unity of rich efiects will ever proclaim Mr. Waterhouse's supreme 

 mastery of his art. 



I need only ask the visitor to pause at the grand entrance, before lie passes into 

 the impressive and rather gloomy vestibule which leads to tlie great hall, and 

 prepares him for the flood of light displaying the richly- ornamented colimiuji, 

 arcades, and galleries of the Index Museum. 



In the construction of a building for the reception and preservation of natural 

 history objects, the material should be of a nature that will least lend itself to 

 the absorption and retention of moisture. This material is that artificial stone 

 called terra-cotta. The compactness of texture which fulfils the purpose in rela- 

 tion to dryness is also especially favourable for a public edifice in a metropolitan 

 locality. The microscopic receptacles of soot-particles on the polished surface of 

 the terra-cotta slabs are reduced to a minimum ; the influence of every shower in 

 displacing those particles is maximised. I am sanguine in the expectation that the 

 test of exposure to the London atmosphere during a period equal to that which 

 Las elapsed since the completion of Barry's richly ornamented palace at West- 

 minster, now so sadly blackened by soot, will speak loudly in favour of Mr. 

 Waterhouse's adoption of the material f^or the construction of the National 

 Museum of Natural History. A collateral advantage is the facility to which the 

 moulded blocks of terra-cotta lend themselves to the kind of ornamentation to 

 which I have already referred. 



In concluding the above sketch of the development of our actual Museum of 

 Natural History, I may finally refer, in the terms of our modern phylogenists, to 

 the traceable evidences of 'ancestral structures.' In the architectural details of 

 the new Natural History Museum you will find but one character of the primitive 

 •and now extinct museum retained, viz. the Central Hall. In Montague House 

 there were no galleries, but side-lit saloons or rooms of varying dimensions and on 

 different storeys. 



In its successor, the Museum developed on its site at a later period, we find 

 galleries added : that, for example, which was appropriated to the birds and sliells 

 being .300 feet in length. This architectural organisation still exists at Bloomsbury. 

 The Museum, which may be said to have budded off, has risen to a still higher 

 grade of structure after settling down at South Kensington. In its anatomy we 

 tind, it is true, the central hall and long side-lit galleries; but in addition to these 

 inherited structures we discern a series of one-storeyed galleries, manifesting a 

 developmental advance in the better admis.^ion of light and a consequent adapta- 

 tion of the walls as well as the floor to the needs of exhibition.' 



' In the notable reply {Annales des Sciences Xaturelleg, 1820) to an illustration 

 of the unitj' of composition or of plan in Cejabalopods and Vertebrates, by bending 

 one of the latter so as to bring the pelvis in contact with the nape, advocated by 

 Ctcoflroy St. Hilaire, Cuvier did not deem it too trivial to call in arcliitectnrc to 

 elucidate bis objections. ' La composition d'une viaison, c'est le nombre d'appartemens 

 on de chambres qui s'y trouve ; et son 2>la", c'est la disposition reciproque de ces ap- 

 pnrtemens et de ces chambres. Si deux maisons contenaient chacune un vestibule, 

 une anti-cbambre, une chambre H couchcr, un salon et nne salle il manger, on dirait 

 que leur covqwsition est la mane : et si cette chambre, ce salon, &c., etaient an meme 



