262 Dr. A. Fritsch — The Prague Museum. 



faults and slips, and would be specially liable to penetration by 

 s'jirfaoe- water, which, already charged with carbonic acid, would 

 therefore be well suited for dissolving more of the limestone. The 

 same surface-water which dissolved the additional portion of lime- 

 stone, may also have altered the character of the substances which 

 were first formed near, or in place of, limestone, partly mechanically, 

 by rearranging them, and partly chemically, by converting the car- 

 bonate of iron into the hydrated peroxide,^ and galena into other 

 salts of lead. It would, of course, take longer to completely change 

 the larger masses of galena than the smaller, and hence in the larger 

 a centre of unchanged galena still often remains. 



It may be noted, in conclusion, that these instances of solution of 

 limestone on a large scale show one method by which the higher 

 beds in a series may be faulted and folded while the lower beds 

 remain undisturbed. 



V. — The Pal^ontological and Geological Collections of the 

 Bohemian Museum in Prague. 



By Dr. Ant. Fritsch. 



(PLATE XIV.) 



AFTER transferring the collections to the new building in the 

 year 1892, more than ten years work was necessary to finish 

 the arrangement of 251 cases, which occupy seven large rooms. 

 Now nearly all this labour is completed, and those who are interested 

 in palaeontology will be glad to leai'n some details as to the general 

 arrangement of the Museum. 



All fossils are fixed on tablets, or placed in glass-topped boxes. 

 The labels are printed on greenish paper, and contain references to 

 the work and plates where the type-specimens are described and 

 figured. Beneath very small fossils is fixed a magnified figure 

 taken from the book ^ where the species has been published. The 

 under side of the tablets is used for white labels with further 

 (written) details, catalogue numbei-s, etc. The inclination of the 

 cases is 45° or 60°. Six rooms are devoted to the geology and 

 palaeontology of Bohemia and one large room to the general strati- 

 graphical collection. 



The first room, called "Barrandeum" (26 metres long), contains 

 the famous collection of Barrande, in which are incorporated the 

 old Museum collection, the collections of Bishop Zeidler, of Corda 

 and Hawle, and of Professor Novak. In six wall-cases are exhibited 

 representative specimens of the chief Azoic, or Eozoic, Primary and 

 pre-Cambrian rocks of Bohemia, on which the younger formations 

 are deposited. Sixty glazed cases contain the Cambrian, Silurian, 

 and Devonian fossils, arranged in stratigraphical order. In the 

 drawers beneath, the specimens are arranged in zoological order in 



1 See Professor J. W. Judd, " Geology of Eutlaud " (Mem. Geol. Surv.), p. 135. 



2 See my article in Natural Science, vol. viii (1896), Xo. 49. 



