16 ON MUSEUMS, &c., 



two accompanying corbels, present specimens of the Liliaceae, viz., the 

 yucca, the aloe and the lilium, tulipa and fritillaria. The capital of 

 the mountain limestone column from Limerick, and the two neighbour- 

 ing corbels, exhibit wheat, barley, oats, Indian corn, sugar cane (with 

 sparrows thereon), rice and canary grass, with buntings and canaries 

 and quails thereon ; these to illustrate the graminese. The Filices are 

 represented by the capital of Devonian limestone from St. Mary Church, 

 and the adjoining corbels, which consist of ferns, the hart's tongue, 

 lastrsea cristata, scolopendrium vulgare, blechnum boreale, and the 

 mallow. The capital of a column of black serpentine from the Lizard 

 in Cornwall, and two corbels, are devoted to the Dioscoracese, being 

 sculptured over with small-leaved bryony, black bryony, and elephant' i8 

 foot. 



Another feature in the architecture of the Museum is very interest- 

 ing, and possibly peculiar to itself: the elaborate and very ornamental 

 ironwork in the spandrels that branch out from the metal pillars 

 sustaining the glass roof, is made artistically to represent the foliage of 

 the following thirteen trees : chamEerops humilis, carica papaya, acer 

 pseudo-platanus, tilia europsea, tussilago farfara, assculus hippocastanum, 

 cocos nucifera, musa paradisiaca, quercus robur, platycerium alcicorne, 

 musa cavendishii, juglans regia, caryota urens. 



One more feature must be noticed, which, to myself at least, afforded 

 infinite pleasure : all round the quadrangle, against the piers of the 

 arcade, there were arranged full-length life-size figures of the following 

 world-famed scientific worthies, finely conceived and exquisitely sculp- 

 tured in white stone : Aristotle, Hippocrates, Euclid, Galileo, Bacon, 

 Newton, Leibnitz, Harvey, Davy, Priestley, Watt, Linnseus. 



Altogether, the Museum at Oxford was a very fascinating place. 

 With its library, reading room, lecture rooms, appointed lecturers, 

 varied apparatus, and studied ornamentation, it seemed more like an 

 institution in Plato's Atlantis, or More's Utopia, than a thing of the 

 present day. It was a beautiful realization of a true Motxrecou — of a 

 home of the Muses; of those of the Nine, at all events, who preside 

 over the departments of Natural Science and Medicine. 



Since 1850, much encouragement has been offered at Oxford to the 

 study of Natural Science. After the lapse of seventeen years, I 

 expected, in 1867, to find the number of those who were applying 

 themselves with enthusiasm to the subject to be large ; but I was 

 surprised to find it to be still comparatively small. The vis inertias of 



