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ROYAL INSTITUTION OF SOUTH WALES. 
From the first Annual Report of the Royal Institution of South 
Wales, published during the last year, we learn that the Swansea 
Literary and Philosophical Institution, hitherto supported by the town 
and neighbourhood, has been expanded, under Royal patronage, to 
the whole southern division of the Principality ; and is now establish- 
ing its Museum and Lecture Rooms in a large and commodious 
edifice in the town of Swansea, under the presidentship of Lewis 
Weston Dillwyn, Esq. 
The position of this Institution, in the midst of a great mining 
and manufacturing district, is peculiarly favourable for collecting 
facts illustrative of geological phenomena, more especially those of 
the Coal formation ; and much has already been done by Mr. Logan, 
to develope, with extreme accuracy and minuteness of detail, the 
stratigraphical succession of the rocks composing this formation ; 
and to show the number and nature of the events which attended 
- their original deposition, as well as the subsequent derangements 
that have affected them. Mr. L. L. Dillwyn, also, is attempting a 
classification of the coal plants of the South Wales Bason; with a 
view to ascertain, by means of a comparative collection in the Swan- 
sea Museum, whether there exists any specific difference between 
those of the upper and lower beds of the carboniferous series. 
BRITISH MUSEUM. 
The accessions lately made to the British Museum form another 
subject, of high importance in our Review of the Geological Pro- 
ceedings for the past year. At the head of these is the purchase, 
from Mr. T. Hawkins, of an additional series of the remains of fossil 
Saurians from the Lias formation; which, added to his former collec- 
tion, already placed in this national repository, present an unrivalled 
series of species in the extinct families of Ichthyosaurus and Plesio- 
saurus, once inhabitants of Britain. Equally important was the 
acquisition, in a former year, of the unique collection of still more 
gigantic and not less monstrous Reptiles, from the Wealden forma- 
tion of Kent and Sussex, obtained by purchase from Dr. Mantell. 
The possession of these several collections places the Museum, 
where it ought to stand, at the head of all existing repositories of 
