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the Advancement of Science, the Trustees of the British Museum 
have made an order to transfer to the collection of recent shells 
in that great National Establishment the duplicates of fossil shells, 
and other fossil remains cf invertebrate animals in the Museum, 
that they may be arranged with the analogous recent genera and 
species *. 
No systematic zoological arrangement of fossil animal remains has 
yet been made in any public Museum of this country ; on the Con- 
tinent such arrangements are not unfrequent; a voluminous col- 
lection of this kind in the University of Bonn has greatly facilitated 
and enhanced the value of the arrangements of fossil Zoophytes, 
radiated, annulate, and molluscous animals, in the splendid publica- 
tions of Prof. Goldfuss. Such a collateral arrangement of their 
extinct prototypes by the side of existing species is not only most 
important to the science of Geology, but. is on other grounds in- 
dispensable to the perfection of every arrangement of the produc- 
tions of the Animal Kingdom; inasmuch as every collection in zo- 
ology must-be essentially and very largely defective which excludes 
all notice of the congenerous extinet species which so many ex- 
isting families present only in a fossil state, and omits the still more 
numerous remains of extinct genera that occur exclusively among 
the relics of those former conditions of the globe and its inhabitants, 
" whereof our knowledge is due entirely to the researches of Geology. 
In illustration of fis’ subject, a series of fossil Tertiary shells from 
Bourdeaux has been presented to the Museum by Mr. James Smith 
of Jordan Hill, near Glasgow. 
During the last year the British Museum has also received an 
accession of a large and splendid Plesiosaurus of a new species, and 
eleven fect long, dan in the lias at Granby, near Belvoir Castle, 
and presented by His Grace the Duke of Rutland; and of many 
fine specimens of Fossil Plants from the English, eat from the Sile- 
sian and Bohemian coal-fields. 
RAILWAY SECTIONS. 
- You will rejoice to hear, that at the late Meeting of the British 
Association at Glasgow, measures were taken, by the appointment 
of a Committee, and a grant of money from the funds of the Associa- 
tion, to begin the important work of collecting and preserving in- 
formation as to the structure and mineral riches of the country, 
which is now accessible in sections of the strata exposed in cuttings 
on the numerous railroads in various parts of the United Kingdom. 
As many of these traverse important mineral districts on the Coal 
formation, and will speedily be covered up, much valuable informa- 
tion which they are calculated to afford will be lost, unless advantage 
be taken of the present moment. It was proposed that the Sections 
thus procured should be deposited in the public Mining Records 
* The fossils in the collection formed by Mr. William Smith to illus- 
trate the British Strata, being a classical document in the annals of 
Geology, are exempted from the operation of this order. 
