1 70 Miscellanies. 



ed with ground glass, through which the room is lighted. By a sim- 

 ple but ingenious contrivance, these lights can be instantly obscured 

 by shutters, at the command of the lecturer, whenever any experi- 

 ments require to be performed in the dark. The seats for the spec- 

 tators, which are equally handsome and commodious, gradually de- 

 scend from the level of the entrance hall towards the table of the 

 lecturer, situated opposite the entrance and nearly on a level with the 

 basement floor. The lower part of the lecture-room is rusticated, 

 and the whole of the walls and part of the floor are in imitation of 

 stone. On the right and left of the lecture-room, and communica- 

 ting with it, are spacious apartments, fifty one feet six inches long by 

 eighteen feet six inches wide, for the collections in geology and min- 

 eralogy; the former containing a suite of nearly ten thousand speci- 

 mens of British rocks and fossils, arranged in the order of their posi- 

 tion in the earth ; the latter exhibiting above two thousand minerals, 

 classed according to their chemical relations. At the back of the 

 lecture-room and connecting the two lateral rooms, is the museum 

 for zoology, forty four feet by twenty two feet, in which the foreign 

 and British quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fishes, shells, insects and co- 

 rallines, which the society possesses, are systematically displayed. 

 These three rooms are lighted by plate glass sky-lights, and are ad- 

 mirably suited to their purpose : they are at present only partially 

 fitted up, as the funds of the society do not allow of more being 

 done. 



The front building has an upper story, containing three spacious 

 rooms, one of which is allotted to the use of the keeper of the mu- 

 seum, and another to the valuable collection of comparative anatomy, 

 the property of the curator of that department, James Atkinson, Esq. 

 The whole of the building, except the basement, is peeled by stones 

 erected by IMr. Iladen of Trowbridge, and by Mr. Pickersgill of 

 York, Preparations are making for lighting the whole with gas. 

 A considerable part of the internal finishings have been executed 

 under the gratuitous direction of Mr. Pritchett. The basement story 

 contains a laboratory; acconnnodations for the lecturer, immediately 

 communicating with the lecture-room ; a dwelling house for the sub- 

 curator ; and a long gallery, containing the architectural fragments of 

 the abbey, discovered in the late excavations. A curious old fire- 

 place, belonging to the abbey, is preserved in its original position in 

 one of the basement rooms, and forms a very interesting object to 

 the antiquary. Tlie room being necessarily nearly dark, a gas light 



