THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



No. LXXXIII.— MAY, 1871. 



OS,IC3-IIsr-A_Xi .A.I2,TIOIjES. 



I. — Notes on a Visit to the Eotal Museum of Natubal History 

 AT Brussels, with some account of the " Mammoth " dis- 

 covered AT LlERRE, AND RECONSTRUCTED BY M. DUPONT. 



By Henry "Woodward, F.G.S., F.Z.S., 

 of the British Museum. 



(PLATE IV.) 



HAVING had tlie good fortune to visit Brussels in January last, I 

 availed myself of a few hours' delay to pay my respects to 

 M. E, Dupont, the Director, and M. A. de Borre, the Secretary, of 

 the Museum of Natural History in that city, by whom I was most 

 kindly received and introduced to M. Henri Nyst (whose descriptions 

 of the Tertiary formations of Belgium and their invertebrate fauna 

 have rendered his name familiar to almost every English geologist). 



Through the kindness of these gentlemen I was enabled to see, in 

 a very brief space, what would have otherwise taken days to accom- 

 plish. 



The Natural History Museum, which, together with a fine Picture 

 Gallery and Library, occupies an old Ducal palace, has already out- 

 grown its exhibition space ; but a grand series of galleries will 

 shortly be completed, capable of affording ample accommodation for 

 the rich collections now in store. 



Among so many interesting objects it would be impossible to avoid 

 neglecting some which deserve attention ; before, however, speaking 

 of the grand palseontological collections, I must not omit to observe 

 that the Brussels Museum possesses one of the best collections of 

 prepared and mounted skeletons of living Cetaceans I have anywhere 

 seen. I counted upwards of twenty examples of entire whales, etc., 

 including large specimens of Balcena mysticetus and Balcena antiqua, 

 etc., etc. 



The greater part of the Fossils which I had the opportunity to 

 examine were derived from the Antwerp Crag, of Pliocene age ; from 

 the Quaternary Drifts of Lierre, etc. ; and from the caverns in the 

 Carboniferous Limestone district to the south of Belgium, more 



VOL. VIII.— NO. LXXXIII. 13 



