FEOM THE HUTTON COLLECTION. 21 



collect the specimens, and have drawings made from them; and 

 that these drawings should be sent to London, with the specimens 

 occasionally, and any remarks Mr. Hutton wished to make, along 

 with them. That the names and remarks sent by Mr. Hutton 

 were not always attached firmly to the specimens can be easily 

 inferred, from the request made by Prof. Lindley to Hutton that 

 the notes and names should be pinned on or written, so that 

 they could not be misplaced, and some mistakes that appear in 

 the text as to localities, and which have not been corrected by a 

 list of errata, seem to have originated in this way. And when 

 we consider the distance the specimens had to be sent, the 

 difficulty and expense of sending parcels and letters to and from 

 London in 1837, we need not be at all surprised at the few mis- 

 takes that have occurred, and which are as far as possible cor- 

 rected in the present Catalogue. 



Mr. Hutton seems to have left off collecting Fossil Plants 

 shortly after the completion of the third volume of the "Fossil 

 Flora;" and on his leaving England in November, 1846, for a 

 prolonged residence on the shores of the Mediterranean, his 

 valuable and extensive collection of Fossil Plants were left in 

 cabinets for more than sixteen years, where, without supervision 

 of any kind for so long a period, they had (when brought to 

 light again) accumulated a considerable covering of dust and dirt. 

 About the year 1862 the collection was purchased by the Council 

 of the Mining Institute, and by agreement with the Natural 

 History Society they were cleaned and arranged systematically 

 in a series of cases in the Geological Room of the Natural History 

 Society's Museum, Westgate Road. 



Only a few of the specimens in the collection were named and 

 labelled by Mr. Hutton, and on these specimens his labels remain 

 to the present time. The rest were entirely without name or 

 arrangement, and many of the Type-specimens were mixed up 

 with the others, without label or anything to indicate their 

 value. 



In 1862, at the time of the removal of the Hutton Collection 

 from the Mining Institute to the Museum, a list of the local 

 species that had been described in the "Fossil Flora" and 



