108 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 



Mr. Waterliouse was not long in submitting to the Trustees his 

 plan and model of the building, with a disposition of galleries as 

 required, and these were formally accepted by the Trustees in 

 April, 1868. It was not, however, until February, 1871, that 

 the working plans had been thoroughly considered, and received 

 the final approval of the Trustees. 

 Completion of The actual work of erection was commenced in the year 1873, 

 remo^ of ^^^ *^^ building was handed over to the Trustees of the British 

 Collections. Museum by Her Majesty's Commissioners of Works in the 

 month of June, 1880. Immediately that the exhibition cases 

 were completed, and the galleries were sufficiently dry to receive 

 the collections, the great labour of removing the Natural History 

 Collection from Bloomsbury was commenced. The departments 

 of Geology, Mineralogy, and Botany were arranged in their 

 respective sections of the Museum in the course of the year 1880, 

 and the portion of the Museum which contained these departments 

 was first opened to the public on April 18th, 1881. It was not 

 untn the following year that the cases destined to receive the 

 larger collections of the Zoological Department were sufficiently 

 near completion to allow of these collections following, and 

 three more years were required before aU the rooms could be 

 brought into a state fitted for public inspection. 



The following description of the structure has been contri- 

 buted by Mr. Waterhouse : — 

 Desoription of " The New Natural History Museum will, from its position, 

 ^" always be more or less identffied with the International 

 Exhibition of 1862, which occupied the whole of the site 

 between the Horticultural Gardens and Cromwell Eoad. It 

 was at one time thought that a portion, at any rate, of the 

 Exhibition buUdings could with advantage have been converted 

 into a Museum of Natural History. Parliament, however, 

 decided against the preservation of any part of these buildings, 

 and they were accordingly entirely removed. 



" In designing the present buUding, Captain Fowke's original 

 idea of employing terra-cotta was always kept in view, though 

 the blocks were reduced in size, so as to obviate, as far as 

 possible, the objection to the employment of this material, 

 arising from its liability to twist in burning. For this and 

 other reasons the architect abandoned the idea of a Eenais- 



