Vol. 69.] ANNUAL EEPOET. ix 



Sufficient printed labels Lave been prepared to mark eacb specimen presented 

 by tbe Geological Society, and it is proposed not to incorporate any of the 

 contents of tbe drawers with the general collection of the Museum until 

 the whole have been thoroughly curated, registered, and studied. 



The larger foreign fossils which occupied shelves and cupboards in the 

 Society's Museum, were cleaned and sorted as soon as received, and temporarily 

 arranged in groups in dust-proof glazed cases in a basement woi'k-room. The 

 preparation of suitable fittings and mounts for these large specimens will 

 occupy considerable time, but a beginning has been lmde, and all the more 

 important fossils registered in the Society's Catalogue will soon ba incorporated 

 in the exhibited series of the Museum, each with an appropriate printed, label. 

 The Siwalik Mammalia, especially, and some other Proboscidean remains, will 

 form an important addition to this collection. 



With the sanction of the Council of the Geological Society, the Trustees of 

 the British Museum have made two gifts of duplicates from the collection. 

 They have presented a series of recent shells to the National Museum for 

 Wales, Cardiff, and a plaster cast of Mositsaurus hoffmauni to the Norwich 

 Castle Museum. These appear to be all the duplicates in the collection 

 available for distribution. 



A. SMITH WOODWARD, Keeper of Geology. 



Minerals and Eock- Specimens. 



The large series of foreign minerals and rocks lias been arranged in drawers 

 in a room in the south-eastern basement of the Museum, where it is now 

 available for study. 



Of the minerals, those which have been described and figured, or are 

 exceptionally well-crystallized or rare, have been registered and incorporated 

 in the General Collection. The?e include a fine series of rubies in the matrix, 

 from the Burma Ruby-Mines, described by Prof. Judd, in 1888; remarkable 

 crystals of columbite from Greenland, presented by John Taylor; nuggets 

 of gold and platinum, presented by Baron A. von Meyendorf about 1842; and 

 various interesting and rare minerals presented by G. B. Greenough, Henry 

 Holdsworth, Henry Heuland, and H. J. Brooke. 



The rest of the mineral specimens will be useful as the nucleus of a series 

 available for students, and for this purpose a special cabinet has been provided. 



By far the larger part of the collections transferred from the Geological 

 Society consists of rock-specimens, of which there are about 17,000, belonging 

 to some 400 different topographical colled ions, besides a series arranged 

 according to species. 



Tbe species collection, as in the case of the minerals, will be useful as a 

 series available for students, and for this also a special cabinet has been 

 provided. 



The topographical collections have been arranged in accordance with the 

 geographical scheme used in the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature. 

 They will be very useful in filling gaps in tbe large series of foreign rocks 

 already in the Museum. At present, however, they are kept apart from the 

 main collection of rocks until the work of examination and comparison has 

 been completed. In the course of this work some removal of duplicates may 

 prove to be necessary, since in past years duplicates from the Geological 

 Society's Museum were occasionally' presented to the British Museum. In all 

 probability, however, most of the material not required for the Museum will 

 consist of badly localized and unlabelled specimens, the presentation of which 

 to other institutions would be useless. 



Some of the topographical collections were brought together by such eminent 

 pioneers in the study of geology as Lyell, Scrope, De la Beche, and Murchison, 

 and are therefore of considerable historic interest. On this account, sucb 

 collections have been sorted out and carefully separated, when, as was found 

 to be the case for certain districts, the specimens belonging to several of these 

 collections had been mixed. 



