Royal Institution of South Wales, British Museum, 393 



vegetables from the coal field in its neighbourhood ; and the West 

 Riding Geological Society, formed under the auspices of Earl 

 Fitzwilliam, on the plan of holding quarterly meetings at different 

 towns of the Riding in succession, is diffusing a taste for Geology, 

 and affording ground for appreciating its practical importance, to 

 numbers of intelligent persons, whose local occupations, and property 

 in the coal and iron mines, will enable them to enlarge the fossil 

 Flora and Fauna of our country. 



ROYAL INSTITUTION OF SOUTH WALES. 



From the first Annual Report of the Royal Institution of South 

 Wales, published during the last year,' we learn that the Swansea 

 Literary and Philosophical Institution, hitherto supported by the town 

 and neighbourhood, has been expanded, under Royal patronage, to 

 the whole southern division of the Principality ; and is now establish- 

 ing its Museum and Lecture Rooms in a large and commodious 

 edifice in the town of Swansea, under the presidentship of Lewis 

 Weston Dillwyn, Esq. 



The position of this Institution, in the midst of a great mining 

 and manufacturing district, is peculiarly favourable for collecting 

 facts illustrative of geological phenomena, more especially those of 

 the Coal formation ; and much has already been done by Mr. Logan, 

 to develope, with extreme accuracy and minuteness of detail, the 

 stratigraphical succession of the rocks composing this formation ; 

 and to show the number and nature of the events which attended 

 their original deposition, as well as the subsequent derangements 

 that have affected them. Mr. L. W. Dillwyn, also, is attempting a 

 classification of the coal plants of the South Wales Bason ; with a 

 view to ascertain, by means of a comparative collection in the Swan- 

 sea Museum, whether there exists any specific difference between 

 those of the upper and lower beds of the carboniferous series. 



BRITISH MUSEUM. 



The accessions lately made to the British Museum form another 

 subject, of high importance in our Review of the Geological Pro- 

 ceedings for the past year. At the head of these is the purchase, 

 from Mr. T. Hawkins, of an additional series of the remains of fossil 

 Saurians from the Lias formation ; which, added to his former collec- 

 tion, already placed in this national repository, present an unrivalled 

 series of species in the extinct families of Ichthyosaurus and Plesio- 

 saurus, once inhabitants of Britain. Equally important was the 

 acquisition, in a former year, of the unique collection of still more 

 gigantic and not less monstrous Reptiles, from the Wealden forma- 

 tion of Kent and Sussex, obtained by purchase from Dr. Mantell. 

 The possession of these several collections places the Museum, 

 where it ought to stand, at the head of all existing repositories of 

 organic remains, almost exclusively the productions of England ; 

 and it is due to his late exertions, whilst Chancellor of Hie Exche- 

 quer, that I should bear this public testimony to the services which 

 Lord Monteagle has rendered to science, by supplying the means 



