1856-81 OWEN'S ANNUAL REPORTS 45 



had shaken my faith in the grounds on which my 

 Report and Plan of 1859 had been based. The 

 facts bearing thereupon, which it was my duty to 

 submit in my " Annual Reports on the Natural 

 History Departments of the British Museum," 

 would, I still hoped, have some influence with 

 hon. members of the legislature to whom those 

 reports are transmitted. 



' The annual additions of specimens continued 

 to increase in number and in value year by year. 

 I embraced every opportunity to excite the in- 

 terest of lovers of natural history travelling abroad, 

 and of intelligent settlers in our several colonies, 

 to this end, among the results of which I may 

 cite the reception of the aye-aye, the gorilla, 

 the dodo, the notornis, the maximised and ele- 

 phant-footed species of dinornis, the representa- 

 tives of the various orders and genera of extinct 

 Reptilia from the Cape of Good Hope, and the 

 equally rich and numerous evidences of the ex- 

 tinct Marsupialia from Australia, besides such 

 smaller rarities as the animals of the nautilus and 

 spirula. 



' Wherever room could be found in the ex- 

 hibition galleries at Bloomsbury for these speci- 

 mens, stuffed or as articulated skeletons, or as 

 detached fossils, they were squeezed in, so to 

 speak, to manifest mutely to all visitors, more 

 especially administrative ones, the state of cram 

 to which we were driven at Bloomsbury. 



