8 GUIDE TO THE FOSSIL INVEETEBEATE ANIMALS. 



Gallery XI. public to all posterity." The collection was purchased on 

 these terms in 1753, and the British Museum, then in 

 Montagu House, Bloomsbury, was opened to the public in 

 1759. The geological portion contained many thousand 

 specimens of minerals and of "extraneous fossils, compre- 

 hending petrified bodies, as trees, or parts of them, herbaceous 

 plants, animal substances," and the like. It included the 

 large collections previously formed by William Courten 

 (1642-1702) and James Petiver (1658-1718). In 1857 the 

 minerals were removed from the collection to the newly 

 instituted Department of Minerals, and it is only the 

 " extraneous fossils " that are now preserved in the Geological 

 Department. Each specimen in the Sloane Collection had 

 originally a number attached to it, corresponding to a care- 

 fully prepared MS. catalogue, still preserved in the library of 

 this Department, and containing many curious entries con- 

 cerning the various objects. In the course of over a century 

 and a half many of the labels have become detached from 

 the objects, or obliterated by cleaning, so that although other 

 specimens from the Sloane Collection may be in the Depart- 

 ment, it is no longer possible to identify them, and even 

 among those here gathered together, there are some which 

 cannot be referred to their original entry. So far as possible, 

 however, the original words applied to the specimens by 

 Sloane himself have been reproduced on the label, and thus 

 the collection is of particular interest as showing the way in 

 which such specimens were regarded by an eminent naturalist 

 in the early part of the eighteenth century, and throws some 

 light upon various names now disused, but then generally 

 employed by scientific writers. Among the specimens atten- 

 tion may be directed to the chambered portion or phragmocone 

 of a belemnite brought from Japan by Engelbrecht Kaempfer, 

 some Echinites or fossil sea-urchins from Dr. Lavater, a coral 

 from Mr. Beaumont, F.E.S., and especially the Echinites from 

 Agostino Scilla's Collection. Scilla was a Sicilian painter, 

 who in 1670 published an important book on fossils. By 

 these specimens the Museum is connected with some of the 

 famous collections in the early history of geology. 

 Table-case Adjoining the Sloane Collection, and in the same Table- 

 16- case, is a collection of 124 Tertiary fossil shells obtained by 

 Gustavus Brander (1720-1787) from the cliffs of Barton in 

 Hampshire, and presented by him to the Museum in 1765. 

 The collection was described by D. C. Solander, an officer of 

 the Museum, in a work entitled, "Eossilia Hantoniensia 



