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It may happen that some of those who deal in Illustrations of the 

 science may join our Body ; — for, happily, there are many who have 

 thus become instrumental in the diffusion of the means of scientific 

 study on account of the love they bear to science. But their be- 

 coming members of our Body will unquestionably be notwithstand- 

 ing, and certainly never because of, this incident of their occupation. 

 We propose indeed to establish a Museum : but we have no idea of 

 rilling our cabinets with the sweepings of the over-crowded cabinets 

 of old collectors. The collections which now exist at the British 

 Museum, and in Jermyn Street, already belong to us all. They 

 have been paid for by our money, and their curators are maintained 

 in their several posts, in each, for our behoof. This Association 

 will be the means of making the value of each of those collections 

 more known than they now are; and thus the labours of those 

 whom we pay to fulfil their duties there, and to whose active assis- 

 tance we are therefore entitled, as matter of right, will, by-and-by, 

 become more appreciated ; — but we have no intention of repeating 

 the folly of filling cellars with valuable specimens which are only 

 accumulated to be hidden. We intend to collect as strict a series 

 of type specimens of each Formation as we are able ; and to confine 

 our own cabinets to such a series of type specimens. We hope that, 

 while specimens of all characteristic rocks will appear in their most 

 instructive forms, we shall have the corals and the trilobites of the 

 lowest ocean-bed Formations, together with a full set of those Tere- 

 bratulce which tell the pretentious parvenu who boasts himself of 

 the Battle Abbey Eoll, within how very little a compass is contained 

 the only real aristocrat that is to be found in nature. Though one 

 whose name we all affectionately respect,' — I think I may say as much 

 of such a man — Hugh Miller, — is no longer among us, we hope 

 that the Old Red Sandstone may be illustrated by its Ptericthys and 

 Cephalaspis, and by those beautiful corals which distinguish it from 

 other Formations. The Mountain Limestone none of us can mistake, 

 if we limit it to a few forms among the encrinites, and to the very 

 characteristic shells which it yields in such perfection. In the Coal 

 layers we shall have more difficulty : for where does the material 

 end ? Not to mention any other of the forms of past life which it 

 yields, can you wander by a pit's mouth, — nay, can you take up a 

 piece of coal to put it on the fire, or raise a handful of ashes from 



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