GEXEEAL ARRANGEMENT OF ITS CONTENTS. 
17 
which can be fully illustrated by specimens admitting of being 
readily preserved and permanently exhibited in a museum. A 
Natural History Museum, therefore, in the sense in which the 
term is now usually understood, is a collection of the various 
objects, animate and inanimate, found upon the earth in a state 
of nature. It will be readily understood that as the study of 
such objects is one of the principal means by which the laws 
which have led to their formation or arrangement may be traced 
out, it is of the utmost importance for the progress of those 
departments of knowledge which the Museum is designed to 
cultivate, to bring together as complete an illustrative series of 
them as possible. 
Although the validity of the old division of all natural objects Division into 
into inorganic and organic or living has been the subject of vegetable 
some discussion, and although the separation of the latter into AnimaL 
vegetable and animal is perhaps less absolute than was once 
supposed . yet for practical purposes, Mineral, Vegetable, and 
Animal still remain the three great divisions or " kingdoms " 
into which natural bodies are grouped, and this classification 
has formed the basis of the arrangement of the collections in 
the Museum. 
I. Inorganic substances occur in nature in a gaseous, liquid, or Mineral ogical 
solid form. With very few exceptions, it is only in the latter 
state that they can be conveniently preserved and exhibited in a 
museum, and it is to such that the term " mineral " is commonly 
limited. The collection, classification and exhibition of speci- 
mens of this kind is the office of the Mineralogical Department 
of the Museum, to which is devoted the large gallery on the first 
floor of the east wing of the building. 
II. The study of the vegetable kingdom, as far as it can be Botanical 
illustrated by preserved specimens, is the province of the ^©P^^^t^ient. 
Department of Botany, which occupies the upper floor of the 
east wing. 
III. In the same way the animal kingdom belongs to the Zoological 
department of Zoology, to which is assigned the whole of the ^^v^^^^^^^- 
western wing of the building. 
It will thus be seen that a department of the IMuseum 
corresponds with each of the great divisions of natural objects ; 
there is, however, a fourth department, which owes its separate 
c 
