16 
OBJECTS OF THE MUSEUM AND 
Division into 
MineraljVege* 
table and 
Animal. 
Mineralogical 
Department. 
Botanical 
Denartment. 
Zoological 
Bepartment. 
which the laws themselves 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 
into inorganic and organic or living has been the subject of 
some discussion, and although the division of the latter into 
vcgetaUc 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 which have formed 
the basis of the arrangement of the collections in the Museum. 
I. Inorganic substances occur in nature in a gaseous, liquid, or 
solid form. With very few exceptions, it is only in the latter 
state that they can be conveniently preserved and exhibited iii 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 
illustrated by preserved specimens, is the province of the 
Department of Botany, which occupies the upper floor of the 
east wing. 
III. In the same way the animal kingdom belongs to the 
department of Zoology, to which is assigned the whole of the 
western wing of the building. 
It will thus be seen that a department of the Museum 
corresponds with each of the great divisions of natural objects ; 
there is, however, a fourth department, which owes its origin to 
the dawning period of scientific culture, when the strange forms 
of animal and plant life, whose remains, found embedded in 
solid rocks below the surface of the earth, were not acknow- 
ledged as jmrt of the great sequence of organic life by which 
the earth has been and is still peopled. ' The terms Zoology and 
Botany were then limited to the study of the existing forms of 
animal and plant life, and tlie extinct or fossil forms were asso- 
ciated with the minerals, rather than with their living represen- 
tatives. This arrangement prevailed in the British Museum. 
