49 
NOTES OF THE EXHIBITION. 
No. II. 
THE MINERALOGICAL DEPARTMENT, 
BY PROFESSOR D. T. ANSTED, M.A., F.R.S. 
COLLECTION of Minerals, carefully made, well ar- 
ranged and selected, and placed with a view to their 
economic value, would, perhaps, be as interesting and attractive 
as any of those collections occupying the numerous halls and 
almost interminable corridors at South Kensington whose 
glittering treasures are soon about to fade and melt away from 
before us. Objects of large dimensions, of wonderful beauty 
of form and colour, of vast cost, and of enormous intrinsic 
value — objects representing great sources of national wealth — 
objects noble in their massive proportions, and interesting in 
proportion to the difficulty experienced in obtaining and re- 
moving them — collections speaking for themselves as showing 
series of manufactures and processes; all these certainly admit 
of being placed in such a way as to astonish, amuse, and 
instruct. 
That such might be the result of a great series, illustrating 
the mineral wealth of the world, seems beyond a doubt ; but 
that any such result has been attained at our great Inter- 
national Exhibition no one will venture to assert. There is ample 
material, whose effect is lost for want of right associations. 
There are separate objects in abundance, capable of attracting 
and really attracting crowds ; there is gold exhibited in a pro- 
fusion and barbaric splendour worthy of the earliest period of 
human history. Never, perhaps, in the world’s history was 
such raw material of representative wealth brought together 
and exposed to public view. There are copper ores also — slices 
of veins adapted to make the mouths of mine speculators water. 
There are building stones and marbles, coals and china clay, 
and manufactured results in abundance. At a distance from 
these are plans, models, and illustrations of the mode of ren- 
dering them useful. But few ideas can be obtained by the 
VOL. II. — NO. V. E 
