162 ' 
NATURE NOTES. 
from foreign lands, and the collection of curiosities from all 
parts of the world, which by the help of kind friends and corres- 
pondents I have been gathering together for many a year. 
For those who cannot study nature “at home” in the 
country, there are now extensive and well-arranged collections 
accessible to all. The grand Natural History Museum at 
South Kensington, so worthily presided over by Professor 
Flower, one of the vice-presidents of the Selborne Society; 
the splendid Museums of Botany at Kew, recently described 
in Nature Notes by Mr. Jackson, the Curator; the great 
collection of minerals in the School of Mines in Jermyn Street 
— these, or any of these, will give opportunity for months of 
study with increased pleasure and knowledge every day. 
But, however much we may use all our opportunities of 
study either in the fields, woods, or in these great national 
collections, most nature students will like to have some private 
collection of their own, to which they may turn in leisure 
moments, or which they may re-arrange on a rainy afternoon. 
Almost every article in such a collection will have some private 
association — the mode in which they acquired it, the locality in 
which it was found, the friends, perhaps, now no longer here, 
who shared their delight in securing the prize. The letters 
which I have mentioned show me how widely spread is this 
pleasure in home museums, and how gladly many of the 
readers of Nature Notes would receive any information which 
would help them to secure one of their own. I must, then, 
delay no longer, but plunge at once in medias res with as simple a 
description of some of my own acquisitions as I can give. 
Before speaking of the cases of minerals in my museum, I 
will try to explain how easily they may be kept and shown 
without having expensive cabinets to contain them, which is 
often a difficulty in the path of young mineralogists. Supposing 
there is but limited space, small shelves three inches wide, and 
three or four inches apart, can be made of plain deal, stained 
brown, and fixed against the wall with glass doors to keep out 
dust. Any carpenter can carry out this plan at very little 
expense, and an immense number of specimens can be arranged, 
and are much more readily seen in this way than in the drawers 
of a cabinet. 
There is, to my thinking, an unfailing interest about stones 
of all sorts and kinds. They reveal so much about the 
history of our country, and tell us in a mute sort of way that 
they are the remains of long past ages, and have survived all 
kinds of upheavals, glacial periods, and changes of temperature. 
Wherever one may happen to be, something can be picked up in 
the way of minerals for the shelves of the home museum, and 
those fossils or stones we have ourselves discovered will always 
be reckoned far more valuable than any bought specimens. On 
this north side of London we live on very high ground, which 
was once covered by the sea, the pebbles are all rounded by 
