SELBORNIANA 
163 
which Queen Elizabetli was entertained. Almost simultaneously 
with this dedication, the Chairman of the London County 
Council had the pleasant duty of declaring a park of more than 
thirty-two acres at Upper Clapton, and another of about twelve 
acres at Hither Green, open to the public. The former of these, 
Springfield Park, formerly comprised three large residential 
properties and will be an immense boon to the crowded borough 
of Hackney, in which it is situated. It has cost nearly ^40,000, 
half of which has been provided by the County Council, ^15,000 
by the Hackney Borough Council, ^1,000 by the Stoke Newing- 
ton Borough Council, a like sum by T. K. Bros, Esq., the owner 
of the estate, ^250 by the Betiinal Green Borough Council, and 
£i\o by the Skinners’ Company, the balance being raised by 
subscriptions. Mountsfield Park, Hither Green, is for the 
benefit of this new district of Lewisham, the population of which 
has grown in ten years from 2,000 to ten times that number, and 
the Borough Council is contributing a portion of the cost, which 
works out at about ^1,000 an acre. \Ve do not believe that in 
ten years’ time any one will regret these expenditures. 
The Hornim.\n Museum. — Of the educational work of the 
London County Council nothing is more valuable, nothing is 
better done than the management of the Horniman Museum at 
Forest Hill. In two respects it is, we believe, unique, at least 
in London, viz., in the systematic organisation of course after 
course of museum lectures, and in the extensive exhibition of 
living animals in vivaria and marine and fresh-water aquaria. 
Most of these animals are British, having been collected by the 
Naturalist of the Museum, to a considerable extent in the 
immediate neighbourhood of Forest Hill. The marine portion 
of the aquarium alone now comprises fourteen tanks ; but 
besides the anemones, corals, echinoderms, mollusks, crustaceans 
and fishes usually seen in such collections, many types of insects, 
amphibians and reptiles are exhibited in a living state. We are 
glad to see from the Report, which we have just received, that 
over 200,000 persons visited the Museum during 1904. East 
London is to some extent provided for in this direction by the 
Bethnal Green Museum, and perhaps even more so by the 
Essex County Museum at West Ham and the Stepney Borough 
^luseum ; West London possesses the great National collections, 
the cosmopolitan character of which detracts in some measure 
from their educational value ; but North London is sadly 
deficient in this important means of teaching. 
Telegraph Poles .at Hindhead. — The Post Office authori- 
ties have been reported to be about to carry overhead wires 
from Thursley, up the Portsmouth Road, round the Devil’s 
Punchbowl, to Hindhead. Many public and private bodies in the 
Haslemere district have, of course, protested, calling upon Lord 
Stanley either to lay the wires underground or to take them 
