8 GUIDE TO THE FOSSIL INVERTEBRATE ANIMALS. 
Gallery XI. public to all posterity.” The collection was purchased on 
these terms in 1753, and the British iVIuseuiu, then in 
Montagu House, Bloomsbury, was opened to the jmhlic in 
1759. The geological portion contained many thousand 
specimens of minerals and of “extraneous fossils, compre- 
hending petrified Ijodies, as trees, or parts of them, herbaceous 
idants, animal substances,” and the like. It included the 
large coUections previously formed by William Courten 
(lf;42-1702) and James Petiver (lG58-i718). In 1857 tlie 
minerals were removed from the collection to the newly 
instituted Department of Minerals, and it is only the 
“extraneous fossils” that are now preserved in the Geological 
Department. Each specimen in the Sloane Collection had 
originally a number attached to it, corresponding to a care- 
fully ])repared MS. catalogue, still preserved in the liljrary of 
this Department, and containing many curious entries con- 
cerning the various objects. In the course of over a century 
and a half many of the labels have become detached from 
the objects, or obliterated by cleaning, so that although other 
specimens from the Sloane Collection may be in the Depart- 
ment, it is no longer possible to identify them, and even 
among those here gathered together, there are some which 
cannot be referred to their original entry. So far as possible, 
however, the original words applied to the specimens by 
Sloane him.self have been reproduced on the label, and thus 
the collection is of jjarticular interest as showing the way in 
which such specimens were regarded by an eminent naturalist 
in the early part of the eighteenth century, and throws some 
light upon various names now disused, but then generally 
employed by scientific writers. Among the specimens atten- 
tion may be ilirected to the chambered j)ortion or phragniocone 
of a belemnite brought from Japan by Engelbrecht Kaernpfer, 
some Echinites or fossil sea-urchins from Dr. Lavater, a coral 
from Mr. Beaumont, E.K.S., and especially the Echinites from 
Agostino Scilla’s Collection. Scilla was a Sicilian painter, 
who in 1670 published an important book on fossils. By 
these specimens the Museum is connected with some of the 
famous collections in the early history of geology. 
Table-case Adjoining the Sloane Collection, and in the same Table- 
case, is a collection of 124 Tertiary fossil shells obtained by 
Gustavus Brander (1720-1787) from the cliffs of Barton in 
Hampshire, and presented by him to the Museum in 1765. 
The collection was described by D. C. Solander, an officer of 
the Museum, in a work entitled, “ Fossilia Hautoniensia 
