HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. 
9 
collecta, et in Musaeo Britannico deposita a Gustavo Gallery XI. 
Braiider,” London, 1766. The specimens retain the original 
names given by Solander, underneath which are the names 
now in general use. Those figured in the book are dis- 
tinguished by a disc of green paper, as previously explained 
(P- 3). 
The miscellaneous assemblage of specimens figured in 
Koenig’s “leones fossilium sectiles” (1820, 1825), and the 
collection of fossils from the Carboniferous Limestone of 
Bolland, formed by William Gilbertson of Preston, both of 
which were formerly exhibited here, have now been dispersed 
among the systematic series. 
The next collection, from which only a selection is Table-cases 
exhibited, was formed by a naturalist who devoted his entire 
life to tlie study and illustration of a single class of 
organisms, namely, the Brachiopoda. This was Thomas 
Davidson (1817-1885), whose great monograph on the 
British fossil Brachiopoda was published by the Palaeonto- 
graphical Society between 1850 and 1886. The collection 
contains many of the specimens therein described, as well as 
an excellent series from foreign localities ; it also includes 
the specimens described in Davidson’s Monograph of recent 
Brachiopoda (I'rans. Linnean Soc. 1886-1887). The entire 
collection of 22,831 specimens was bequeathed by him to the 
Trustees of the British Museum and handed over by his son, 
William Davidson, Esquire, in 1886, with Davidson’s original 
drawings, and his library relating to the subject. As an 
attempt to reduce the inconvenience caused to students by 
the retention of these specimens apart from the general series 
of Brachiopoda in Gallery VI 11 (p. 108), most of the 
other type-specimens and figured specimens have also been 
removed from their systematic position or from otlier col- 
lections, and have been mingled with the exhibited brachio- 
pods of the Davidson collection. 
The next three Table-cases contain the greater part of the Table-eases 
collection which formed the basis of the “ Mineral (,'onchology 
of Great Britain,” a work by James Sowerby (1 757-1822) 
and his son, James de Carle Sowerby, of which successive 
parts, i.ssued between June, 1812, and January, 1846, 
amounted to seven volumes in 8vo, illustrated with 648 
plates, engraved by the authors and, in some of the later 
parts by G. B. Sowerby and by J. W. Salter, afterwards 
Palaeontologist to the Geological Survey. The collection 
comprises about 5000 fossils, from all parts of England and 
