1846-47 
REPLY 
277 
most practicable because the fossils at the museum 
are not, like Sloanian and Banksian Natural History 
specimens, special bequests, but have accumulated 
gradually round a nucleus of a small but choice 
collection of minerals, and the chief augmenta- 
tions have been by Parliamentary grants for the 
purchase of the two collections of Mr. Hawkins, 
the collections of Dr. Mantell, Mr. Koch, &c. Of 
all the Natural History departments in the museum, 
I believe this to be most out of place there ; that 
its removal would be opposed by fewest difficulties, 
and that the space required by such removal 
would be most valuable for the legitimate objects 
of the Museum. 
‘ What I Hive done towards preparing the 
way for the reception of such an addition to the 
Hunterian basis of a national collection of com- 
parative anatomy is as follows : — 
‘ I should premise that the portions of the 
College funds assigned to the museum have been 
applied during the last six or seven years almost 
exclusively to the increase of the Surgical Depart- 
ment. With great difficulty and by personal can 
vass I have carried the purchase of a rare object 
of comparative anatomy now and then. At length 
the Patholop-ical Museum overflows, and is made 
O 
to encroach on the Comparative Anatomy, against 
the further extension of which want of space is 
3-dded to the argument of want of funds. Mr. 
Barry [afterwards Sir Charles] is called in, and 
