NORTH GALLERY.] NATURAL HISTORY. 
45 
NORTH GALLERY. 
The Rooms on the North side of the North Wing are appropriated to 
the Oryctognostic or Mineralogical Collection, and to that of Palae¬ 
ontology ( Secondary Fossils or Organic Remains). The greater part 
of these Collections was heretofore arranged in the East Wing, and 
considerable additions have since been made to them. 
In accordance N with the plan laid down for their distribution, the Table 
Cases containing the General Collection of Minerals form two rows 
or series, extending through four rooms or compartments of the gal¬ 
lery, as follows :— 
In Room I., being the N. E. corner room, the first series of Table 
Cases begins and the second terminates : it contains Cases 1 to 6 and 
55 to 60. Room II. contains the Cases 7 to 13 and 48 to 54. Room 
III. the Cases 14 to 23 and 38 to 47, with two supplementary Cases; 
and in Room IV. are placed the Cases 24 to 30 and 31 to 37, the ar¬ 
rangement of which is nearly completed. 
The system adopted for the arrangement of the Minerals, with occa¬ 
sional slight deviations, is that of Berzelius, founded upon the electro¬ 
chemical theory and the doctrine of definite proportions, as developed 
by him in a memoir read before the Royal Academy of Sciences of 
Stockholm. The detail of this arrangement cannot here be entered 
into : it is, however, partly supplied by the running titles at the out¬ 
sides of the glass Cases, and by the labels within them. 
The first two Cases, and part of the third, contain the electro-positive 
native metals: iron, copper, bismuth, lead, silver, mercury, palladium, 
platinum, osmium and gold. 
Case 1 . Of native iron , found in insulated masses, and dissemi¬ 
nated in meteoric stones, the following specimens are deposited :— 
native iron from Gross-Kamsdorf in Saxony ;—two small polished pieces 
of the mass found in Southern Africa, which weighed about 250 pounds, 
and is now in the cabinet of Haarlem:—fragment of the iron from 
the Senegal; — specimens of the native iron from Otumpa, in the Gran 
Chaco Gualamba, in South America, described by Don Rubin de 
Celis, w ho estimated the weight of the mass to be about 300 quintals, 
or 15 tons *;—a large piece detached from the celebrated mass of 
Siberian native iron, which was discovered by Pallas on the summit of a 
mountain between Abakansk and Belskoi Ostrog, on the banks of the 
Jenisey, where it was considered by the Tartars as a sacred relic : 
the mass originally weighed about 1680 pounds;—a mass of 
iron from Atacama, resembling that of Siberia, and also containing 
much of the olivine-like substance within its cells;-—a portion detached 
from the large mass of the iron of Ellenbogen, in Bohemia, w’here it 
was knowm by the popular name of the enchanted Burgrave, (der 
verwiinschte Burggraf);—part of that dug up on the Collina di Bri- 
anza, near Villa, in the Milanese;—two specimens of the mass of 
iron found at Lenarto in Hungary, one of which (being polished and 
treated with acid) exhibits the outlines of imperfect crystals ;—a small 
* The large mass of iron placed against the wall under the window in Room I., 
was sent from Buenos Ayres, by Mr. (since Sir Woodbine) Parish; it is supposed 
to be part of that of Otumpa, described by Rubin de Celis in the Philos. Trans, for 
1738; its weight 1400 pounds. 
