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Journal of Proceedings. 
and are, perhaps, even too ready to admit that they do such things better 
in France or Germany, but Mr. Waterhouse’s building may worthily take 
its place beside the greatest architectural triumphs where the object kept 
in view was to combine the useful and the beautiful—the greatest amount 
of well-lighted space with true artistic proportions and adornments. 
When the various galleries and rooms are tilled with the unique series of 
specimens now hidden at Bloomsbury, the new Natural History Museum 
will be, as Professor Owen very justly remarked, absolutely unrivalled in 
the civilised world. Precisely at the time appointed the Professor met the 
party, and he was, of course, greeted with the respectful applause due to 
one of the great veterans of modern biological science. After a few words 
of welcome, and some preliminary observations on the general plan of the 
building, he led the way into the Palaeontological Gallery, and commenced 
an eloquent and pleasant exposition of some of the more striking and 
scientifically valuable specimens contained in that chamber of Nature’s 
bizarre workmanship. Of necessity it would be impossible to reproduce 
even the substance of Prof. Owen’s discourses ; they were essentially 
object lessons-—delightfully chatty, learned, and discursive. By reason 
of the large numbers attending the meeting, many who crowded round the 
venerable Professor were unable to follow fully what was said, but the 
brightened eye and animated smile of the narrator as he stood beside some 
of his more cherished specimens spoke of a living enthusiasm unabated by 
long familiarity with his subject or oft repetition of details. This was 
especially noticeable as he described some huge fossil tusks of Eieplxas 
ganesa found in a sandstone quarry in the Upper Miocene deposits of the 
Siwalik Hills, in India. The animal which bore them, he showed, must 
have sunk into the soft sand of some delta, where it would have lain while 
the surface of the globe was going down, down, and more sand was 
deposited and other strata were formed above it, so remaining through 
ages, until the gradual upheaval of the earth which followed forced the 
surrounding sand into the ivory at such enormous pressure as to convert 
that substance into stone—a process which, from the nature of things, he 
explained, must have taken place before the formation of the Himalayan 
Mountains. An officer of engineers (Captain Cautley) superintending 
blasting operations for cutting a canal through the rock, noticed a piece 
with two round “ bullseyes ” embedded, and set aside this and other pieces 
similarly marked. Shipped to England and shot down like rubbish in the 
great square before their museum at Bussell Street, the marks proved to be 
sections of these tusks, which piece by piece were cut out from the sand¬ 
stone and mounted complete. Professor Owen endeavoured to give life 
and meaning to the dry bones of high antiquity which are ranged in the 
galleries in such bewildering variety—to the imperishable remains of the 
massive Deinotherium, the Mastodon , and the still more wonderful Mega¬ 
therium, the gigantic land sloth of the late Pliocene, and more particularly 
the Post-Pliocene, formations of the New World. The survey of the 
remains of this last-named colossal beast, with its massive hind-quarter 
