On entering the British Museum for the second time, the visitor should
ascend the great staircase, pass through the south, central, and
mammalia saloons; traverse the eastern zoological gallery, and
continue north, direct into the first room of the most northern
gallery of the northern wing;--where the studies of his second visit
should begin. His first visit was occupied in the examination of the
varieties of animal life distributed throughout the surface of the
globe. The greater part of his time on this occasion will be devoted
to the study of the wonders that lie under the surface of the earth;
of the revelations of extinct animal life made by impressible rocks;
and of the metallic wealth which human ingenuity has adapted to the
wants and luxuries of mankind. In the fossil remains he will be able
to recognise traces of an animal life, of which we have no living
specimens; of trees, the like of which never rise from the bosom of
the soil at the present time. The lessons that lie in these
indistinct, disjointed revelations of the remote past, are pregnant
with matter for earnest thought to all men. They are part of our
history--links that hold us to the sources of things, and recall us
again and again to the condition of our universe, as it trembled into
space, and as now we inhabit it--a great and marvellous globe, every
grain of which has an unfathomable story in it. Philosophers have
laboured long at the story of the earth; and their revelations have
tended to settle it, in a form not unlike the following:--
Originally, within the space bounded by the orbit of Uranus, a gaseous
matter was diffused at a high temperature. By laws, the origin of
which we have not yet traced, the condition of the diffused heat was
changed, and the particles of the gaseous matter, condensed and
agglomerated by attraction, into a series of planets, of which our
earth is the third in point of size. That the earth has undergone vast
changes, is evident to the most superficial geological student. We are
only able to investigate the crust of the earth, with all our
ingenious boring instruments: but even in this crust we may trace a
gradual change, and recognise the silent operations of nature in ages
never counted by man. According to the popular theory, the earth must
have been sixty times as large as its present size, and have cooled to
its present dimensions, retaining still, in its unfathomable bowels, a
burning heat. The conclusions of geologists, after long and patient
examination, are, that certain rocks mark the age of the world--that,
in fact, the crust of the globe consists of a certain number of
strata, each belonging to a certain era, as the rings of a tree tell
its years of growth. The more they test this theory, the more certain
are they that the history of our globe may be accurately read in the
strata which compose its crust. "A granitic crust, containing vast and
profound oceans, as is proved by the extent and thickness of the
earliest strata, was the infant condition of the earth. Points of
unconformableness in the overlying aqueous rocks, connected with
protrusions of granites, and other similar presentments of the
internal igneous mass, such as trap and basalt, mark the conclusions
of subsequent sections in this grand tale. Dates, such as
chronologists never dreamed of--compared with which, those of Egypt's
dynasties are as the latter to a child's reckoning of its
birthdays--have thus been presented to the now living generation, in
connexion with the history of our planet."[5] These changing masses
have been discovered with remains of organic life wrapped in their
particles, each mass enclosing a petrified museum of the life that
flourished while it was in course of formation: thus not only have we
distinct proof of extinct forms of animal and vegetable life, but we
are also able to assign the dates of their existence.
The MOST EASTERLY ROOM of the NORTHERN MINERAL and FOSSIL GALLERY, is
that to which the visitor's attention will be first directed. In this
room, as in the next three, the table cases are devoted to the
minerals; and the wall cases, along the southern side of the gallery,
are filled with