The first object that will arrest the visitor's attention on entering
this fine apartment is the gigantic skeleton of the extinct elk of
Ireland, which towers above every other object, from its pedestal,
placed in the centre of the room. It is seven feet in height, and
eight feet in length.
The southern wall cases and the southern table cases of this room are
covered with the fossil remains of various fishes. These are important
to the student as exhibiting high forms of animal life that existed at
the time of the formation of the most ancient strata in which organic
remains have been discovered. The visitor will notice the perfect
forms imprinted upon the various strata here exhibited.
In case 7 he will be struck with the fossil remains of some of the
sauroids or lizard-like fishes, only two species of which survive to
the present day, but which, in remote ages, abounded in the seas, and
were particularly voracious. On the middle shelf of the wall case
marked B the visitor should notice the fossil remains of the enormous
and powerful carnivorous fish called the rhizodus; also the macropoma,
like a carp in shape, in wall cases 13, 14; the fossil bremus in case
19; the extinct species of fossil carps, in cases 24, 25; the fossil
pikes in cases 24-27; and the fossil herrings in the middle of cases
25-27. Having noticed these fossils the visitor should examine the
wall case in the north-eastern corner of the room in which are
deposited many bones of mammalia from the Sewalik Hills, including the
teeth and jaws of an extinct species of camel; and the skull of the
remarkable livatherium; and on the top of the case are various bones
of the same extinct monster. The tops of the southern cases display
various fossil remains, including the head-bones of the asterolepis;
the skull and antlers of the Irish elk; and various skulls of
different kinds of oxen. The western wall case is filled with a
curious collection of various fossil parts of an extinct species of
rhinoceros found in this country, also skulls of the rhinoceros dug up
in Siberia. There is something impressive in the effect--the
atmosphere of this and the sixth rooms. As crowds of holiday people,
inhabitants of an island in which no dangerous living animals now
abide, wander amid the fossil remnants of ages when the most terrible
monsters must have lived in British waters and crawled upon British
ground, curious contrasts rise in the brains of contemplative men. The
mind wanders back to the age of reptiles--to times when no human
footprint had sunk into the earth--and the great agents of nature were
silently depositing in the congregating and shifting earths dead
images of the prevailing life. Ages roll on as the reptiles give place
to higher animal organisation developed in carnivora, the quickening
blood warms, and then as the sovereign of all the grades of life,
erect and gifted with reason, comes man. Something of this vast and
half-told progress is shown in the range of fossil cases with which
the visitor is engaged. He has passed the era of reptiles and fishes,
and on entering the sixth and last room of the gallery, he will notice
the higher series of fossils. The distribution of the