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Report of the Museum Committee.

The Committee has to congratulate the Society on the great progress which has been made in the arrangement of the collection during the past year.

The most important feature in this progress has been, 1st, the determination by Mr. Lonsdale of Plants from the Coal, presented by Sir P. Egerton, Messrs. Hutton, Murchison, Stokes, Meade and others, occupying fifty drawers.

2ndly, The working into the cabinet of the valuable collection of Silurian fossils, filling thirty-six drawers, presented in former years by Mr. Murchison ; and the comparison by Mr. Lonsdale of the names accompanying the specimens with published figures and descriptions. Besides these steps in the arrangement of the English series, eleven drawers of shells and corals from the mountain limestone have also been named. Also more than forty specimens of Saurian remains from the Lias, together with miscellaneous specimens from the Diluvium of Essex, Crag, Pliocene strata of the Clyde, London Clay, and Chalk Marl.

Labels, containing generic or specific names, localities, references to books, and the names of donors, have been affixed by Mr. Woodward to all the above-mentioned rocks and fossils : corresponding entries have also been made by him in the hand catalogues. The specimens above alluded to, many of which have been now introduced for the first time into our English collection, occupy no less than 160 drawers.

Four new Cabinets, ordered by the Council at the last Anniversary, have been placed in the Lower Museum, and have been already in great part filled.

The Committee have learnt with pleasure that the number of persons who have made use of the Society's collections during the past year has considerably exceeded that of the years immediately preceding.

Mr. Woodward entered upon his appointment as Sub-Curator on the 1st of June. Since that period his time has been fully employed in the labours above mentioned, in affixing new bracket labels to the larger specimens, — in drawing illustrations for the Evening Meetings, and in attending the visitors who have consulted the Society's Museum.

The Committee cannot conclude this Report without congratulating the Council on the success which has attended the new arrangements which were made last year in regard to the duties of the Curator and Sub-Curator. By relieving Mr. Lonsdale from attendance on visitors to the Museum, and from many secretarian labours in labelling and cataloguing specimens, they have enabled him to devote his energies far more successfully than on any former occasion to the classification of our English collections, and we have pleasure in ex-

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pressing our admiration of the varied and profound acquirements which he has displayed in determining since the last Anniversary the names of so many species of fossil plants, shells, corals, and saurian reptiles.

LIBRARY.

With respect to the Library the Committee have only to report that 160 volumes and pamphlets have been added, and have been duly entered into the catalogue.

(Signed)

CHARLES LYELL.

CHARLES DARWIN.

PH. GREY EGERTON.