active and influential members. He was succeeded in the Presidential Chair by H.R.H. the late Prince Consort, at Aberdeen. We need not say his address was an excellent one. It gives a lucid sketch of the progress and state of zoology, physiology, and palæontology, and the astronomical, mechanical, and other physical sciences were not overlooked by this great master of Natural History. The application of scientific principles to practical purposes is also elucidated, and the claims of science to administrative countenance and support were boldly advocated.

Since his appointment, in 1856, to the office of Superintendent of the National Natural History Collections, he has persistently and consistently advocated an extension of space for their display. In his series of Annual Reports, and in a special one with a plan, printed in a return ordered by the House of Commons, 16th March, 1859, are assigned the grounds on which the estimate of a space of five acres is founded for such increase as may be expected to the Natural History Series in the next thirty years, for the proper display of a Natural History Collection worthy of the commerce and rank of our country. His views, although at first deemed excessive, have been so entirely confirmed by the subsequent calculations and operations of Agassiz and other able naturalists, and the estimates for other museums, that no question is now made on this point. To the proposed transference of the National Collections Professor Owen has only so far assented, that believing the ground at Bloomsbury would cost more than any Chancellor of the Exchequer would be willing to apply to Parliament to expend, he considers the advantages to be gained for science by adequate means of display, so great and so pressing, that it would be desirable to have the requisite space in any accessible locality. Professor Owen's views on this subject are set forth in detail, with plans, in his work On the Extent and Aims of a National Museum of Natural History,' octavo, 1862. It is to be hoped that this question may soon receive a favourable and final consideration in Parliament, and that Professor Owen may be preserved to us, with health and strength, to realize his grand idea of a National Muscum of Natural History.