including quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, insects, ancient arms, works of art, &c. The whole is arranged in scientific order, and accompanied by a descriptive catalogue, the following being the general classification adopted in the several departments of this museum.

South Sea Curiosities. The principal of these curiosities were brought to England by Captain Cook, and among them will be found some superb feathers, cloaks, helmets, hats of feathers, ornaments, breast-plates, war clubs, idols, fish-hooks, fly-flaps, and caps. In the other part, collected from other sources, are also war clubs, paddles, bows, rattles, adzes, and axes, of hard black stone, &c. &c.

Curiosities from North and South America. In this department are maucassons or shoes, a quiver, with poisoned arrows, and the tube for discharging them. Belts, pouches, a great variety of bows, arrows, from Canada, Hudson's Bay, &c. ; the calumet or pipe of peace, a Wampum belt, specimen of cloth made of the asbestos.

African Curiosities. This class contains musical instruments, sceptres, pouches, shoes, fans, bows, and poisoned arrows, lances, daggers, &c.; hammocks, gourds, an African harp, pair of bellows, &c.

Works of Art. This department contains curious articles of great value and beauty, a beautiful equestrian model of Edward the Black Prince in armour; portraits of Mrs. Siddons in Queen Catharine, and Mr. Kemble in Cato; some models in coloured wax; busts in rice paste; models of an ancient armoury, a Chinese pagoda, of men of war in coloured straw; sculptures in ivory; pictures in coloured sand, in wool, &c.

Natural History. This department of the Museum excels any in Great Britain, either for the rarity and number of the specimens, or the beautiful and novel manner in which they are displayed. Among the quadrupeds are every interesting specimen, from the huge elephant and rhynoceros, to the most minute species. The giraffe, or camelopardalis, seventeen feet three inches high, is the finest in Europe.

Birds. These consist of vultures, eagles, buzzards,

Z

fifty specimens of the shrike, or butcher birds, parrots, maccaws, cockatoos, lories, toucans, hornbills, orioles, thrushes, woodpeckers; some beautiful specimens of birds of Paradise; that magnificent bird the grand hoopoe, trogons,cuckoos, king-fishers, bee-eaters, chatterers, manakins, humming-birds, a black swan, an undescribed water-bird of the duck tribe, pelicans, Soland geese, African cranes, pigeons, pheasants, partridges, and grouse; upwards of seventy specimens of the bunting (emberiza), finch (fringila), warbler (motacilla) tribes; many owls, varieties of the rook, crow, daw, &c.; penguins, pettrels, gulls, spoonbills, herons, bitterns, cassowaries; a case of sixty fly-catchers, all named from different countries; a case containing all the British titmice, &c. &c. beautifully stuffed, and mostly have the vulgar and Linnæan names to each.

Amphibious Animals. This department contains several specimens of the tortoise, particularly that beautiful one called the geometrical tortoise (testudo geometrica), lizards, the great boa, thirty-two feet long, the American and African iguana serpents, rattle-snakes, spectacle snakes (coluber naja), &c.

Icthyology. In this department, among other rare and curious fishes, are the coryphene, or dolphin, gurnards, saw fish, chaetodons, some non-descripts, torpedoes, a sea horse, asterias, an enormous crab-claw, anglers, a frog fish, bat-fish, remora pike, lump suckers, loricana, trum pet-fish, fiying-fish, globe-fish, diodon or sea hedge-hog, lampreys, sharks of several species, sturgeons, &c. &c.

Entomology. This branch of the Museum comprises a brilliant display of the insect tribe, consisting of about five hundred of those most remarkable for their beauty of colours, extraordinary form, or singularity of manner or economy. Among the principal of those are some of the finest of the beetle tribe. Locusts, lanthorn-flies, cicada, moths, wasps, termites, or the white ant, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, &c. &c. two small cases of marine in sects, and crustacea, as crabs, turtles, some non-descripts, sea-horse, monoculi, cray-fish, &c.

६

Marine Productions. This department is contained in two cases, and consists of shells, corals, coralines, madre

pores, gorgonias, sponges, &c. &c.; upwards of a hundred specimens of rare shells and corals, on a tripod, supported by crabs; a very large paper nautilus, (argonautic argo); some other examples of nautili, &c. &c.

Minerals. In the mineralogical department are, a beautiful groupe of crystals, specimens of chalcedony, opals, both in the matrix and polished; native gold; a limestone from Transylvania; ditto, from the Wicklow mountains, Ireland; cat's eyes, aqua marinas, fluor spar, a variety of spars, iron, silver, and copper ores, malachite, model of the Pigot diamond, &c. &c.

Miscellaneous Articles. In this class of the catalogue of the Museum are numerous extraordinary and stupendous remains of non-descript animals, found in the Americas; bones of incognita, an Egyptian mummy, a ditto of the white ibis, another opened to display the contents; horn of the American stag, an elephant's head and grinders; ditto of the leopard; egg and thigh bones of an ostrich, jaws of a shark, ditto of a porpoise, shells of armadilloes, or hog in armour; rhinoceros skin, beaks and heads of curious birds, elephant's tail, a wasp's nest, vertebræ of the spermaceti whale, specimens of fossil, oak, &c.

The Armory. This department of the Museum is fitted up in an appropriate and elegant manner, representing the interior of the hall of one of the castles of our ancient nobility; the armour and various instruments of war are displayed in trophies, or on figures, placed under Gothic canopies.

The Museum is kept open every day in the week, (except Sundays); and the admission is only 1s. ; catalogues, 2s. 6d.

The Pantherion is a separate exhibition, intended to display quadrupeds in such a manner as to convey a correct notion of their haunts and habits. In one orange tree are disposed sixty species of the genus Simia, or monkeys. Besides animal nature it exhibits, in connection with it, many rare exotic trees. The admission is 1s. and the same catalogue describes both collections.

The Museum of Living Animals, over Exeter 'Change, Strand.

In the rooms over Exeter 'Change, in the Strand, is a

collection of divers living beasts and birds, which are not even exceeded in rarity by those of the royal menagerie in the Tower, while they much exceed them in variety and numbers. This collection has lately been enriched by an ourang outang from China, the first ever seen alive in this kingdom; a full grown lion and lioness; a royal Bengal tyger; an elegant leopard; the laughing hyæna; three oriental porcupines; and an enormous elephant.

The price of seeing the two chief apartments is two shillings, or the whole may be seen for half-a-crown. Besides the above, the proprietor has a great number of smaller animals, and a variety of curious birds, from the different countries of the world.

In other parts of the town there are shops which deal in curious animals, which are shewn for 1s. each, and often possess rare subjects, such as Brooke's Menagerie in the New Road, and a shop opposite St. James's Church, Piccadilly.

The Menagerie in the Tower, and the collections in the British Museum and at the India House, we have describ ed under their respective heads.

Other Exhibitions of particular animals or collections are frequently opened for the season, which are advertised in the newspapers, or rendered conspicuous in the principal streets.

THE FINE ARTS..

London is now much and deservedly distinguished for the cultivation of the fine arts. The commotions on the continent have operated as a hurricane on the productions of genius, and the finest works of ancient and modern times have been removed from their old situations to the asylum afforded by the wooden walls of Britain. Many of them have, therefore, been consigned to this country, and are now in the private collections of our nobility and gentry, chiefly in and about the metropolis.

Although France may possess the greatest number of the larger works of the old masters, yet England undoubtedly possesses almost the whole of their finest perform

ances, which will not appear extraordinary when it is recollected, that the invariable practice of the great painters was to bestow their utmost exertions upon their easle pictures, that is, upon such pictures as were not too large to be painted actually by their own hand on the stand employed in painting small pictures, while they had inferior assistance in their larger works. Pictures, therefore, of this kind, being extremely valuable, and at the same time portable, England was the only place where they could obtain their adequate price during the convulsions on the continent, which brought every work of celebrity to this country, that could by any means be removed. Such is the wealth of individuals in this country, that some of the pictures thus described, possessed in private collections, are purchased at the vast prices of ten and twelve thou sand guineas.

PUBLIC EXHIBITIONS.

The Royal Academy at Somerset House is entitled to the first notice, and its annual exhibition of pictures, &c. by members of the academy, and the principal artists of the empire, is the most interesting object of art presented by the metropolis.

The coved ceiling of the library, on the first floor, was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Cipriani. The centre, by the former, represents the theory of the art under the form of an elegant female, holding in one hand a compass, in the other a label, on which is written, " Theory is the knowledge of what is truly Nature." The four compartments in the coves of the ceiling are by Cipriani, and represent Nature, History, Allegory and Fable.

The council room is more richly decorated. In the central compartments of the ceiling are five pictures, painted by Mr. West. That in the centre represents the Graces unveiling Nature; the others represent the four elements, from which the imitative arts collect their objects under the description of female figures, attended by genit, with Fire, Water, Earth and Air, exhibited in different forms and modifications. The large oval pictures which adorn the two extremities of the ceiling are by Angelica