The actual work of erection commenced in the year 1873, and the building was handed over to the Trustees of the British Museum by Her Majesty’s Commissioners of Works in the month of June, 1880. As soon as the exhibition-cases were completed, and the galleries sufficiently dry to receive the collections, the labour of removing the Natural History Collection from Bloomsbury was begun. The departments of Geology, Mineralogy, and Botany were arranged in their respective sections of the Museum in the course of the year 1880, and the portion of the Museum which contained these departments was first opened to the public on April 18th, 1881. It was not until the following year that the cases destined to receive the larger collections of the Zoological Department were sufficiently near completion to allow of these collections following, and three more years were required before all the galleries could be brought into a state fitted for public exhibition. [Sidenote: Description of the building.] The following description of the structure was contributed by Mr. Waterhouse:-- “The New Natural History Museum will, from its position, always be more or less identified with the International Exhibition of 1862, which occupied the whole of the site between the Horticultural Gardens and Cromwell Road. It was at one time thought that a portion, at any rate, of the Exhibition buildings could with advantage have been converted into a Museum of Natural History. Parliament, however, decided against the preservation of any part of these buildings, and they were accordingly entirely removed. “In designing the present building, Captain Fowke’s original idea of employing terra-cotta was always kept in view, though the blocks were reduced in size, so as to obviate, as far as possible, the objection to the employment of this material, arising from its liability to twist in burning. For this and other reasons the architect abandoned the idea of a Renaissance building, and fell back on the earlier Romanesque style which prevailed largely in Lombardy and the Rhineland from the tenth to the end of the twelfth century. “In 1873, a contract was entered into by the Government with Messrs. George Baker and Sons, of Lambeth, for the erection of the building at a cost of £352,000. Other subsequent contracts have been entered into by the Treasury, especially one for the erection of the towers, which in the first instance it was decided to omit. [Sidenote: Exterior.]