When the King enjoyed his own again, the Collection was offered, as fit to be made a royal one. It contained more than thirty-three thousand separate publications—bound in about 2,200 volumes—issued between 1640 and 1662 inclusive. But CHARLES THE SECOND was busied with pursuits having little to do with any kind of learning, and was ill inclined, as we have seen already, to burden his Treasury for the enrichment of his Library. Sir Thomas BODLEY’S Trustees at Oxford refused the offer, in their turn, under a very different but scarcely less obstructive pressure. Their excellent founder had formed peculiar and stringent views about the literature worthy of a great University. He had warned them against stuffing his library with ‘mere baggage books.’ And so future Bodleian curators had, in another age, to buy with large bank notes many things which their predecessors could have bought with small silver coins;—just as in the ancient story. The unfortunate Collection went a-begging. The books passed from hand to hand, somewhat, it would seem, by way of pledge or mortgage. They had cost a large sum of money, and a larger amount of toil. When his expectations were at their best the first owner, it is said, refused several thousands of pounds for them. [Sidenote: THE ACQUIREMENT OF THE THOMASON COLLECTION BY GEORGE III.] His ultimate successors in the possession were glad, in 1762, to accept, at the hands of King GEORGE THE THIRD, three hundred pounds. The purchase was recommended to him by Thomas HOLLIS, and also by Lord BUTE, as a serviceable addition to the newly founded Museum. [Sidenote: 1762.] As all readers now know, it has largely subserved our history already. It is not less certain that the ‘Thomason Collection’ embodies a store of information yet unused. [Sidenote: THE BRANDER FOSSILS.] [Sidenote: 1766.] The next augmentor of the Museum was one of its Trustees, Gustavus BRANDER, distinguished as a promoter of natural science, and more especially of mineralogy and palæontology in the early stages of their study in England. A remarkable collection of fossils found in Hampshire, in the London Clay, was given by Mr. BRANDER to the Public, after having been, at his cost, carefully examined and described by Dr. SOLANDER. It was the first notable contribution to the grand series of specimens in palæontology which, in their combination, have made the British Museum the most important of all repositories in that department of science. To the Zoological Collections, the additions made, whether by gift or by purchase—save as the result, more or less direct, of ‘Voyages of Discovery,’ which will be noticed presently—were for many years very unimportant. The first purchase worthy of record was a collection of stuffed birds, formed in Holland, and acquired, in 1769, for four hundred and sixty pounds. This purchase was made by the Trust.