At the commencement of Sir Henry ELLIS’S term of Principal-Librarianship, the Natural-History Collections were partly under the charge of Dr. LEACH, partly under that of Mr. Charles KÖNIG. Both were officers of considerable scientific attainments. In the instance of Dr. LEACH, certain peculiar eccentricities and crotchets were mixed up in close union with undoubted learning and skill. In not a few eminent naturalists a tendency to undervalue the achievements of past days, and to exaggerate those of the day that is passing, has often been noted. LEACH evinced this tendency in more ways than one. But a favourite way of manifesting it led him many times into difficulties with his neighbours. He despised the taxidermy of Sir Hans SLOANE’S age, and made periodical bonfires of Sloanian specimens. These he was wont to call his ‘cremations.’ In his time, the Gardens of the Museum were still a favourite resort of the Bloomsburians, but the attraction of the terraces and the fragrance of the shrubberies were sadly lessened when a pungent odour of burning snakes was their accompaniment. The stronger the complaints, however, the more apparent became Dr. LEACH’S attachment to his favourite cremations. [Sidenote: GEORGE MONTAGU; HIS LABOURS IN NATURAL HISTORY AND HIS ZOOLOGICAL MUSEUM.] LEACH was the friend and correspondent of that eminent cultivator of the classificatory sciences, Colonel George MONTAGU, of Lackham. Both of them rank among the early members of the Linnæan Society, and it was under LEACH’S editorship that MONTAGU’S latest contributions to the Society’s _Transactions_ were published. [Sidenote: 1802–13.] MONTAGU’S _Synopsis of British Birds_ marks an epoch in the annals of our local ornithology, as does his treatise entitled _Testacea Britannica_ in those of conchology. [Sidenote: 1803–9.] His contributions to the National Collections were very liberal. But he did not care much for any books save those that treated of natural history. In addition to a good estate and a fine mansion, he had inherited from his brother a choice old Library at Lackham, and a large cabinet of coins. These, I believe, he turned to account as means of barter for books and specimens in his favourite department of study. His love of the beauties of nature led him to prefer an unpretending abode in Devon to his fine Wiltshire house, and it was at Knowle that he died in August, 1815. His Collections in Zoology were purchased by the Trustees, and were removed from Knowle soon after his death. Scarcely any other purchase of like value in the Natural-History Department was made for more than twenty years afterwards. After the purchase of the Montagu Collection, the growth of that department depended, as it had mainly depended before it, on the acquisitions made for the Public by the several naturalists who took part in the Voyages of Discovery or whose chance collections, made in the course of ordinary duty, came to be at the disposal of the