which it has been proposed to transport such collections, is of great practical importance. Similar evidence shows that the proposed removal of those collections from the British Museum has excited grave and general disapprobation in the scientific world. Your Committee cannot here employ more forcible language than that made use of in a memorial signed by one hundred and fourteen persons, including many eminent promoters and cultivators of science in England, and presented to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1848. The following are their words:—“We beg to add the expression of our opinion that the removal of the Natural-History Collections from the site where they have been established for upwards of a century, in the centre of London, particularly if to any situation distant from that centre, would be viewed by the mass of the inhabitants with extreme disfavour, it being a well-known fact that by far the greater number of visitors to the Museum consists of those who frequent the halls containing the Natural-History Collections, while it is obvious that many of those persons who come from the densely peopled districts of the eastern, northern, and southern parts of London, would feel it very inconvenient to resort to any distant locality.”’ [Sidenote: RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMONS’ COMMITTEE OF 1860.] After an elaborate examination into the nature and extent of those enlargements which the present growth and probable increase of the several Collections of Antiquities and of Natural History render necessary, the Committee proceed thus:— The ground immediately surrounding the Museum, says the reporter, speaking of the adjacent streets to the east, west, and north, ‘comprises altogether about five and a half acres, valued by Mr. SMIRKE at about two hundred and forty thousand pounds. As the proprietary interest in all this ground belongs to a single owner, your Committee are of opinion that it would be convenient, and possibly even a profitable arrangement, for the State at once to purchase that interest, and to receive the rents of the lessees in return for the capital invested. The State would then have the power, whenever any further extension of the Museum became necessary, to obtain possession of such houses as might best suit the purpose in view.