Of Birds, about two thousand five hundred species were, in 1862, exhibited in the galleries of the British Museum, and in its store-rooms there were the skins of about four thousand two hundred species. The number of species already known and described, in 1862, was not less than eight thousand three hundred. And, it is hardly necessary to add, vast explorations have since been undertaken, in the years which have elapsed, or are now about to be undertaken in Africa, in Madagascar, in Borneo, in New Guinea, and in many parts of Australia. Of Fishes, the Museum contained, in 1862, about four thousand species. These were then represented, by way of public exhibition, irrespectively of the unexhibited stores, by about one thousand five hundred stuffed specimens, illustrating about one thousand species. The total number of recorded species, already at that date, amounted to more than eight thousand. Of Reptiles, little more than two hundred and fifty species were publicly shown in the Museum Galleries, but its collections, unexhibited for want of space, were already much larger. The number of known species of _Reptilia_, in 1862, exceeded two thousand. Coming to the Invertebrata, it appears that, in 1862, about ten thousand species of molluscs, illustrated by about one hundred thousand specimen shells, were publicly exhibited. [Sidenote: See, hereinafter, Chap. VI.] This, it will be remembered, was anterior to the great accession of the CUMING Collection, which already, in 1862, contained more than sixteen thousand _species_—and is the finest and most complete series ever brought together. About forty-five thousand specimens of molluscs were, in 1862, stored in the drawers of the galleries and other rooms, or in the vaults beneath. These, on a rough computation, may have illustrated about four thousand five hundred species. Within the _two years only_, 1860–1862, the registered number of specimens of Fossils was increased from one hundred and twenty thousand to one hundred and fifty-three thousand, but of these it was found possible to exhibit to the Public little more than fifty thousand specimens. [Sidenote: GROWTH OF THE MINERALOGICAL COLLECTIONS. 1858–1862.]