without any help from the taxes, the collection
has been increased and enriched from
various sources.

Fifteen hundred pounds were given for
fifteen hundred preparations left behind him
by Sir Astley Cooper; four hundred and fifty
pounds were given for four hundred and fifty
made by Mr. Liston; eight hundred and
sixty-eight pounds for preparations made by
"old Brooks," and seven hundred and sixty
pounds for a number of specimens prepared
by Mr. Langstaff. Innumerable things have
been given by different scientific surgeons
and others, until the total of the
combined supply makes up what we see—
undoubtedly the finest physiological collection
in the world. The whole cost of bringing the
thing to its present perfection has been very
great. Since the museum has been in charge
of the College, it is calculated that they have
spent upon it, in specimens, salaries,
catalogues, and preservation (a very costly
business) upwards of sixty-six thousand pounds.

With the consequences entailed by its
custody (ingloriously escaped by the College
of Physicians) the sum spent has been much
larger still. This has come almost wholly
out of the fees paid for diplomas, the College
having no property in houses or lands; and
such being the case, now that they see the
museum has grown and grown till it almost
chokes up the existing space for its reception
—large though that be—and now that specimens
are hidden up for want of space for their
display; the public may fairly demand that
aid from some source may be given for its
proper expansion. In other countries the
Government are foremost in their provision
for science; in ours, the public voice has
often to be raised again and again before a
scanty dole is afforded for such public
purposes. About three thousand a-year is now
spent out of the funds of the surgical public
for keeping up this national museum—open
to the nation without fee or stint, with no
twopenny fee at the door, as they have at
St. Paul's—a museum into which the
contributions of science are ever and anon pouring
new abundance. The Government of France,
or Prussia, or Russia, if they had such an
institution, would surely not stint something
for house-room. Why should the Government
of England?

Whilst to the scientific this museum affords
ample means for study, it has also points of
deep interest and instruction for the simplest
of unlettered visitors. On a pedestal in the
centre of the room, stands the skeleton eight
feet high of the Irish giant, O'Byrne, the living
human wonder of his day. He died about
seventy years ago, when only twenty-two
years old, his death being hastened by his
love for drink. His last fears were, that his
enormous frame might fall into the hands of
the doctors, and he made those about him
promise to carry his body out to sea, and
sink it there. So remarkable a specimen of
the human family was not, however, fated to
be utterly lost. A hundred years might pass
without producing another man of the same
height; extraordinary exertions were made
to secure his skeleton, and John Hunter
succeeded in adding it to his museum, but
not without an expenditure of a very large
sum of money to the depraved associates of
the drunken dead giant. Beside O'Byrne's
skeleton are those of an adult man and
woman of the ordinary stature, and the
contrast is sufficiently complete. A more striking
one, however, is secured by a fourth skeleton,
that of a little woman, known thirty years
ago, as the Sicilian Dwarf. Her name was
Caroline Crachami, and she was exhibited in
various parts of England, being much less
than two feet high! She died in Old Bond
Street, in 1824, and her skeleton measures but
twenty inches. The man who put up her skeleton,
had evidently a dash of the satirist in his
composition; for at the foot of the tiny bony
frame lies a silk stocking that once clothed
the dwarfs leg, and a little ring filled with
pearls, and a ruby that once encircled her
finger. The glitter of the gew-gaws is a
silent commentary on the vanities once allied
to the dry bones they now lie beside—vanities
not limited to poor dwarfs.

Beyond the human giant, loom the bones
of a quadruped the skeleton of poor Chuny,
"the mad elephant of Exeter Change."
Many of our readers will remember the days
when Zoological Gardens were unknown in
England, and when Exeter Change projected
half across the present Strand near the end of
Catherine Street, and ran for a considerable
distance down towards Charing Cross—the
under part being an arcade for the sale of
nick-nacks, and the upper stories being full of
caged wild-beasts. Those who remember that
old favourite haunt of shopping ladies and
sight-seeing Londoners, will remember also
the day when the town was alarmed by news
that the elephant had gone mad, with love
and tooth-ache, and was breaking out of his
den; and how, in spite of drugs by pailsful,
and poisons by the pound, he could be neither
cured nor killed; and how, at last, men were
summoned from the neighbourhood armed
with guns to fire upon the enraged creature,
and at last a file of grenadiers were sent for,
and all fired, and fired more than two
hundred muskets and rifle shots in vain, until at
length one ball took effect in the poor crazy
monster's brain. To all who remember these
things, Chuny will appear an old acquaintance
when they see him in the College Museum,
for which he was bought at a cost of two
hundred pounds.

Round about the museum are many
other smaller objects of attraction. The
paper nautilus is there with a word in
the catalogue, dissipating the old poetical
notion that their expanded arms are used as
sails; also some beautiful Italian models of
the torpedo—the fishy living galvanic battery;