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BOOK III,
Chap. III.
HISTORY

OF THE
MUSEUM
UNDER SIR

A. PANIZZI.

GROWTH

OF THE

GICAL COL

LECTIONS.

1858-1862.

Owen,
Report, as

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 fiftythree thousand, but of these it was found possible to exhibit to the Public little more than fifty thousand specimens.

Coming to the Department of Mineralogy, we find that MINERALO the registered specimens had increased, within about four years, from fifteen thousand to twenty-five thousand. This increase was mainly due to the acquisition of the noble ALLAN-GREG Cabinet formed at Manchester. But large as this increase is, the national importance of the Mineralogical Collections is very far from being adequately represented by the existing state of the Museum series, even after all the subsequent additions made between the years 1862-1870. A Museum of Mineralogy worthy of England must eventually include five several and independent collections. above (1862). There must be (1) a Classificatory Collection, for general purposes; (2) a Geometrical Collection, to show the crystalline forms; (3) an Elementary Collection, to show the degrees of lustre and the varieties of cleavage and of colour; (4) a Technological Collection, to show the economic application of minerals—the importance of which, to a commercial, manufacturing, and artistic country, can hardly be exaggerated. Last of all, there is needed a special collection of an ancillary kind; that, I mean, which has been called sometimes a 'teratological' collection, sometimes a 'pseudomorphic' collection. Call it as you will, its object

(Ibid.)

Chap. III.

OF THE

MUSEUM

is important. Such a series serves to show both the defec- BOOK III, tive and the excessive forms of minerals, and their transi- HISTORY tional capacities. These five several collections are, it will be seen, over and above that other special Collection of Sky-stones or Meteorites,' which is already very nobly represented in our National Museum.

UNDER SIR

A. PANIZZI.

BOOK III,
Chap. IV.
ANOTHER

GROUP OF
ARCHEOLO-

GISTS AND
EXPLORERS.

CHAPTER IV.

ANOTHER GROUP OF ARCHEOLOGISTS AND
EXPLORERS. THE SPOILS OF XANTHUS,
OF BABYLON, OF NINEVEH, OF HALICAR-
NASSUS, AND OF CARTHAGE.

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The Libraries of the East.-The Monasteries of the Nitrian Desert, and their Explorers.-William CURETON and his Labours on the MSS. of Nitria, and in other Departments of Oriental Literature.-The Researches in the Levant of Sir Charles FELLOWS, of Mr. LAYARD, and of Mr. Charles NEWTON.-Other conspicuous Augmentors of the Collection of Antiquities.

WE have now to turn to that vast field of research and exploration, from which the national Museum of Antiquities has derived an augmentation that has sufficed to double, within twenty-five years, its previous scientific and

Chap. IV.

ARCHEOLO

literary value to the Public. In this chapter we have BOOK III, to tell of not a little romantic adventure; of remote ANOTHER and perilous explorations and excavations; sometimes, of GROUP OF sharp conflicts between English pertinacity and Oriental GISTS AND cunning; often, of great endurance of hardship and privation in the endeavour at once to promote learning-the world over—and to add some new and not unworthy entries on the long roll of British achievement.

EXPLORERS.

LIBRARIES

Two distinct groups of explorers have now to be recorded. The labours of both groups carry us to the Levant. What has been done of late years by the searchers after manuscripts, in their effort to recover some of the lost treasures THE of the old Libraries of the East, will be most fairly appre- OF THE EAST. ciated by the reader, if, before telling of the researches and the studies of CURZON, TATTAM, CURETON, and their fellowworkers in Eastern manuscript archæology, some brief prefatory notice be given of the earlier labours, in the same field, of HUNTINGTON, BROWNE, and other travellers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Mention must also be made of the explorations of SONNINI and of ANDRÉOSSI.

THE

RESEARCHES

OF ROBERT

HUNTING-
TON IN THE

MONAS

About the year 1680, Robert HUNTINGTON, afterwards Bishop of Raphoe, visited the Monasteries of the Nitrian Desert, and made special and eager research for the Syriac version of the Epistles of St. Ignatius, of the existence of NITRIAN which there had been wide-spread belief amongst the TERIES; learned, since the time of Archbishop USSHER. But his quest was fruitless, although, as it is now well known, a Syriac version of some of those epistles did really exist in one of the monasteries which HUNTINGTON visited. The monks, then as afterwards, were chary of showing their MSS., very small as was the care they took of them. The

Chap. IV. ANOTHER GROUP OF ARCHEOLO

GISTS AND

BOOK III, only manuscripts mentioned by HUNTINGTON, in recording his visits to three of the principal communities-St. Mary Deipara, St. Macarius, and El Baramous-are an Old Testament in the Estrangelo character; two volumes of Chrysostom in Coptic and Arabic; a Coptic Lectionary in four volumes; and a New Testament in Coptic and Arabic.

EXPLORERS.

AND THOSE
OF SONNINI,
BROWNE,

AND OTHERS.

Towards the close of the following century, these monasteries received the successive visits of SONNINI, of William George BROWNE, and of General Count ANDRÉOSSI. SONNINI says nothing of books. BROWNE saw but few-among them an Arabo-Coptic Lexicon, the works of St. Gregory, and the Old and New Testaments in Arabicalthough he was told by the superior that they had nearly eight hundred volumes, with none of which they would part. General ANDRÉOSSI, on the other hand, speaks Africa, &c., slightingly of the books as merely ascetic works, . some in Arabic, and some in Coptic, with an Arabic transHuntington, lation in the margin;' but adds, 'We brought away some of the latter class, which appear to have a date of six centuries.' This was in 1799. BROWNE died in 1814; SONNINI DE MANONCOURT, in 1812; Count ANDRÉOSSI Lac de Nation, survived until 1828.

Browne,
Travels in

p. 43.

Observations

(repr. in Ray's Coll.).

Andréossi,

Vallées des

pass.

Lord Prudhoe's Narrative, &c., as abridged in Quarterly Review,

vol. lxxvii, pp. 45, seq.

In the year 1827, the late Duke of NORTHUMBERLAND (then Lord PRUDHOE) made more elaborate researches. His immediate object was a philological one, his Lordship desiring to further Mr. TATTAM's labours on a Coptic and Arabic Dictionary. Hearing that Libraries were said to be preserved, both at the Baramous and Syrian convents,' he proceeded to El Baramous, accompanied by Mr. LINART, and encamped outside the walls. The monks in this convent,' says the Duke, 'about twelve in number, appeared poor and ignorant. They looked on us with

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