Having brought his examination of the mineral kingdom to a conclusion, the visitor should notice the fossil zoophytes and shells from various deposits, arranged upon the other tables of the room.  He will now leave the mineral kingdom, and advancing once more westward, will reach the fifth room of the gallery, which is entirely given up to various fossil remains.

FOSSIL FISHES

The first object that will arrest the visitor’s attention on entering this fine apartment is the gigantic skeleton of the extinct elk of Ireland, which towers above every other object, from its pedestal, placed in the centre of the room.  It is seven feet in height, and eight feet in length.

The southern wall cases and the southern table cases of this room are covered with the fossil remains of various fishes.  These are important to the student as exhibiting high forms of animal life that existed at the time of the formation of the most ancient strata in which organic remains have been discovered.  The visitor will notice the perfect forms imprinted upon the various strata here exhibited.

In case 7 he will be struck with the fossil remains of some of the sauroids or lizard-like fishes, only two species of which survive to the present day, but which, in remote ages, abounded in the seas, and were particularly voracious.  On the middle shelf of the wall case marked B the visitor should notice the fossil remains of the enormous and powerful carnivorous fish called the rhizodus; also the macropoma, like a carp in shape, in wall cases 13, 14; the fossil bremus in case 19; the extinct species of fossil carps, in cases 24, 25; the fossil pikes in cases 24-27; and the fossil herrings in the middle of cases 25-27.  Having noticed these fossils the visitor should examine the wall case in the north-eastern corner of the room in which are deposited many bones of mammalia from the Sewalik Hills, including the teeth and jaws of an extinct species of camel; and the skull of the remarkable livatherium; and on the top of the case are various bones of the same extinct monster.  The tops of the southern cases display various fossil remains, including the head-bones of the asterolepis; the skull and antlers of the Irish elk; and various skulls of different kinds of oxen.  The western wall case is filled with a curious collection of various fossil parts of an extinct species of rhinoceros found in this country, also skulls of the rhinoceros dug up in Siberia.  There is something impressive in the effect—­the atmosphere of this and the sixth rooms.  As crowds of holiday people, inhabitants of an island in which no dangerous living animals now abide, wander amid the fossil remnants of ages when the most terrible monsters must have lived in British waters and crawled upon British ground, curious contrasts rise in the brains of contemplative men.  The mind wanders back to the age of reptiles—­to times when no human footprint had sunk into the earth—­and