PLATE 35.—BULLOCK’S MUSEUM, PICCADILLY reprinted from June 1810

Ackermann’s repository at 387-388.

Our present number contains an internal view of the beautiful museum of natural history, antiquities, and productions of the fine arts, collected by Mr. W. Bullock, late of Liverpool; to whose taste, liberality, and scientific exertions, the public are indebted for one of the most refined, rational, and interesting exhibitions the metropolis ever witnessed.

Feeble would be our efforts to convey to the mind of any adequate idea of the merits of this cabinet of rarities. The extreme regions of the globe must have been explored in the selection of so many objects of wonder and delight; day after day may be spent in reviewing it, and the spectator again return with renewed pleasure. The arrangement of the natural history department is particularly striking and novel; the astonished visitor is in an instant transported from the crowded streets of the metropolis to the center of a tropical forest, in which are seen, as in real life, all its various inhabitants, from the huge elephant and rhinoceros to the most diminutive quadruped; and of the feathered creation, from the ostrich to the almost insect humming-bird; including the richest assemblage of the most rare, singular and splendid birds ever brought into one general view.

The various tribes of fishes, serpents, lizards, insects, shells, corals, &c. &c. in all their countless forms, are exhibited in such a way as to convey an idea of their manner and mode of life. That huge serpent, the boa constrictor, thirty-two feet long, is seen pursuing, through the branches of a tree, a baboon, so overcome with the sense of danger, as to be ready to fall into the opened mouth of its adversary. Another of the same species locking its terrific body round an expiring deer, and crushing it in his fatal fold, is sublimely horrible, and induces a ready belief of the astonishing account given of this reptile by travelers, to which a degree of doubt has generally been attached.

The statues, models, carvings, and turnings in wood, ivory &c. are each exquisite in their kind; and we are at a loss which to praise most, the articles themselves, or the tasteful manner in which they are displayed.

We have the pleasure of assuring the public, that the spirited proprietor of this delightful place of amusement (who has devoted the devoted the principal part of his life, and expended a sum of 24,000 pounds in its completion,) meets with that remuneration to which he is so justly entitled. Eighty thousand persons have already visited it; and the collection is rapidly augmenting by the addition of every interesting article that can be purchased*, as well as donations of valuable curiosities from many of the first personages both for rank and science, in the kingdom.

No person possessing the least desire of improving their knowledge of nature, should refrain from visiting this attractive exhibition; juvenile minds will there be taught a lesson beyond calculation valuable; they will read, in the great volume of creation, the work of an all wise Providence, and the lesson will be indelibly impressed on their memories. Indeed, no one can be disappointed, even should they form the most sanguine expectation of experiencing a pleasure which expanded minds are ever prone to entertain in the contemplation of objects rare, and sights unseen before.

The exhibition is open every day from ten till dusk, in the Great-room, 22, Piccadilly, where a catalogue, describing upwards of eight thousand of its curiosities, may be procured.

*As a proof of the liberal manner in which Mr. B. collects, we mention, that a small shell, not before in the museum, was a few days since purchased for him at the auction room of Messrs. King and Lochee for the sum of 27 pounds.