The Canterbury Museum.

The Canterbury Museum, an elegant edifice standing in the Domain Gardens, owes its building and great collections to the energy of the late Sir Julius von Haast. The Museum contains seven large galleries, exclusive of those devoted entirely to the exposition of the biology and geology of New Zealand, and of objects illustrating the history of the indigenes of the Colony.

The General Natural History Collections are typically very complete. The Antiquity Room contains a large and most interesting numbers of objects. In the Picture Gallery are hung many paintings by well, known English artists, as well as by the chief New Zealand painters. Here also are arranged casts of some of the most celebrated specimen of ancient sculpture. One of the largest and best lighted rooms is devoted to Ethnology, where is exhibited the comparative art of savage and civilised races. The general geology of the earth is illustrated by a very complete typical collection, and in the adjoining Technological room, an almost complete metallurgical one.

One of the chief features of the Museum is its New Zealand collections, of which the specimens, in number and completeness, of the extinct Moas are unsurpassed anywhere in the world. The specimen illustrating its Zoology and Geology are also very extensive, well displayed and exhaustively labelled. A full descriptive catalogue now under preparation, and shortly to be published, will render the Museum still more instructive to the visitor. Altogether the Canterbury Museum, in illustrating all Departments of Knowledge, can claim to be a practical Educational establishment of special importance to the Province, and a most valuable adjunct to its schools and collegia The present Curator is Henry O. Forbes, F.R.G.S., Fellow Zoologcal Society of London, &c., &c.