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- A northern lobby ceiling depicting birds, insects, butterflies and paterae (en)
- Curcuma, Nathaniel Wallich (en)
- Unlike the intentionally exposed girders of the main hall, the supporting arches above the landing are enclosed within terracotta facing. (en)
- A nine-panel set from above the landing. The archaic panels' style remains the same, but each lower panel depicts a separate species. (en)
- Archaic panel depicting Ottelia and a stylised bird (en)
- Panels from the balcony ceiling, with a lizard, snail, bird and crab (en)
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- Natural History Museum Main Hall, London, UK - Diliff.jpg (en)
- Nathaniel Wallich05.jpg (en)
- Central Hall, Natural History Museum, London 20181216 101528 .jpg (en)
- Central Hall, Natural History Museum, London 20181216 101316 .jpg (en)
- Central Hall, Natural History Museum, London 20181216 100923 .jpg (en)
- Ottelia cordata painting on the ceiling of the Natural History Museum, London.jpg (en)
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- The walls and the ceilings are decorated, as befits a Palace of Nature, with all the varieties of animal and vegetable life, and the more striking fossil remains ... Not the least admirable part of the plan is the great central hall, to be furnished and ornamented as an index to the contents of the museum. Though its proportions are magnificent, it will only be an epitome of the whole collection. The idea seems to have been suggested by the Reference Library of 60,000 volumes in the Reading Room of the British Museum, which this hall will almost equal in size, though of a very different form. We are sure that Londoners will be very glad to hear that they have now the opportunity of pursuing the most delightful of all studies in a true Temple of Nature, showing, as it should, the Beauty of Holiness. (en)
- The lower panels will have representations of foliage treated conventionally. The upper panels will be treated with more variety of colour and the designs will be of an archaic character. The chief idea to be represented is that of growth. The colours will be arranged so that the most brilliant will be near the apex of the roof. (en)
- The great instrument of zoological science, as Lord Bacon points out, is a Museum of Natural History. Every civilized state in Europe possesses such a Museum. That of England has been progressively developed to the extent which the restrictive circumstances under which it originated have allowed. The public is now fully aware, by the reports that have been published by Parliament, by representations to Government, and by articles in Reviews and other Periodicals, of the present condition of the National Museum of Natural History and of its most pressing requirements. Of them the most pressing, and the one essential to rendering the collections worthy of this great empire, is 'space'. Our colonies include parts of the earth where the forms of plants and animals are the most strange. No empire in the world had ever so wide a range for the collection of the various forms of animal life as Great Britain. Never was there so much energy and intelligence displayed in the capture and transmission of exotic animals by the enterprising traveller in unknown lands and by the hardy settler in remote colonies, as by those who start from their native shores of Britain. Foreign Naturalists consequently visit England anticipating to find in her capital and in her National Museum the richest and most varied materials for their comparisons and deductions. And they ought to be in a state pre-eminently
conducive to the advancement of a philosophical zoology, and on a scale commensurate with the greatness of the nation and the peculiar national facilities for such perfection. But, in order to receive and to display zoological specimens, space must be had, and not merely space for display, but for orderly display: the galleries should bear relation in size and form with the nature of the classes respectively occupying them. They should be such as to enable the student or intelligent visitor to discern the extent of the class, and to trace the kind and order of the variations which have been superinduced upon its common or fundamental characters. (en)
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