Day 6 - Natural history

The Natural History Museum is a supreme monument to Victorian architecture, arguably outstripping the British Museum, the National Gallery and Buckingham Palace in its grandeur, breadth and vision.

Inside the vaulted hall humans stare at mammoths in alcoves and eyeball the dinosaur skeleton who stretches across the gallery about to pounce on naughty children. Looking up the stairs you can see a man sitting on a marble chair, oblivious to everyone around him. He is marble too. It's a statue of Charles Darwin, moved to the Central Hall as part of the bicentenary celebrations of his birth.

To the right is the origin of our species in the form of a series of placards detailing the development of hominids and their interaction and relationship with primates past and present. Reminds me of a sophisticated school project - perhaps what we might have done in primary school had we been geniuses. There are many chains in the evolution of being that lead to homo sapiens, or knowledgeable man. Imagine a humanoid half our height, with half our brain, but with our curiosity and an uncanny likeness. Also explored is the similarity between man and ape. Chimpanzees share many structural features with us - we are more closely related with them than we are to orangutans (although I'm sure exceptions can be made).

In the Minerals Gallery every stone on this planet (and some not of this planet) has been catalogued and is on display. From agates to pirites, chalcites to opals, quartz to crystals, emeralds, diamonds, different coloured topaz, sapphire, feldspar. If I find someone to propose to, I'll buy her a ring encrusted with moonrock, or a meteorite with traces of Mars ..

The vault at the end of the hall houses priceless treasures - the Devonshire Emerald, the Latrobe Nugget and can you imagine diamonds from stardust?

But let us go and view the humpback whale, largest living creature, or watch the lemming frozen in his migration to oblivion. See that cobra skeleton - even Steven Seagal would be reduced to a writhing mass of atomic matter when clenched within its coil. I wander past The Cocoon, where Britain's precocious nerds .. I mean naturalists .. are hermetically sealed from the coughs of man, cars of man, and flatulence of man's politicians.

Just outside The Cocoon I sip some exotic Chinese tea sourced from the vale of Twinings. I ponder the crustaceous shells being scraped, the meteors being analysed for traces of extra-solar debris, and what genus of mustard Britain's Nerd in Chief had on his last turkey bagel.