The Institute

Mahogany cabinets, glazed and darkened almost to black, stand in ranks down a single high gallery under a roof of iron and glass. Mounted skeletons hang from the girders on fine wires, long jaws and ribbed fins turning a fraction whenever a draught moves through. Shells, corals and coiled horns from every coast the ships ever reached fill the drawers and the shallow cases beneath them. Polished floorboards creak between the cabinets, and dust drifts through the slanting light in no hurry at all. At the far end a door opens into a glasshouse, warm and wet, crowded with broad-leaved plants that never grew on this coast. Condensation beads on its panes and runs down in slow, crooked lines, blurring the green into a single soft wall.