2 BULLETIN 97, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



a National Museum building, and to the destruction of the latter 

 collection in the Chicago fire of 1871 while it was in the custod}' of 

 Dr. William Stimpson. 1 



Among private institutions contributing largely are the Carnegie 

 Institution, of Washington, District of Columbia ; the Venice Marine 

 Biological Station, Venice, California ; and various universities, such 

 as the Stanford University and the University of California. 



Through a system of exchanges reciprocal benefit has been derived 

 from many of the larger museums, such as the Museum of Compara- 

 tive Zoology, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Peabody Museum of 

 Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut ; the Museu Paulista, Sao 

 Paulo, Brazil; the Museo Nacional, at Valparaiso, Chile; and in 

 Europe, the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France; the Zoologi- 

 cal Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark ; and others. 



SPECIAL RESEARCHES. 



In the eighties, th'e early days of the United States National 

 Museum, the collection of crustaceans, as well as of other inverte- 

 brates, was in charge of Dr. Richard Rathbun, at that time an assist- 

 ant on the United States Fish Commission. The collection was of 

 so moderate a size that it was possible for a single curator to classify 

 all the larger and more conspicuous forms in various groups. At 

 that time Prof. Sidney I. Smith, of the United States Fish Com- 

 mission, had charge of the Decapods of the northeast Atlantic coast 

 of America which were obtained by the commission, and the material 

 forming the basis of his reports was subsequently transferred to the 

 museum. Later Dr. James E. Benedict was made an assistant cura- 

 tor of marine invertebrates, and the then rapidly increasing numbers 

 of decapod crustaceans occupied a large share of his attention. When 

 the present writer took up the subject the commoner and more 

 abundant forms were already worked over. The nomenclature, how- 

 ever, proved to be in a very unsettled condition, on account of our 

 ignorance of the true status of type-specimens in some of the Euro- 

 pean museums, the misinterpretation of the descriptions of those 

 types by others, and the consequent repetition of errors in literature. 



In 1896 therefore the writer visited six European museums to 

 examine certain types, those of J. C. Fabricius in the museums- in 

 Copenhagen and Kiel, of Herbst in Berlin, of Saussure in Geneva, 

 of the two Milne Edwards' in Paris, and of Miers and others in the 

 British Museum. The results were of great value in revising the 



1 For a full account of the sources of the invertebrate collection in the National 

 Museum up to 1883 see " Great International Fisheries Exhibition, London, 1883, Section 

 G. Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection illustrating the scientific investigation of the 

 sea and fresh waters." By Richard Rathbun. Washington : Government Printing Office, 

 1883. 



