Temporary summer assistants, volunteer workers (see page 26), 

 and Antioch College students (Douglas R. G. Roycroft, Miss Aria 

 Ruks, Miss Lise B. Thomsen, and Miss Linda M. Turkel) aided 

 greatly in the routine care of collections, the details associated with 

 curating them, and the incorporation of new material into them. 



Rearrangement of the bird and mammal collections in the steel 

 cases purchased last year was continued. Tanner Dominick Villa 

 and Assistant Taxidermist Mario Villa prepared mammal skins for 

 the study collections and cleaned and mothproofed a number of old, 

 large, flat study-skins. Also much time has been spent in search of 

 improved methods of museum taxidermy. 



Assistant Marx integrated into the collection the newly purchased 

 Taylor Collection of amphibians and reptiles (see page 72) with the 

 assistance of Miss Janet Wright, who also did considerable work in 

 arranging the pamphlet collection. Assistant Pearl Sonoda not only 

 saw to realcoholing the fish collection but also checked and listed 

 the fish in the large monel fishtanks. Assistant Phyllis Wade carried 

 on routine work for the Division of Anatomy while Curator Davis 

 was on a field trip in Malaya, did much of the routine curating of the 

 collection during the year, and made illustrations. 



Assistant August Ziemer inspected and fumigated the insect col- 

 lections as well as prepared many thousands of specimens for the 

 collections. Research Associate Alex K. Wyatt continued to identify, 

 combine, and integrate our various collections of North American 

 butterflies and moths, Research Associate Seevers spent considerable 

 time curating parts of the Bernhauer Collection of rove beetles, and 

 Associate Curator Dybas saw to the transfer of a large segment of the 

 Brancsik Collection of beetles into the collection. 



It was found that, unfortunately, a new shipment of cork used to 

 line insect-storage trays was highly corrosive to insect pins. Investi- 

 gation by the staff and by chemists of Morningstar-Paisley, Inc. 

 (manufacturers of adhesives) showed that this was caused by a 

 paste used by the bindery firm that covered our cork with flint paper 

 — the paste contained humectants (water-drawing chemicals) and cor- 

 rosive agents. Specifications for corrosion-free cork, paste, and cov- 

 ering paper have been drawn up by the staff of Morningside-Paisley. 



Assistant Roscoe has taken over the final processing of additions 

 to the mollusk collection, which hitherto has been carried on entirely 

 by Curator Emeritus Haas and Curator Solem with the aid of tem- 

 porary assistants. The half million new specimens received in the 

 past two years have been unpacked and sorted roughly. During the 

 year 12,500 sets of mollusks representing about 115,000 specimens 

 were completely processed and integrated into the collection. 



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