Care of the Collections— Zoology 



Our collections are growing at a good rate. This is a healthy condi- 

 tion for a research institution, but it means, of course, that the new 

 material must be processed, housed, and cared for. Processing in- 

 cludes identification, often cataloguing, and sometimes special treat- 

 ment before the new specimens can be incorporated into the specimen 

 files of our permanent collections. All this is part of the routine 

 that, varying in detail from division to division, is the heavy respon- 

 sibility of every curator. Fortunately the divisions of birds, mam- 

 mals, insects, fishes, and reptiles and amphibians have had secretarial 

 help and also, to aid in curatorial work, several temporary assistants, 

 a number of volunteer assistants, and four Antioch College students 

 (David Graybeal, Ben Massie, John Nash, and Miss Anita Pope). 



In addition to routine care of the mammal collections, a several- 

 years' backlog of African-mammal skulls was cleaned for study. 

 Tanner Dominick Villa and Assistant Taxidermist Mario Villa pre- 

 pared large skins of both African and South American mammals for 

 the study collection. Assistant Taxidermist Peter Anderson remade 

 some salted birdskins into Museum specimens. Osteologist Sophie 

 Andris carried on work for both the Division of Mammals (cleaning 

 1,360 skulls) and the Division of Anatomy (preparing 92 skeletons) . 



The last of the 20,547 bird specimens of the Koelz Collection 

 acquired in 1956 was catalogued and so made available for incorpora- 

 tion into the collection, and the bird collections from gulls to ostriches 

 were rearranged. Shifting of the fish collection to make it more 

 usable was started by Assistant Pearl Sonoda, on whom much of 

 the routine work of the Division of Fishes rests. The large numbers 

 of specimens that the Division of Insects must handle (there are 

 about three-quarters of a million species of living insects) put a pro- 

 portionately large burden of routine curatorial work on that staff. 

 Curator Emeritus William J. Gerhard completed reorganizing and 

 arranging the Museum's collections of ants, bees, and wasps. Re- 

 search Associate Wyatt worked with North American butterflies and 

 moths, incorporating with them the extensive Wyatt Collection. 

 Assistant August Ziemer arranged North American moths and trans- 

 ferred nearly half of the Knirsch Collection of palearctic beetles into 

 unit trays. The Division of Lower Invertebrates, like the Division 

 of Insects, deals with a great many species. There are perhaps 

 100,000 in the phylum (compared with 3,500 mammals, for instance), 

 and the number of specimens is correspondingly great and routine 

 curatorial work heavy. Curator Haas and Assistant Curator Solem 

 have done most of this themselves, processing 57,000 shells. 



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