The Museum as it stands To-day 89 



fruits and wood from Brandon, Vermont, and the shark's teeth, 

 whale bones, and crabs, from Gay Head on Marthas Vineyard. 

 The Glacial Period produced many mollusks from several locali- 

 ties, as Portland, Maine, and Nantucket. The fossil tooth of a mas- 

 todon found during the excavation of the Cape Cod Canal is one 

 of the striking specimens. From the Recent Period is a collection 

 of bones found in the Indian shell heaps. These include at least three 

 extinct animals, the Great Auk, the native Indian dog,and the giant 



mink. 



Botanical Department 



ASM ALL collection of plants, presented by Amos Binney, was 

 . one of the first five contributions to the Museum of the Bos- 

 ton Society of Natural History, according to the earliest accession 

 book, which was started in 1830. This was the beginning of the pres- 

 ent herbarium, which now contains many thousands of specimens, 

 not only of flowering plants, but mosses, lichens, algae and fungi. 



Many early botanists of note were associated with the develop- 

 ment of this herbarium, and some of them presented their collec- 

 tions to the Society. Noteworthy special accessions are the Sprague 

 and the Thomas Taylor collections of lichens ; the John A. Lowell 

 collection of flowering plants, and many sheets from the collection 

 of William Boott. More recently, the Reginald Heber Howe. Jr., 

 collection of lichens, also the C. C. Kingman and the Joseph A. 

 Cushman collections of miscellaneous plants have been acquired. 

 The Society also owns a rare set of mounted algae, prepared and 

 issued by H olden, Setchell & Collins, consisting of many bound vol- 

 umes of mounted plants. 



These plants, with the numerous specimens collected especially 

 for the Museum by Dr. Joseph A. Cushman and others, are filed 

 in steel and wooden cabinets, the New England plants being kept 



