THE COLLECTION OF COELENTERATES 



BY 



H. B. BIGELOVV 



The foundations for the present collections were laid in the sixties 

 when the interest in the marine fauna of the American waters was 

 awakened. Some of the oldest specimens (mostly horny corals) were 

 collected by Louis Agassiz from various places off Florida, Charles- 

 ton and Maine, etc., and a very complete representation of the 

 Alcyonarians of the west coast of Central America was brought home 

 by Alexander Agassiz from his first trip to Panama. Some speci- 

 mens probably date from much earlier accessions to the Univer- 

 sity's cabinet of Natural History. The New England fishermen 

 showed early great interest in the Museum and gave quite large col- 

 lections of horny corals and pennatulids from deep water. The first 

 scientific expeditions, under L. F. de Pourtales, brought an abun- 

 dance of material from the waters around Florida, later the Hassler 

 expedition made a cruise around South America, and in the eighties 

 began a number of large expeditions under the leadership of Alex- 

 ander Agassiz, with the "Blake" and the "Albatross," first in the 

 West Indian waters and later as government expeditions to various 

 parts of the Pacific Ocean, and that implied that the greater part of 

 the collections, including all types, went to the United States Na- 

 tional Museum in Washington. In the last twenty-five years only 

 few additions have been made to the collections of the horny and 

 stony corals, while the pelagic coelenterates and hydroids have 

 steadily increased in number through gifts from all parts of the 

 world, from the United States Fish Commission, the Canadian 

 fisheries, the Australian Museum, the Philippine Bureau of Science, 

 the Arcturus Expedition, etc. 



About 3500 numbers of specimens already determined have been 

 catalogued by Dr. H. B. Bigelow (mostly pelagic coelenterates and 

 hydroids), and about 1000 lots of partly undetermined material 



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