THE FOSSIL FISH COLLECTION 



BY 



H. C. STETSON 



Fossil fishes are comparatively rare; therefore the collection must 

 necessarily be small as compared with the invertebrates, or even with 

 other vertebrates. 



As ranked with other collections in this country it is possibly in 

 second place, taken as a whole, although several museums exceed it 

 in special local collections. The accessions are mostly old ones, and 

 beginning with 1908 the collection lay untouched for almost twenty 

 years. 



The nucleus is the Louis Agassiz collection, which consists of such 

 European material as Professor Agassiz brought over and which 

 was early secured for the Natural History Collections of Harvard 

 College. The next large accession was the acquisition in 1862 of part 

 of the famous collection of the Earl of Enniskillen. It consists of 

 Palaeozoic sharks from the British Isles, and is unrivaled in this 

 country. Two small collections were also acquired in the sixties, the 

 Marder Collection in 1861, likewise British Palaeozoic sharks, and 

 the C. F. Hartt collection of Teleosts from the Cretaceous at Ceara, 

 Brazil. 



Nothing was added till the eighties, when in close order came the 

 Sternberg collection of the large predaceous Teleosts from the Kansas 

 chalk in 1881, the Haeberlein collection from Solenhofen in 1882, the 

 very large Stock collection of Ganoids from the Scottish Coal Meas- 

 ures in 1884, and the Terrell collection from the Cleveland Shale in 

 1885. These were all gifts of Alexander Agassiz. The Haeberlein 

 collection is the finest, from the Lithographic limestone, ever brought 

 to this country. The Terrell collection has yielded the fine specimen 

 of a large Arthrodire (Dinichthys) now on exhibition. Large collec- 

 tions of Teleosts from the Eocene of Monte Bolca, Italy, and from 

 Wyoming were also given by Alexander Agassiz. The preservation 

 of fish from these localities is perfect and they make very attractive 



