676 ^ CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



We have seen the revolutionary change brought about by the invention of the 

 snap-back trap. This little device, designed to take the smaller species, was 

 responsible, within a few years after its appearance, for the hundredfold increase 

 in the size of mammal collections. 



The mammal collection of the Fish and Wildlife Service (more familiarly 

 known as the Biological Survey) is limited to recent North and Middle America 

 species, of which it has the largest representation of any collection in the world. 

 Included in this great collection is the type of the smallest North American mam- 

 mal, Microsorex hoyi winnemana, a tiny shrew weighing less than a dime. This 

 elfm creature was collected by Edward A. Preble on the Potomac shoreline, almost 

 within sight of the building where it is now housed. The collection also includes 

 the type of the largest of all existing carnivores, TJrsus tniddendorfi, collected on 

 Kodiak Island, Alaska. Of the valued types, the survey collections contain 1,313, 

 nearly half of the species and subspecies of North American mammals that are 

 known today. These collections, like others, are indispensable in connection with 

 the administration of wildlife, and are the basis for distributional, taxonomic, 

 and identification studies. On June 30, 1952, this collection contained 146,237 

 catalogued specimens. 



The United States National Museum collection contains mammals from all 

 parts of the world. In recent years, about 2,000 specimens have been added an- 

 nually. This collection now (1952) has 110,824 specimens. Major collections have 

 been received in the past ten years from Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, Labrador, 

 Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia in the New World, and from Egypt, Sudan, 

 Japan, Korea, Formosa, Philippines, Burma, Nepal, Siam, Borneo, Australia, 

 and nearly all the island groups of the Pacific. 



The American IMuseum of Natural History mammal collections contain more 

 than 130,000 specimens. The many expeditions to South America, Asia, Africa, 

 Madagascar, Australia, and Oceania have resulted in the discovery of many new 

 species. Well over 800 types are represented in the museum. More than half of 

 the collection is composed of North American specimens. In 1940, the Museum 

 of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, had in its collections slightly 

 more than 100,000 skins. These were primarily representatives of the Pacific Coast, 

 from Alaska to Lower California, the Great Basin, northern Mexico, and Salvador. 

 This is a remarkably large collection for a university museum, more than twice 

 the number contained in the University of Michigan, which may be considered 

 the second largest mammal collection owned by an educational institution. 



The increasing interest in mammals is reflected in the ever growing collections, 

 both private and public. A survey of the existing North American collections 

 was made by A. B. Howell in 1923. A comparison of the survey made by Doutt 

 et al. (1945) and Howell's earlier study reveals many interesting changes in the 

 twenty-year span. In this short period the number of specimens in collections 

 more than doubled. The number of private collections had increased two and a 

 half times, while public collections were almost five times as common as in 1923. 

 Doutt's report lists 939,483 specimens in United States and Canadian collections, 

 whereas only 410,239 specimens were recorded by Howell in 1923. Since 1943 

 even greater strides have been made. The National Museum collection is increas- 

 ing by 2,000 specimens a year, while more than 8,000 specimens were added to the 

 Biological Survey collections in the past nine years. The University of Michigan 



