442 the canadian naturalist. [dec. 



Proceedings. 

 The Report of the Scientific Curator was first read, as follows : 

 Report of the Scientific Curator. 



Since the annual meeting, the Society's yearly report for the 

 session 1863-64 has been prepared and issued to the members. 

 Under the auspices of the council, a catalogue of the Canadian 

 vertebrata contained in the museum has been prepared and pub- 

 lished with the Report, in order that friends at a distance may 

 know what species are desiderata in our collection. Care has 

 been taken to make the list of donations to the museum and library 

 for the past year, full and complete. Efibrts have been made to 

 make the list of members accurate and trustworthy ; but it is feared 

 some errors may yet remain uncorrected. The co-operation of 

 members is desired in order that such mistakes may be avoided in 

 future. 



At the date of my last report (May 18) about 1200 specimens 

 of minerals had been carefully labelled. Since then, the remaining 

 part of the Holmes collection, consisting of about 500 specimens 

 has also been carefully labelled. The mass of confusion in the 

 large case in the aquarium-room has been reduced to something 

 like order, and about 430 specimens of rocks and minerals have 

 been named and exhibited. Many packages, that have remained 

 unopened for years, have been unpacked, and some of the best 

 specimens selected, named, and exhibited. Although upwards of 

 2000 examples of minerals and rocks have been labelled, about as 

 many more remain without their names affixed. As soon as proper 

 cases can be obtained, it is proposed, first to name all those which 

 are unlabelled, as far as possible, and then to thoroughly re-arrange 

 and classify the whole collection. The rock-specimens we ultimately 

 hope to arrange after the classification adopted by Prof. Dana, in 

 the last edition of his Manual of Geology, and simple minerals 

 after the plan followed in the " Mineralogy " of the same author. 

 It is hoped that when the collection of rocks and minerals is thus 

 arranged, it will be of far more us^ to the student of geology or of 

 mineralogy than in its present scattered state. Our Post Tertiary, 

 Tertiary, Cretaceous, Oolitic, Liassic, and Carboniferous fossils 

 have been mounted on tablets, classified, and named. Mr. Bil- 

 lings has kindly promised to determine the Silurian and Devonian 

 species. The most important part of the summer's work has been 

 the arrangement of the insect-cabinet. Thanks to the liberality 



