EEPOKT OF THE SECRETARY. * 43 



accomplished in the cramped work-rooms in Washington. The collec- 

 tions which under these more favorable conditions had been overhauled, 

 identified, properly catalogued, and arranged were returned to Wash- 

 ington in October and November, and replaced upon the shelves in sys- 

 tematic order, where they, are now being worked up as rapidly as pos- 

 sible. 



IX. JDei)artment ofMolluslcs. — The department of mollusks under cue 

 curatorship of Mr. W. H. Dall and Mr. E. E. 0. Stearns, has made ex- 

 tensive progress during the year, especially in .he matter of catalogu- 

 ing and arranging the accumulations of past years. The amount of 

 work accomplished is well shown by the number of catalogue entries, 

 which is 18,638, representing between fifty and sixty thousand individ- 

 ual specimens. Only three times as many entries were made in the 

 catalogue of this department during the preceding twenty years. The 

 number of entries docs not represent the accessions of the year which 

 contained, however, much that was valuable and interesting. The clas. 

 sification and systematic arrangement of the accessions of previous 

 years, especially the Jeffreys collection and the Stearns collection, have 

 made extensive demands upon the attention of the staff. It may fairly 

 be said that there never has been an exhibition col lection of mollusks, 

 although many years ago a few cases of shells were incidentally dis- 

 played. A beginning has been made by the curator in the work of de- 

 veloping this collection, and one experimental case containing the chief 

 types of cephalopods, pearls and pearl formations, cameo shells, and 

 sections showing the internal structure of various large and ornamen- 

 tal species, has been placed on exhibition. A provisional display is also 

 made of the principal economic mollusks of North America. There is, 

 however, no space available for exhibition of molluscan collections, and 

 the laboratory rooms are inadequate and inconvenient, so that even the 

 task of making the collections available for the use of students is much 

 more difficult than it should be, and what is being done may be looked 

 npon as preparatory to the occupation of more suitable apartments 

 when such shall have been provided. 



The main features of the work of the year may be stated as follows: 

 The identification of specimens for teachers and others in various parts 

 of the United States; the identification and classification of the recent 

 or living mollusks of the Atlantic coast of North America, as well as 

 those of the Antillean-Caribbean region, in order to facilitate compari- 

 son and investigation of the later fossils with related living forms ; the 

 arrangement of land, pond and fluviatile gastropods, as well as the 

 fresh- water acephala for the purposes of comparison and investigation 

 in the matter of geographical distribution and variation of species as 

 related to and affected by environment and environmental conditions. 



The foregoing, as a whole, bears directly or indirectly upon the 

 geological phenomena and physical conditions, present and past, of the 

 continent of North America, &c., and the connection of the latter with 



