Letters, Announcements, &:c. 381 



Reicheiibach's works are in a most chaotic state of confusion. 

 We trust that Dr. Meyer will be able to give the date of issue 

 of each part and volume of Reichenbach^s publications^ as 

 many of them have absolutelv no date at all attached to them. 



Proposed Neiv "' Index Zooloffia/s." — We are pleased to be 

 able to announce that Mr. S. H. Scudder, of Cambridge^ 

 Mass., has undertaken to prepare a new ' Nomenclator Zoo- 

 logicus.' This is to be a complete index of all names used in 

 zoology. It will embrace all the names in Agassiz's ' No- 

 menclator/ to be marked " A/' those in Marshall's ' Nomen- 

 clator/ to be marked " M," and those in the successive num- 

 bers of the ' Zoological Record/ the object being, not merely 

 to give the names, but to show whether a proposed generic 

 name is preoccupied or not. 



The New U.S. National Museum at Washington. — From a 

 letter of Mr. E. Ingersoll to the ' Field ' of April 5th last, we 

 extract the subjoined account of the U.S. National Museum, 

 for the erection of which, in the grounds of the Smithsonian 

 Institution, an appropriation of 250,000 dollars was made by 

 the last Congress just before its adjournment. 



" The plan, contemplated as a whole, was originally sug- 

 gested by Quartermaster- Gen. Meigs, U.S. Army, after care- 

 ful inspection of the museums of Europe. It will be a build- 

 ing somewhat similar in appearance to those on the Exhibition 

 grounds at Philadelphia, though brought into harmony, as far 

 as possible, with the Lombardo-Gothic lines of the much- 

 abused Smithsonian. It will be 300 feet square, with an area 

 of 90,000 square feet — over two acres — and will be divided 

 into sixteen exhibition halls. In addition to the public halls, 

 the plans provide for about sixty smaller rooms, to be used as 

 offices, laboratories, workshops, and store-rooms. These will 

 occupy the two-story towers at the corners and entrances. 

 The central hall, surmounted by a sixteen- sided dome or 

 lantern about eighty feet high, will be over fifty feet square. 

 Outside of this is a lower roof, about forty feet high, its sup- 

 ports inclosing an area 216 feet square. Still further out- 

 side is a third roof, lower than the second, and separated 



