56 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1897. 



The Manchester Museum, Owens College, Manchester, England, pre- 

 sented fifty-four species of fossils from the Lancashire coal measures. 



A great deal of time has been devoted to the exhibition series of 

 fossil vertebrates and fossil plants, but the collections are still in a 

 condition far from satisfactory. When the new gallery in the southeast 

 court is completed, the former series will be considerably enlarged. 

 The Marsh collection of vertebrates should be labeled and the entire 

 invertebrate exhibition series mounted upon tiles. All of the fossil 

 Medusa? illustrated by the Director of the U. S. Geological Survey in 

 a work to be i^ublished by the Survey, will be i^laced upon exhibition. 

 Two synoptic collections illustrating the genera, families, and orders of 

 the Crinoids and Trilobites have been arranged and mounted on tiles 

 for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, About five months have been 

 given to the preparation of the Zeuglodon material collected by Mr. 

 Schuchert, and a nearly complete skeleton of this cetacean will soon 

 be placed upon exhibition. 



Considerable progress has been made with the study collections in 

 the various sectious of this department under the charge of Messrs. 

 W. H. Dall, Lester F. Ward, T. W. Stanton, F. H. Knowlton, David 

 White, and Charles Schuchert. The material gathered annually by 

 these gentlemen is, however, accumulatiug more rapidly than they are 

 able to study and finally dispose of. 



The assistant curator has been able to give very little time to original 

 research, owing to i^ressure of other work. He has, however, as oppor- 

 tunity i)ermitted, continued his studies of the Kortli American fossil 

 starfishes. He has also prepared reports on several collections of 

 fossils submitted to him by the Director of the U. S. Geological Survey. 

 His work entitled Synripsis of American Fossil Brachiopoda, includ- 

 ing Bibliography and Synonymy, has been completed, and is in type. 

 It will appear as Bulletin No. 87 of the U. S. Geological Survey. 



A number of papers have been i^iiblished during the year by mem- 

 bers of the staff of this department. The titles of these appear in the 

 Bibliography (Appendix lY). 



The assistant curator devoted a portion of the month of May, 1897, 

 to collecting invertebrates from the Devonian strata of western Ten- 

 nessee. His explorations in Alabama have already been referred to. 

 From the Fewkes expedition of 1896,. through Mr. Walter Hough, an 

 interesting collection of Mesozoic invertebrate fossils was received. A 

 large quantity of material collected by the paleontologists of the U. S. 

 Geological Survey has been deposited in the Museum, but has not yet 

 been formally transferred. 



A number of si^ecimens have been lent to Prof. Alpheus Hyatt, of 

 Cambridge, Massachusetts, for use in the preparation of a synopsis of 

 the class Cephalo^wda. Professor Hyatt also spent a short time at the 

 Museum in April, 1897, studying the ammonites. 



Prof. J. F. Whiteaves, of the Geological Survey of Canada, identified 



