REPORT ON THE DEPARTMENT OF MAMMALS 

 IX THE l'. S, NATIONAL MUSEUM, L889. 



By Frederick W. True, Curator. 



At the opening of the last fiscal year the preparations for the Ohio 

 Valley Centennial Exposition, which had occupied the month of June, 

 were nearly completed. A number of matters, however, still demanded 

 attention, and the exposition work was not entirely off our hands until 

 a month later. Early in the fall the Curator was called upon. to assist 

 in the routine work of the Assistant Secretary's office. For this rea- 

 son, and also because for a considerable part of the time the Chief Taxi- 

 dermist was occupied by special work, outside of his regular duties, 

 the progress made in the department during the year was not so great 

 as it would have been under more favorable conditions. 



The exhibition series received more important additions than, per- 

 haps, during any other year. The collection contains representatives 

 of a larger number of families of mammals than ever before. A por- 

 tion of these specimens were received in exchange, others were pur- 

 chased, and the remainder originally formed a part of the series exhib- 

 ited in the Cincinnati Exposition. 



The groups of prairie dogs and opossums, the first of a series in- 

 tended to represent the smaller forms peculiar to North America, were 

 placed in new, specially designed, cases. The series of easts of Ceta- 

 ceans, which forms a special feature of the collection of the Museum, 

 was renovated and completed. 



Attention was directed afresh to tin- matter of providing better 

 storage-cases for the study-series. New arrangements were made 

 necessary, especially by the fact that the Bureau of Economic Orni- 

 thology and Mammalogy of the Department of Agriculture, had agreed 

 to deposit in the Museum its valuable collection of North American 

 mammals. The new cases are not completed at this date, but it is ex- 

 pected that they will be in use within a few months. 



Among the accessions of the year are many interesting specimens. 

 Two specimens of the rare Florida muskrat, Neofiber alleni, were pre- 

 sented by William Wittfield, esq. Mr. Loren W.Green presented a 

 series of excellent skins of the northern variety of Tamias utriatus, col- 



349 



