478 Annals of the Carnegie Museum. 



collection, which happily passed through the conflagration of the ware- 

 house in which they were temporarily stored without sustaining any 

 material injury, for which the authorities of the Museum have officially 

 expressed their gratitude to the officers of the Pittsburg Department of 

 Fire, who, upon being apprised that the valuable collection of the 

 Museum was in peril, made special efforts to secure it against loss. 



The library of the Museum has been enlarged by the actjuisition of 

 a great many important works during the past year. It is our inten- 

 tion ultimately to secure a complete set of the scientific journals pub- 

 lished by various learned societies, so that access to the literature of 

 the sciences on the part of all students in western Pennsylvania may 

 be facilitated. A complete set of the publications of the Linnaean 

 Society of London, a nearly complete set of the publications of the 

 "Wilke's Exploring Expedition, D'Orbigny's great work upon South 

 America, the works of Humboldt and Bonpland on the botany of South 

 America, La Sagra's Historia Fisica de la Is/a de Cuba, the Flora of 

 the Phillippine Islands, published under the direction of P. Fr. Andres 

 Naves, a complete set of the writings, published and unpublished, of 

 Townend Glover, a complete set of the Reports of the Challenger 

 Expedition, are among some of the more recent and important acqui- 

 sitions of the library of the Museum. Good foundations have been 

 laid by the acquisition of works e.specially relating to paleontology, 

 ornithology, entomology, and botany for systematic research. The 

 execution of our plans, however, will be a work which will necessarily 

 cover years. Meanwhile, the Museum, through the exchange of its 

 publications with other kindred institutions, is securing a great deal 

 of the contemporary literature of science. 



The fourth part of Volume I of the Memoirs of the Museum, con- 

 taining Mr. Ashmead's paper on the Chalcidoidea, has been published. 

 It will shortly be followed by another from the pen of the same author, 

 founded upon other collections made by Mr. Herbert H. Smith in 

 South America and belonging to the Carnegie Museum. 



The work of reproducing the skeleton of Diplodocus carnegii, which 

 Mr. Carnegie has authorized the Director of the Museum to have made 

 for the British Museum, is jjroceeding rapidly under the direction of 



