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Report of the Hope Professor of Zoology, 1909. 



It will be realized from the following pages that the year 

 1909 has been marked in the history of the Department by 

 rapid growth of the collections, by the large amount of work 

 that has been done, and by generous assistance of many kinds 

 that has been rendered. 



The urgent necessity for increased space to which attention 

 has been directed on many occasions is at length to be met 

 by extension into the southern end of the old Radcliffe 

 Library. 



I. Financial Gifts and Grants to the Department. 



For many years the expense of an extra assistant has been 

 generously defrayed by Dr. G. B. Longstafif. In 1909, by the 

 munificent gift of ;^2,400, Dr. Longstafif created an endowment 

 which renders the assistantship permanent or can be employed 

 to aid the Department in other directions. The Trust deed 

 is a model one in its simplicity and the provision to ensure 

 that, whatever the conditions of the future, the fund will 

 always be of the highest utility to the Department. 



The dangerous state of the collection of moths has been 

 referred to in earlier Reports. This great collection, con- 

 taining hundreds of types, was either far too densely crowded 

 in cabinets of an old and unsafe kind or kept in the original 

 store-boxes of the W. W. Saunders collection (1830-1873), in 

 which they were purchased and presented by Mrs. F. W. Hope 

 in 1873. The boxes themselves were well made by the 

 celebrated cabinet-maker Standish, but they are so old that 

 the cork has lost much of its elasticity and large insects are 

 very liable to fall, injuring themselves and others. Small and 

 delicate insects are in even greater danger from the rush of 

 air caused by opening so large a box. These great risks 

 have been averted during the past year, and the whole collec- 

 tion of moths is now safely arranged in a series of inter- 

 changeable drawers, sufficiently numerous to admit of increase 

 for many years. The large Van der Poll collection, recently 

 disposed of in London, was in chief part contained in 960 

 drawers fitting into 5 enormous cases without doors. These 



