Growth of 'the Collection. 79 



hitherto had been stored at the Challenger Office in Edinburgh 1890. 

 in charge of Sir John Murray, were transferred to the British 

 Museum. They amounted to many thousands of specimens of 

 every form of marine animals, and included numerous examples 

 of great value. This transference was made with the under- 

 standing that, after a selection had been made of any specimens 

 required for the national collection, " all the other specimens are 

 to be used in the way of exchange for Deep-Sea and Pelagic 

 specimens not represented in the British Museum, so that 

 these Deep Sea and Pelagic collections may be rendered as 

 complete as possible." The collection was placed in a room of the 

 Eastern Basement, where the specimens were sorted, and detailed 

 working lists for all the groups were prepared. None of these 

 duplicates are included in the following statement. 



The registered accessions numbered 77,658 specimens. 

 Although this increase is considerably in excess of the average, 

 it did not much differ in its composition from the more normal 

 increases of other years. Almost exactly one-half were dona- 

 tions. With the exception of some 3000 specimens, all those 

 purchased (38,000) had been authentically named. 45,000 speci- 

 mens were Insects, of which about 37,000 were named when they 

 reached the Museum, while only 21,000 had been named out of 

 the 33,000 belonging to the other groups. 



Of the named Challenger collections were received : 18 

 Mammals, 19 Reptiles, 184 Fishes, 416 Molluscs, 20 Polyzoa, 

 83 Pelagic Hemiptera, 141 Worms, 1209 Echinoderms, 18 

 Anthozoa, 24 Hydrozoa, 15 Sponges and 216 Radiolaria. 



The Bird collection received further instalments from Messrs. 

 Godman and Salvin, Sclater, Seebohm and Shelley, and a valuable 

 set of South African Birds collected by the late Mr. J. H. Gurney, 

 and presented by his son. 



The most important acquisition of the year was the collection 

 of Arachnida formed by the late Count Keyserling, which was 

 one of the five large collections of Spiders known to exist at the 

 time in private or public museums. It comprised more than 

 2000 species, or about 10,000 specimens. Its great value 

 consisted in the large proportion of types (884) described by 

 the collector and in the authentic determinations of the 

 remainder. This collection, combined with the one previously 

 formed by the Trustees, probably forms now the most important 

 of this class of animals in existence. It was purchased for 450. 



The collection of Lepidoptera formed by the late Professor H. 

 Frey of Zurich, consisted of 16,000 named specimens in beautiful 



