Zoology 721 



the acquisition of American material and to what was ac- 

 quired by donation. 



In the Report for 1867 it was recalled that "when the 

 government museum was transferred to the Institution, it 

 was stipulated that an appropriation should be annually made 

 for it," 1 and that "the appropriation for this purpose had 

 been limited until the last session of Congress to the sum 

 of $4000." 2 It was then announced that "the appropriation 

 was, last year, temporarily increased to $10,000, but," it was 

 added, "even were this continued, it would be still quite in- 

 adequate to the suitable maintenance of a national museum." 



During all these years there were no paid curators for the 

 zoological part of the museum, and reliance was had only on 

 volunteer aid of persons too busily engaged in other pursuits 

 properly to take care of collections of which they were nomi- 

 nal curators. The difficulties of such curators were much en- 

 hanced, too, by frequent changes and removals of collections 

 from place to place without supervision. The collections even 

 suffered also by the very willingness to make them useful ; for 

 example, in 1867 Doctor William Stimpson was authorized to 

 take most of the collection of American invertebrates, espe- 

 cially crustaceans and east-coast mollusks, to the Chicago 

 Academy of Science, of which he was director, for purposes 

 of study. He had engaged to prepare manuals of the marine 

 mollusks and crustaceans of the eastern United States, and 

 had prepared many descriptions and illustrations of mollusks 

 and shells, when the disastrous fire of 1873 destroyed a large 

 portion of the city of Chicago, and with it the building of the 

 Academy in which the collections had been housed. The 

 loss was irretrievable. The long labors of years were oblit- 

 erated, and the life of the author, unsupported by hope or 

 anticipation, and prostrate by grief, soon succumbed. 



1 " Smithsonian Report," 1867, page 55. 2 Ibidem, page 56. 



