12 Forty-third Annual Report on the 



Mt. Tacoma, Wasliiugton, but tlie season was so unfavorable by- 

 reason of forest fires and smoke that it was abandoned. In the 

 Alaska trip the Muir glacier was visited, the glaciers in Taku 

 inlet, and the Davidson glacier, in Lynn canal, and many smaller 

 glaciers were seen from the ship's deck. The results of the trip 

 were instructive and suggestive of application in the full interj^re- 

 tation of glacial phenomena in New York, particularly in the 

 Catskill mountain region and in the Adirondack mountains. And 

 the field work, another season, in studying our glacial formations, 

 will have its problems solved by the aid of knowledge acquired 

 on the Pacific slope. 



During the latter part of the autumn I have visited the prin- 

 cipal cities of the State and have collected statistics of the use 

 of stone in building and in street work, and have obtained from 

 architects and stone dealers much valuable data about the sources, 

 durability, cost and comparative advantages or defects of the 

 stone used in these cities. 



Dr. Chas. E. Beecher retains his position on the Museum 

 staff, as Assistant and Consulting Palaeontologist. 



In the summer he visited Wyoming and South Dakota and 

 secured for the Museum some valuable fossils, minerals and stone 

 implements. He visited Louisville and examined the Nettleroth 

 collection and reported on it. He has examined several other and 

 smaller collections which were offered at sale. His most import- 

 ant service is a paper on the " Development of Some Silurian 

 Brachiopoda," and published as Memoir No. 1. Mr. John M. 

 Clarke, Assistant State Palaeontologist, was conjointly with him 

 author of this paper. 



Wm. B. Marshall, Assistant in Zoology, has charge of the 

 department of Zoology and the care of its collections. He has 

 given much time to their rearrangement and to the general 

 improvement of the exhibition of the material on the top floor of 

 the Museum. He has relabeled the birds, following the order in 

 Ridgway's " Manual of North American Birds ; " mounted the 

 Beecher collection of shells ; and rearranged nearly all of the col- 

 lections in the room. A study of the Unionidse of Albany county 

 has yielded some valuable data concerning the markings on the 

 beaks of these fresh-water shells, and important generalizations 

 have been drawn therefrom, which he has brought together in a 

 paper, to be published as a Museum bulletin. The records of 



