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REPORT OF THE CURATOR OF THE MUSEUMS. 
To vHe DrrectTor-tn-CHiEF. 
Dear Sir: 1 have the honor to submit herewith my report 
as Curator of the Museums and Herbarium for the year 
1899: 
Museums. 
I, Museum Mareriau.* During the early part of the year 
the accumulated material belonging to the Garden, derived 
from previous donations, exchanges, and purchases, and vari- 
ous more or less bulky objects accompanying sets of herbarium 
specimens, especially those of the Gibbes’ collection, together 
with the museum specimens from Columbia University, now on 
deposit at the Garden, altogether making a total of over 2000 
specimens, was carefully cleaned and thoroughly poisoned 
with mercuric chloride in order to prevent the ravages 
of insects in the future. These specimens will be largely 
available for exhibition purposes in the museums, and those 
not used in this way may be placed in the study collections. 
1. General collections. During the spring, summer and 
fall the assistants and other members of the Garden staff 
spent all the available time in the field collecting specimens 
for use in the economic and systematic museums, the endeavor 
being to most thoroughly strengthen the exhibits of the food 
plants, drug plants, fiber plants, timber plants and poison 
plants for the economic museum, and the types to illustrate 
the natural families for the systematic museum. We were 
aided in this work by suggestions and various lists from Dr. 
Rusby, the Honorary Curator of the Economic Collections. 
Besides being useful for illustrating the products just men- 
tioned, our Jocal collections will serve to strengthen the exhibits 
of plants yielding essential oils, fixed oils, resins, gums, waxes, 
starch, glucose, sugar and plants of miscellaneous economic 
application, as an ample supply and duplicates were gathered 
* See also tabulated appendix to this report. 
