22 Forty-first Annual Report on the 



collection of MoUusca for exMbition in the State Museum. The 

 system of mounting and labeling employed in the Academy of 

 Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, has been adopted. The collection, 

 when properly mounted, will occupy about 300 drawers and by 

 this method of mounting will require a space equal to that now 

 occupied by the entire Molluscan collections. 



The purchase of the Kunz collection of minerals has given the 

 Museum a good general collection, and in the rearrangement of 

 the Mineralogical department the old collection which for years 

 occupied the cases at the west end of the third-story room, was 

 broken up and distributed, the choice specimens being added to 

 the Kunz collection and the remainder placed in the stock for 

 exchange and for making up duplicate collections for the schools. 



The collection of New York minerals was formerly exhibited in 

 the cases on the front and at the east end of the same room. 

 Excepting the saline class it has been rearranged in the cases 

 which held the general collection. In this rearrangement an effort 

 was made to retain the specimens of the original Beck collection, 

 valuable as a historic record and representative of the Mineralogical 

 department of the State Surve}^ at its close in 1842. The speci- 

 mens were all compared with the catalogues, and all which could 

 be identified as belonging to the original collection have been left 

 in that arrangement, and 685 of them bear labels of that collec- 

 tion. Although the labels on the remainder have been lost, the 

 localities and their place in the collection prove their origin as the 

 same. About 200 specimens of New York minerals, which had 

 been incorporated in the State collection by additions from year to 

 year, have been removed to the general collection and to the stock 

 of duplicate material. As far as possible the New York localities 

 of minerals are now represented by the best specimens in the 

 general collection in the first-story rooms ; and there is no longer 

 a distinctive New York or State collection other than what 

 may be called the Bech Collection, which is historic rather than 

 representative. 



The mineralogical collections have received important additions 

 by collections made in Essex and Warren counties. The collec- 

 tions from Essex county are principally from the town of Newcomb, 

 and comprise a variety of minerals, notable among which are 

 large and fine crystals of brown tourmaline, furnishing some mate- 

 rial suitable for gems. A series of specimens from this locality 



