8 Thirty-third Annual Eeport of the 



series will probably require about twenty cases for its illustration. 

 For the Biological Collection, quite an amount of material has 

 been obtained, which is not yet exhibited. This collection is intended 

 to represent the entire life-history of our most injurious insects, through- 

 out, as far as possible, their several stages and transformations, their 

 architecture, conditions of disease, the parasites attacking them, and 

 their depredations upon their food-plants or other objects which they 

 infest or frequent. Such a collection will admit of indefinite exten- 

 sion ; and its value for instruction and economic uses will be commen- 

 surate with its use in showing the several phases of the insect depre- 

 dator whose nature and habits it is important to learn. 



Geology. — The principal work in the arranged collections of this 

 department has been to exhibit in some temporary table-cases the series 

 of rock specimens, two hundred and fifteen in number, collected the 

 previous summer by J. W. Hall from fifty-one typical localities on the 

 Hudson river, between Ehinebeck and New York. This excellent 

 series will illustrate, to some extent, the physical characters and the 

 geographical distribution of the rocks of that part of the Hudson 

 river valley. The specimens at present bear only the locality number, 

 the list of localities corresponding being in the director's office. 



The collections of fossil corals from Western New York have fur- 

 nished large numbers of fine slabs covered with various species and 

 genera of corals, which have been weathered into fine relief ; or of 

 masses of a single species, which being silicified have been beautifully 

 preserved in the weathering and solution of the limestone. These 

 make most interesting and important additions to the collection, both 

 for study and exhibition. For the want of a suitable place for their 

 display, a few of these slabs only have been placed in the entrance 

 hall of the museum. 



During the past year, studies of the Gasteropoda, Pteropeda, 

 and Cephalopoda have been essentially finished, and the volume con- 

 taining the descriptions and figures of the species, embracing 492 pages 

 of letter-press with 120 plates, has been completed and published. 



All the specimens of Gasteropoda, which had been in use, from the 

 original collections of the museum, together with others obtained from 

 later collections, and used for special study, have been placed in the 

 cases upon the first floor of the museum and properly labeled. The 

 specimens of Pteropoda and Cephalopoda, which have been used in the 

 descriptions and illustrations of the volume, will soon be labeled and 

 arranged in the cases as far as these afford room for the same. In the 

 last-mentioned class of fossils large accessions have been made to the 

 collections and to the number of species, and the cases available for 

 their exhibition are quite inadequate to contain them. 



The cleaning, preparation and ticketing of the extensive collections 

 of 1878, chiefly the Corals and Bryozoa of the Upper Helderberg and 

 Hamilton groups, have occupied the greater part of the time of Mr. 

 Geo. B. Simpson, who has made a careful study of the Bryozoans of 

 this and the previous collections; and has selected and arranged the 

 materials, critically determining the species. This work has been done 

 for the museum collections preparatory to making the drawings for 

 illustrating this portion of the Natural History of the State. The 

 material has afforded figures for about twenty- five plates, for which 

 the original drawings are nearly completed. 



