State Museum of Natural History. 11 



ronage of the State. It is of no avail to say that the employees of the 

 Museum are paid for their services whether their productions are pub- 

 lished or not. The fact of the publication is important to them as 

 well as to the museum ; and we also have volunteer contributors who 

 communicate important papers with the expectation of seeing them 

 appear in the Museum reports. 



I am well convinced that the founders of the Museum could never 

 have anticipated such a state of things ; and certainly the Board of 

 Regents, when making a special report to the Legislature in 1866, re- 

 garding the reorganizing of the State Cabinet of Natural History, in 

 order to meet the advancing requirements of science, could never have 

 supposed that the reports of its workings would remain unpublished 

 for two, three, or four years after their completion and presentation. 

 1 beg most earnestly that your Board will give serious consideration to 

 this matter, which I assure you is of vital importance to the existence 

 of the Museum as a scientific institution. 



The tables of contents of the thirty-second and thirty-third reports 

 are as given in the note below.* 



*THIRTY- SECOND REPORT. 



Report of the Director. 



Additions to the State Museum during the year 1878. 

 Report of the Botanist, C. H. Peck. 



The Mosses of Spring Brook, Caledonia, by Charles H. Peck. 

 The Insects and other.'Animal Forms of Spring Brook, Caledonia, by J. A. Lintner 

 Annelida Chsetopoda of New Jersey, by H. E. Webster. 



Descriptions of New Species^of Fossils from the Calciferous Formation, by C. D 

 Walcott. 

 Laurentian Magnetic Iron Ore deposits, of Northern New York, by Charles E. 

 Hall. 

 Descriptions of Lower Helderberg Corals and Bryozoans, by James Hall. . 



Thirty-third Report. 



Report of the Director. 



Additions to the State Museum during the year 1879. 

 List of additions to the Synoptical collection of insects. 

 List of the Unionidae of the Gould collection. 

 List of the Uuionidse of the State collection. 

 List of the Unionidae of the general collection. 

 List of the Land Shells of the New York State collection. 

 List of the Corbiculidae of the New York State collection. 

 List of the Land Shells of the United States in the Museum collections. 

 List of Land Shells presented to the State Museum in 1875, by Dr. James Lewis 

 Descriptions of New Species of Fossils from the Trenton Group of New York 

 by C. D. Walcott, with illustrations. 



Report of the Botanist, Charles H. Peck, with illustrations. 



Bryozoans of the Upper Helderberg and Hamilton Groups, by James Hall. 



In the same connection I beg leave to call your attention to another 

 condition attached to the publications of the Museum. The reports 

 are published for the Regents of the University, and have formerly all 

 been delivered at the State Library. Within a few years the Museum 

 has been allowed a small proportion of the copies for distribution. In 

 the publication of the Natural History of the State, the Palaeontology 

 when published is delivered to the Secretary of State for sale and distri- 

 bution, but these volumes often remain a long time in the office, many 

 copies of volumes three and four being still on hand. The Museum is 

 suffering for the want of a library, and the few important works which 



