8 TWENTY-SEVENTH REPORT ON THE STATE MUSEUM. 



duties of the museum. During the months of July and 

 August he was chiefly engaged in making collections for the 

 Museum ; a portion of which have been arranged in their 

 proper relations. The alcoholic collections remained undis- 

 tributed, for want of proper jars for containing them, at the 

 time he left the Museum in October. 



Mr. Peck has during the past year, as heretofore, devoted 

 his time entirely to botany, and the results are equally im- 

 portant and satisfactory as in former years. 



With the assent of the Board of Regents, Mr. C. Callaway 

 has been employed as a special assistant for the past year. 

 He was at first engaged in the cleaning, assorting and re- 

 arrangement of the minerals. Under a provision in the 

 supply bill of last year, Mr. Callaway has since, as for some 

 time previous, been occupied in cleaning, preparing and label- 

 ing the duplicate specimens from the Gebhard collection, 

 and, lately, of those collected for the Museum, and for the 

 Palaeontology of the State by the assistants. 



Disposition of Material. 



In the entrance hall, on the right of the door, a vertical 

 case has been made for the reception of thirty specimens of 

 granite, representing the stone used in the construction of the 

 dry-dock at Brooklyn, and presented by Hon. Wm. J. McAl- 

 pine, the engineer of that work. These blocks have for several 

 years occupied a place among miscellaneous collections in the 

 Curator' s room, but are now appropriately arranged with the 

 economic collection. 



On the first floor of the Museum, the following additions 

 have been made : Eighty- six species of carboniferous fossils 

 from the Western States ; several species of Upper Helderberg 

 corals ; two slabs of Oriskany sandstone with Rensselceria 

 ovoides ; two slabs of Schoharie Grit with orthoceratites ; one 

 slab of Hamilton shale with Spirifera muoronatus ; one slab of 

 Hamilton Lamellibranchiate shells ; with several miscellaneous 

 specimens. 



From the Chemung group is one mass composed mainly of 

 ftpirifera Verneuili ; also one large slab, with numerous charac- 

 teristic fossils, from a thin gray layer in the midst of red rocks of 

 shale and shaly sandstone previously supposed to be of the Cats- 



