REPORT OF DIRECTOR AND STATE GEOLOGIST 1900 rl89 



crystal models will occupy the flat case in the rear room of the 

 mineral department. 



In addition a catalogue of mineral species represented in the 

 museum has been prepared and is now in press. This catalogue 

 will be attached to the cases containing the mineral collections. 



GENERAL ZOOLOGY 



The work of cataloguing and relabeling the collections begun 

 during the previous year by Dr Farr, assistant in zoology, has 

 been continued by him as time would permit, till now the work 

 has been completed on all the vertebrates except the small col- 

 lection of amphibians and reptiles. During the year the fish and 

 mammals have been catalogued, and the fish and birds have been 

 entirely relabeled. For the birds a new and more attractive 

 style of label was designed to replace the old labels, which were 

 discolored by age and were not uniform in size. In the new 

 labels, as far as has been possible, the locality, date of capture 

 and donor have been indicated, as well as the seasonal plumage 

 and sex of the bird. It is thus possible except in the case of the 

 older specimens, for which we have meager data, to tell at a 

 glance what particular region each bird is from; and more 

 interest attaches to a specimen known to come from a certain 

 locality than to a species which may be known to occur occa- 

 sionally within our limits, while the individual specimen in the 

 exhibit may come from a different region. 



In pursuance to a policy previously adopted, each label bears 

 a number referring to that in the card catalogue. In labeling all 

 the collections except the alcoholic specimens, which have the 

 labels securely cemented to the jars, each label bears a number 

 on the reverse side, while a corresponding number is affixed to 

 the base or pedestal on which the specimen is mounted, so that 

 it is impossible for a label to be misplaced without immediate 

 detection. 



During the month of August Dr Farr visited the American 

 museum of natural history in New York for the purpose of study- 

 ing its collections of foreign birds and identifying some few forms 



