REPORT OP THE DIRECTOR 1898 r37 



museum has only a few forms. The great abundance of Miocene 

 Mollusca along the middle Atlantic slope, which are so remarkably 

 preserved, should be a sufficient cause for enlarging this collection. 



Such material as desired could probably be secured by exchange 

 of paleozoic fossils from New York with the large collections to be 

 found in many of the southern institutions. Excellent naaterial is 

 in this way added annually to the Johns Hopkins university col- 

 lections, and the expense of obtaining it reduced to a minimum. 



The work of revising and arranging the British Tertiary was 

 completed in December. All of the specimens in the museum 

 which were relabeled were remounted on blocks, they being covered 

 over with pinkish paper, such as was used in the synoptic mineral 

 and rock collections. The British collection is of interest because it 

 was given in the year 1858 by the renowned English geologist, Sir 

 Roderick Murchison, who at that time was at the head of the 

 geological survey of Great Britain. 



The Eocene fossils from the Paris basin, France, were presented 

 to the museum in 1858 by W. C. Johnson, of Utica. The first two 

 weeks of January were spent in remounting and labeling this 

 superb collection. Scarcely any locality in the world exceeds the 

 '' Paris basin " in the variety and wonderful preservation of fossi- 

 shells, and the museum is fortunate in having so good a representa- 

 tion of them. Where illustrations of the fossils could not be found, 

 I was obliged to accept the earlier determinations as correct. The 

 changes made in most cases contain the older synonyms in paren- 

 thesis. All of these specimens came from Damery, France. The 

 collection of Tertiary fossils from Europe contains 337 different 

 species, which is just twice as many as our American Tertiary. 



The Miocene is, however, wanting in Great Britain, and we have 

 no specimens from that horizon, though it is well developed on the 

 continent of Europe. 



The task of relabeling the British Eocene and Oligocene was 

 simplified by the use of Prof. R. B. Kewton's report preyicusly 

 mentioned. 



The following specimens labeled as coming from the European 

 Eocene do not agree either with the horizon or the locality assigned 

 to them by Newton in his memoir. 



