DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGY. 141 



Department of Geology. 



I.— The Staff. 



During the year the duties of the scientific staff have been 

 re-arranged, owing to the appointments of Dr. Bather as 

 Assistant-Keeper and Mr. W. D. Lang as Assistant. The 

 Keeper, assisted by Dr. Andrews, continues to take special 

 charge of the Vertebrata. The Assistant-Keeper supervises 

 the arrangement of the Brachiopoda, Vermes, Echinoderma, 

 and Arthropoda, and is engaged upon a catalogue of the 

 Echinoderma. Mr. Newton and Mr. Crick are jointly occupied 

 with the Mollusca. Mr. Lang began duties in October, and 

 does miscellaneous work in the arrangement of the Polyzoa, 

 Actinozoa, Hydrozoa, Porifera, and Protozoa. Dr. Henry 

 Woodward has been specially engaged by the Trustees, with 

 the sanction of the Treasury, to prepare and exhibit a 

 collection illustrative of Dynamical Geology. Dr. Forsyth 

 Major has also been employed for a short time on the 

 collection of Mammalia. Dr. Andrews was absent from the 

 Museum and engaged in collecting fossil Vertebrata in Egypt 

 from January 22nd to May 12th. 



II. — Arrangement and Conservation. 



Besides the examination and incorporation of recent 

 acquisitions, the chief work of the year has been the registra- 

 tion and arrangement of old collections, which have hitherto 

 remained unregistered or incompletely identified and labelled. 

 This has been done while preparing an outline of the history 

 of the geological collection, and has resulted in the recognition 

 of many valuable specimens which have previously escaped 

 notice. The most important identification was that of the 

 John Finch Collection of Tertiary Mollusca from Maryland, 

 which was purchased by the British Museum in 1834 but 

 never registered and labelled. This series of shells was 

 described by Thomas Say in Journ. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philad., 

 1824, and about half of the specimens figured have now been 

 recognised and duly marked. 



More details in the progress of the arrangement and 

 conservation of the collection may be enumerated as 

 follows : — 



MamTnalia (Galleries 1 and 2). — A small collection of 

 mammalian remains dredged from the ted of the North Sea, 

 has been arranged and labelled in pier-case 2 to complete the 

 illustration of the British Pleistocene Mammal Fauna. 



The last Sikora Collection of bones of Lemurs from the 

 caverns of Madagascar has been registered and incorporated. 



