50 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



specimens, or give certificates for commercial purposes of their value. 

 In regard to work of this class, the following rules have been adopted: 



1. All applications for the examination of specimens must be made 

 by letter, addressed " Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution." 



2. The specimens examined, or a part of them, will be retained by 

 the Institution. 



3. All specimens are to be delivered to the Institution free of expense. 



Mr. Meek, who still retains his connection with the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution, has continued during the past year his paleeontological inves- 

 tigations relative to the specimens collected by various State and Gen- 

 eral Government surveys. He spent last summer in Colorado in the in- 

 vestigation of the geology of the region, returned to Washington in 

 October, but on account of the weak condition of his lungs he thought 

 it prudent to spend the present winter in Florida, carrying with him a 

 part of his library and a series of specimens with which to continue his 

 work. 



Dr. Theodore Gill, who has special charge of the Smithsonian deposit 

 in the Library of Congress, and devotes his extra time in the Institution 

 to natural history, has been engaged during the past year in the study . 

 of the vertebrates generally, the results of which have been partially 

 published in a memoir on the number of classes of vertebrates and their 

 natural relations. He has also revised the nomenclature of the marine 

 fishes of our eastern coast from Greenland to Florida, and prepared a 

 catalogue of them for the report of the United States Commissioner of 

 Fish and Fisheries, and has, at the request of the same officer, investi- 

 gated the genus Micropterus, comprising the black-bass, &c, and defi- 

 nitely established its species and nomenclature. 



The Institution in 1870, fitted up a photographic apartment, under 

 the charge of Mr. S. W. Smillie, in which photographs are taken of 

 specimens of archaeology and of natural history for illustrating the pub- 

 lications of the Institution, and for distribution to other museums. 

 During the past year a large number of food-fishes and prehistoric re- 

 mains have been photographed. 



The specimens of the Institution are open to all investigators for 

 study, and no work of importance on natural history has been published 

 within the last twenty years in this country which has not been in- 

 debted to this establishment for the use of materials and other facilities 

 in its production. The same privilege has been granted, under certain 

 restrictions, to the officers of the Institution, and Professor Baird has 

 availed himself of this by employing his leisure time for several years 

 in the production of an extensive work on North American ornithology. 

 In this enterprise Professor Baird has associated with himself Dr. Thos. 

 M. Brewer, of Boston, and Mr. Robert Ridgeway, of Illinois. The work 

 is published by Messrs. Little & Brown, of Boston, who have printed 



