62 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1884 



(e) Department of Comparative Anatomy. 



A Department of Comparative Anatomy is being organized, under the 

 charge of Mr. Frederick W. True, and the east-south range has been 

 fitted up with a set of cases especially constructed after new designs for 

 the reception of the preparations. Mr. Lucas, with his two assistants, 

 has been engaged during the latter part of the year in mounting skele- 

 tons, and fully 150 fine preparations have been put on exhibition. The 

 report of Mr. True upon the plan of organization will not be presented 

 until next year, since much preparatory work remains to be done. A 

 case illustrating the work in this department was sent to the New Or- 

 leans Exposition. 



(/) Department of Mollusks. 



Mr. W. H. Dall, who has for many years had charge of the collection 

 of mollusks, having been appointed one of the paleontologists of the 

 Geological Survey, and assigned to the Department of Quaternary Mol- 

 lusks, has, by the request of the Director of the Survey, been assigned 

 working-rooms in the Smithsonian building, and will continue to care 

 for the department as heretofore, access to the collections of recent 

 shells being necessary for comparison with the shells of the Quaternary 

 beds, which are, for the most part, specifically identical. Prof. E. E. O. 

 Stearns, late of the University of California, has been assigned to this 

 department as adjunct curator, and since the 1st of July there has 

 been great activity in rearranging the collections. It was decided to 

 make an extensive display of the mollusks of the United States at the 

 New Orleans Exposition, and the well-known Stearns collection of mol- 

 lusks, for which negotiations had been in progress for some years, was 

 purchased from the exhibition appropriation. Professor Stearns had 

 in charge the preparation of the scries for New Orleans, which occupied 

 his time from July until the end of the year. This occupied twenty 

 large cases, and exhibits the economic mollusks of both coasts and the 

 adjacent seas, and the fresh-water mussels which form so remarkable a 

 part of the fauna of the great Mississippi basin. Mr. E. Ellsworth Call 

 has been employed for six months in connection with the New Orleans 

 work, and by the efforts of these three conchologists, with the help of 

 two clerks, much progress has been made toward getting under final 

 control the immense mass of material in this department. 



The identification of the specimens representing the American laud 

 shells has occupied the attention of the curator. He has also devoted 

 himself to the study of the deep-sea forms obtained from the Gulf of 

 Mexico and the Caribbean Sea by Prof. Alexander Agassiz. 



It is Mr. Dall's opinion that, when the mass of material which yet re- 

 mains to be examined has been classified, the national collections, as 

 far as the fauna of North America and its adjacent seas is concerned, 

 will not be surpassed by any other collection in the world. 



