246 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1884. 



Work in the line of research has been confined to such examinations 

 of the material to be exhibited at New Orleans as were necessary for 

 the preparation of suitable descriptions and labels of the exhibits in 

 this department, and has necessarily been very much broken. The 

 plan followed was to do only the necessary work of preparing the ma- 

 terial for the temporary exhibit at New Orleans, and to confine such 

 work to that which would be suitable for use in the final examination 

 of the material, which must be delayed until its return from New 

 Orleans. 



In this connection Mr. J. A. Allen has made, in the laboratory of this 

 department, seventeen quantitative analyses since the 1st of July, be- 

 sides a great many qualitative examinations. 



The material collected for the New Orleans Exposition offers many 

 promising topics for research, and this work will be taken up and car- 

 ried forward as rapidly as possible upon the return of the material to 

 Washington. 



The only papers published by the curator were, chapter III in the 

 Tenth Census Eeport of the Building Stone Industry, entitled " The 

 Chemical Examination of Building Stones," and a biographical memoir 

 of the late Dr. George W. Hawes. These are noticed in the bibliograph- 

 ical appendix to this report. 



The large amount of work that has been put upon the material of this 

 department during the past year has brought it under very much bet- 

 ter control. It has now been so far examined and administered upon 

 that it is much easier to tell what we have and what we have not than 

 it has been at any former time. In the reserve series have been placed 

 1,345 specimens, besides which there is yet included in this series a con- 

 siderable amount of material not yet administered upon. Nine thousand 

 five hundred specimens have been placed on exhibition and 1,353 speci- 

 mens assigned to the duplicate series. Eifty-nine boxes have been placed 

 on general storage, containing duplicate materal the records of which 

 are imperfect. The total number of specimens in the department is 

 not far from 40,000. 



The collections in economic geology in the department have now been 

 thoroughly organized, and while we have known for a long time that 

 the representations of the mineral resources of the country were very 

 full and complete, yet much material, until this year, has been stored 

 away, and more or less inaccessible. Of the localities which had been 

 developed previous to the Centennial Exhibition the illustrations are 

 exceedingly full and complete; in fact, no single collection of the kind 

 can be found to compare with it anywhere else. There are, however, 

 many localities which have come into prominence since the close of the 

 Centennial, and these were only partially or not at all represented in the 

 Centennial material.. From time to time some of these deficiences have 

 been supplied, but there are yet quite a number of localities not rep- 

 resented, the most important of these being the Menominee iron re- 



