196 



REPORT ON NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1886. 



for the exhibit of the department at the Centennial Exposition, and 

 now much faded and injured by exposure. 



All the folding boxes have been made since I first took charge of the 

 division in 1878, aud after the pattern of my own. Three hundred of 

 them contain a tolerable classified collection, chiefly of Coleoptera and 

 Lepidoptera, arranged while Professor Comstock was in charge of the 

 division. The specimens are, as a rule, in rather poor condition, and 

 include comparatively few species not included in the other j indeed 

 they may be looked upon as duplicates and have been rarely used in 

 the work of the division. The other boxes contained all the more recent 

 material collected for, or reared at, the department during the years 

 1881-1884, and including the Brazilian collections of Dr. J. 0. Branner 

 and Mr. Albert Koebele. This material is separated by orders but not 

 yet carefully worked over or classified. They also include some few 

 purchases from Messrs. H. K. Morrison and William Wittfield, the ex- 

 otic Coleoptera from the administrators of the Belfrage estate and the 

 Burgess collection of Diptera. 



This collection includes many undescribed species in all orders, and 

 a rough estimate indicates that there are about 50,000 specimens and 

 probably 5,000 species, mostly exotic, not in the Riley collection. If to 

 this statement the accessions of the year, as indicated under that 

 head, are added, a good idea of the present extent of the national 

 collection may be formed. 



The collection of Lepidoptera, so far as rearranged^ contains as fol- 

 lows : 



Species 

 and vari- 

 eties. 



Speci- 

 mens. 



Rhopalocera .. 



Sphingidae 



Sesiidae* 



Thyridae 



AgaristidsB 



SyntomoidaB . . . 

 PyromorphidaB 



Cydosiidae 



Ctenuchidae.. . 

 Lithosiidae ... . 

 Arctiidae 



Duplicates 



Total... 



395 



62 



4 



2 



4 



7 



4 



3 



7 



10 



63 



1,243 



144 



10 



6 



12 



23 



21 



8 



23 



35 



246 



561 

 75 



1,771 

 333 



636 



2,104 



* Not all the material is incorporated here. 



With a view of aiding outside investigators who -could not come to 

 Washington, the material in the families Throscidae, Eucneinidss, and 

 the genus Chrysobothris in Coleoptera, were sent to Dr. George H. 



