DEPARTMENT OF MOLLUSKS. 213 



not amount to less than 3,500, representing about 1,200 species. En- 

 tries of all the accessions will be found in section v of the Report. 



Our faithful and generous correspondent in California, Mr. Henry 

 Hemphill, has presented a series of more than 600 specimens from the 

 Pacific shore of the peninsula of Lower California, including both re- 

 cent and Pliocene or Post-Pliocene species. Our Floridian correspond- 

 ents, Messrs. G. W. Webster, J. J. White, and I. Greegor have gener- 

 ously remembered us with specimens representing species not pre- 

 viously received from them. They have thus added materially to the 

 series representing the Floridian fauna. Mr. W. P. De Golier, of this 

 city, also remembered us with a large case of West Florida shells, sev- 

 eral of which were very acceptable additions, including a very fair 

 specimen of Voluta junonia from near Tarpon Springs. 



A valuable collection of Post-Pliocene types, illustrating the paper 

 of Mr. R. E. Call on the freshwater fossils of the Bonneville Lake 

 Basin, Utah, was received from the TJ. S. Geological Survey. Dr. 

 Sterki, who has been studying the smaller land shells, also presented a 

 series of types of these difficult little forms, while several additions 

 were made by Mr. W. G. Binney to the Binney type collection of 

 American land-shells. The last-named gentleman also presented 92 

 electrotypes of figures used by him in his supplements to previous pub- 

 lications on American land-shells. We also received from Dr. P. H. 

 Carpenter, of the Biological Laboratory of Eton College, England, a 

 series of 34 slides of sections of shells illustrating the classical memoir 

 of the late Dr. William B. Carpenter on the Structure of the Shell in 

 Mollusks and Brachiopods, the first series of which is in the British 

 Museum. 



ROUTINE WORK. 



* 



The routine work of the year has been largely devoted to the general 

 collection as distinguished from the faunal series upon which work has 

 previously been concentrated. Last year ended with the arrangement 

 of the east coast fauna of the United States, south from Cape Hatteras, 

 and the West Indies, and the preparation of a preliminary catalogue of 

 the fauna of the southeast coast of the United States, which was duly 

 printed. 



The old general collection has passed through many vicissitudes. 

 The worst event in its history was its being mounted with a prep- 

 aration of shellac, on glass plates or tablets. As there is no known 

 cement which will remain hard and unite permanently two such sur- 

 faces as those of polished glass and shell in a climate subject to such 

 extremes of temperature as ours, in the course of time all of these 

 specimens had to be removed from the glass tablets, each and every 

 shell defaced by a dark-colored patch of shellac. This was so serious 

 an injury that when the general collection was taken up for reivsion, 

 it was attempted, fortunately with success, to remove the shellac by the 

 use of alcohol. This work was begun by Mr. Jouy and continued to its 



