INTRODUCTION. Vll 



These casts "of fossils have the\ great advantage that they are in 

 almost every case copies of the most per feet specimen of the object 

 which has ever been found. This specimen, too, is often a unique one, 

 the cast is the only representation of the form which can ever be ranged 

 in the classification of a Cabinet, and yet no Cabinet can be complete 

 in its series without it. 



Few of them are restored in any way, and when this is the case it 

 is indicated. 



These casts are intended to be exact copies in form and detail of 

 surface, of the originals, and such care is taken in their coloring that 

 large numbers of them will hardly be detected, as casts, when ranged 

 with original specimens on the Cabinet shelves.* Much care has been 

 taken in coloring them, and in perfecting processes for making them 

 light and strong, so that they can — all save the very largest — be taken 

 to the lecture-room for class purposes. 



The casts are adapted by their size and form for various positions 

 in a collection. 



Most of them are suitable for the shelves of a Museum, a few are 

 large slabs, and intended for a place upon the walls, while a small 

 minority are huge objects calculated to stand on pedestals in the central 

 parts of the room. The whole thus form very ornamental objects for a 

 large Geological Hall. A handsome printed label accompanies each 

 specimen ; giving in full the name of the fossil, the author of the 

 species, its geological formation, the locality where it was found, and — 

 in the case of the Vertebrates — the museums in which the original 

 specimen is now deposited. A number on the label accords with the 

 number under which the specimen is described in this catalogue. 



These casts are given on the ea press condition that the individual or 

 Institution which purchases them will not copy them, nor allow them to be 

 copied. The large sum of money which the writer has invested in 

 the original procuring of these specimens makes such a restriction, for 

 the present at least, an imperative one. 



HENRY A. WARD. 



University of Rochester, Sept. 1, 1866. 



* " A fossil bone and a colored plaster-cast of it are not distinguishable at 

 first sight, scarcely by sight at all. The artificial junction of a series of casts of 

 the bones of an unique fossil skeleton, produces a result equivalent, for all the 

 purposes of public exhibition, to the articulated skeleton itself. Thus every 

 capital in Europe, the Public Museum of each civilized community, may show 

 to the people the proportion of the creatures of former worlds that science has so 

 restored. Requisite space for exhibition being provided, reciprocal interchange 

 of casts would soon furnish such museums with the co-adjusted frame-works cf 

 the most remarkable extinct animals that have hitherto been reconstructed." 

 Owex on a National Museum of Natural History, page 69. 



