1 4 Report of the President. 



mens, has been carefully sorted and the valuable portion 

 placed in drawers where it is accessible. The large collection 

 of fossil remains of fish and other organisms from the Mt. 

 Lebanon region in Syria, presented by the Protestant College 

 at Beirut, through Rev. D. Stuart Dodge, D.D., of this city, 

 is the most important gift received by the department during 

 the year. Caring for this material required considerable time 

 and attention 



The publication of the Catalogue of types and figured speci- 

 mens in the palaeontological collection of the department, 

 which has been in progress for several years, has been com- 

 pleted. This Catalogue emphasizes in marked manner the im- 

 portance of this portion of the Museum's property, and the 

 work upon it has developed the fact that above one thousand 

 more types and figured specimens are in the collection than 

 were originally supposed to be there. The following extract 

 from the preface of the volume of the Bulletin which is de- 

 voted to the Catalogue will indicate clearly the scope and 

 character of the work and the collection: 



"The chief palaeontological possession of the Geological Department of 

 the American Museum of Natural History is the great James Hall collection 

 which was purchased in 1875 from the celebrated palaeontologist, and the 

 principal feature of that collection is the large number of type and other illus- 

 trated specimens, especially of Palaeozoic species, which it contains. This 

 Hall collection may well be considered the standard reference collection for all 

 workers in North American Palaeozoic palaeontology; hence the desirability of 

 publishing a complete record of these valuable specimens. Other collections 

 have been added to the department from time to time through exchange and 

 other means, but with few exceptions they contain no types. Most of the 

 " figured specimens " in the series are those which were identified, redescribed, 

 illustrated and published by Professor Hall in the early volumes of the Palaeon- 

 tology of New York, and therefore have almost the dignity and value of types. 



"Of the specimens described and illustrated in the quarto volumes of the 

 Palaeontology of New York, the Museum possesses two-thirds of those in 

 Volume I, covering the Cambrian and Lower Silurian systems; nearly eight- 

 tenths of those in Volume II, extending from the Medina to the Onondaga 

 stages, inclusive; three-fourths of those in Volume III, which treats of the 

 Lower Helderberg and Oriskany groups; more than one-third of those in 

 Volume IV, which describes the Brachiopoda. of the Devonian system from 

 the Upper Helderberg to the Chemung; about thirty per cent, of the speci- 

 mens illustrated in Volume V, Part I, which is devoted to the Lamellibranchi- 

 ata of the Upper Helderberg (or Corniferous), Hamilton and Chemung groups; 

 and a nearly equal proportion of the Cephalopoda and Gastropoda illustrated 

 in Volume V, Part II. The collection, however, contains only about 74 of 

 the specimens of Bryozoa given in Volume VI, and about 70 of the Crustacea 

 illustrated in Volume VII of the Palaeontology of New York. Much of the 



