1 2 Report of the President. 



voted to the installation of the newly-acquired Bement col- 

 lection. The Curator reports that this collection was found 

 to contain about 12,000 specimens, all of them exhibition 

 material of the highest grade, representative of most of the 

 known established species. The available space, furthermore, 

 was found to be inadequate to the proper display of the 

 Bement collection alone, so that it became necessary to 

 relegate all the best specimens of the old Museum collection 

 to the drawers underneath the cases, to form a reserve or 

 study collection, after sorting therefrom the material that 

 could justly be considered to be duplicates. 



The preliminary arrangement of such a collection, which has 

 been done in accordance with the latest edition of Dana's 

 System of Mineralogy and the preparation of the labels is a 

 task of considerable magnitude. The installation was carried 

 forward so rapidly, however, that it was feasible to throw the 

 collection open to the view of the members of the Museum 

 and their friends on Members' Day, November 26, and to the 

 general public soon thereafter. Many inquiries had been 

 made before that date by the persons interested in miner- 

 alogy as to when the Bement collection would be open to 

 view, and the mineral halls have since been frequently visited 

 both by students of the science and by those who are fond of 

 minerals merely as objects of beauty. It is not too much to 

 say that our Institution now possesses the best and most 

 beautiful exhibition series of mineral specimens in this 

 country, and one of the finest in the world. In his report 

 the Curator calls attention to the facts that not more than 

 half of this great collection has yet been provided with labels 

 or installed on permanent mounts, and that much remains to 

 be done in the way of providing group and explanatory labels, 

 maps to show the geographical distribution of the more 

 common and important minerals, and other accessories for 

 rendering the collection attractive, intelligible and instructive 

 to the average visitor. 



As a part of the Bement collection the Museum received a 

 series of meteorites that deserves more than the passing 

 notice which can be given it here. The meteorite collection 



