Report of the President 43 



room staff, spent over two months in field work on the coasts 

 of Massachusetts and Maine in order to add to our general 

 collections and also to make observations, photographs and 

 drawings of detailed items for use in constructing habitat 

 groups of seashore life for the Darwin Hall. 



Dr. Crampton has several publications nearly ready for 

 printing: these are the first instalment of a monograph on 

 " The Distribution and Evolution of Polynesian Snails," a paper 

 on "Natural Selection in Lepidoptera," a book on "The 

 Doctrine of Evolution " (Hewitt Lectures of Columbia Univer- 

 sity), and a paper on " The Heredity of the Single and Double- 

 brooded Characters in Cynthia." The Catalogue of Spiders by 

 Dr. Petrunkevitch is now in process of printing by the Museum. 



Molluscs. — The accessions of principal importance in this 

 division during the past year have been an interesting and use- 

 ful gift by Mr. A. D. Gabay of a series of polished shells (for 

 the most part of the sea abalone or Haliotis), and the purchase 

 of a few land shells from Jamaica and of a group of very 

 beautiful polished pearl-bearing fresh-water clams from the 

 Middle West. 



A great deal of time has been expended in making prepara- 

 tions for the occupation of the new Hall of Molluscs, wherein 

 will be more clearly shown and elucidated the habits, biology, 

 evolution and distribution of these most variously conditioned 

 and contrasted animals. Attention may be called to the 

 advantages of devoting a single room to a study storage 

 collection, in which would be contained, as far as possible, a 

 complete systematic series of all the species in the present col- 

 lection, which is a composite of almost half a dozen large 

 assemblages of shells and in which, indeed, none of the 

 numerous accessions made in the last eight years has been 

 incorporated. 



Literary work in the section of Molluscs has been confined 

 to the beginning of a work on the marine shells of the eastern 

 United States. 



Hall of Local Insects and Insect Biology. — The most 

 striking feature in the entomological work of 1910 has been 



