1865.] SENATE— No. 96. 11 



shall have a sufficient number of competent students ready to 

 take up the work. 



The publications of the Museum have proceeded very slowly, 

 notwithstanding my constant efforts to accelerate the printing 

 of a first volume of our illustrated catalogue ; but unforeseen 

 circumstances have made it impossible for me to proceed with 

 greater diligence. In the first place, the high prices of the 

 materials necessary for this work, which have rendered the 

 strictest economy imperative, and the scarcity of working men, 

 have induced me to pause, lest the means granted for this pur- 

 pose by the legislature should not be sufficient. In the second 

 place, I have been disappointed in my collaborators. Investi- 

 gations made under my direction, in the Museum, and which I 

 looked upon as materials for the catalogue, have been, with- 

 out my knowledge, published elsewhere. Meanwhile, however, 

 the Monographic Review of the Ophiurans, by Mr. Theodore 

 Lyman, and that of the Acalephs, by Mr. A. Agassiz, have been 

 set in types, and will soon be ready for publication. Prepara- 

 tory to this more elaborate illustration of our collections, a 

 bulletin has been issued containing short notices of a consid- 

 erable number of new genera and species of Fishes, Polyps and 

 Echinoderms. These sheets have been circulated among the 

 correspondents of the Museum. 



The principal work done in the Museum, during the past 

 year, relates to the limitation of the faunas, among living 

 animals, as well as among the fossils. In proportion as we 

 advance in the study of the geographical distribution of animals, 

 we find that local collections, however carefully made and 

 labelled, do not yet of themselves furnish the basis for a natural 

 limitation of the faunas. Even the most complete lists of 

 animals found in an extensive region contribute but indifferent 

 materials for the study of a fauna, as such lists may embrace 

 the representatives of two distinct faunas, bordering upon one 

 another. Moreover, it is time that a distinction be made in 

 this kind of researches between a zoological realm and a 

 zoological province, as well as between representative species 

 and animals characteristic of wider areas, and bearing no 

 special relation to the fauna of their home ; and upon these 

 points our information is still very scanty. Zoological provin- 

 ces, properly speaking, and to which I would, for the present 



