10 MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. [Mar. 



ally the case. Mr. Niles has also incidentally taken care 

 of the Mammalia. Mr. St. John is in a similar way engaged 

 upon the preliminary work of a part of our catalogue. With 

 a view of testing their relative importance for the progress of 

 science, as well as for the most appropriate arrangement of the 

 Museum specimens, Mr. St. John is directed to prepare a 

 faunal catalogue of the fossils of Waldron. This will at the 

 same time lead to a correct appreciation of the peculiarities of 

 the fauna of Wenlock, of Niagara and of Waldron and other 

 localities of the same age. Mr. Hartt has been comparing the 

 subcarboniferous fossils of the North American British 

 Provinces, of which he has made extensive collections, with 

 those of Europe, of which M. De Koninck's collection has 

 brought to the Museum the most complete series ; the special 

 object in view being to ascertain the faunal combinations of 

 those periods, and eventually to incorporate the results of these 

 investigations in our catalogue. During the past year Mr. 

 Allen has resumed his connection with the Museum, and has 

 taken charge of the collection of birds, which he has put in 

 excellent working order. Prior to his departure for the Sand- 

 wich Islands, Mr. Horace Mann had begun a monographic 

 study of the fossil Solens and of the extensive group of Fusus 

 and allied forms, but his journey has prevented the completion 

 of this work. The progress made thus far in the preparation 

 of diagrams to illustrate those objects which are either too 

 small to be distinctly seen in the exhibition rooms, or too 

 perishable to be exhibited at all, in the usual ways of preserv- 

 ing specimens, has fully satisfied me of the great value of such 

 illustrations, not only for the special students of Natural His- 

 tory, but also for the general visitors of our rooms. The num- 

 ber of these diagrams prepared by Mr. Burkhardt during the 

 past year is already too large to allow them all to be put up in 

 the exhibition rooms. My special task of superintending all 

 the work in every department, and of seeing that every one 

 does his best and that which is most useful to the Museum, in 

 proportion to his obligations to our institution, is becoming 

 more and more arduous as the arrangement of the collections 

 is advancing and decisions are to be made concerning their 

 final disposition. The time will come, when a further subdi- 

 vision of labor will be a necessity, and I trust by that time we 



