MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 5 



Dr. Eastman has again gone West in the interests of the Museum. 

 His expedition of last year resulted in important additions to our 

 palaeozoic fishes and he reports having secured valuable new 

 material for his department. 



The most important addition to the collections of the Museum 

 is Mr. Agassiz's gift of the Davis and McConathy collections of 

 palaeozoic corals. The Davis collection comprises more than eight 

 thousand lots, the majority of which are the types of Major Davis's 

 work on the a Kentucky Fossil Corals." Major Davis spent two 

 months at the Museum in installing these collections. 



From Dr. J. M. Flint has been received a " Class Microscope " 

 devised by him, and equipped with a rotary stage carrying about 

 three hundred mounts of recent Foraminifera. The instrument is 

 designed for exhibition purposes, and will be installed as soon as 

 practicable. 



Mr. Henshaw reports that the accessions to the library are 

 greater than those recorded in recent years. A complete change 

 has been made in the arrangement of the stacks, the large north- 

 west room being devoted exclusively to serials arranged alphabeti- 

 cally under the geographical divisions adopted throughout the 

 Museum. The two rooms of the Whitney Library have been 

 assigned, one to geological and geographical serials and the other 

 to the publications of geological surveys and to maps. Upwards 

 of two hundred volumes and pamphlets treating of Ethnology have 

 been transferred to the Peabody Museum, and nearly as many 

 botanical works to the Gray Herbarium and the special libraries 

 of the departments of Botany. Many duplicates have been trans- 

 ferred to the general library of the University. By a vote of the 

 Council of the University Library upwards of five hundred geologi- 

 cal volumes and pamphlets were transferred from Gore Hall to the 

 library of the Museum. It is earnestly hoped that the officers of 

 the central library will continue this policy and in time transfer to 

 the museum stacks such books in other departments of natural 

 history as are not on our shelves. Such a segregation would make 

 the Museum library the most complete of its kind and one of the 

 strongest departments of the University. It would facilitate the 

 work of students, and add much to the utility of the books and 

 efficiency of the Museum, since books on systematic natural history 

 are of little use apart from the collections of which they treat. 



From Walter Hunnewell, Esq., the Museum has received the 



