1878.] 359 [Hartt. 



the Commission have worked unceasingly day and night on their her- 

 culean task. Neither is the discussion of the material finished, nor 

 are the collections fully determined or arranged. Everything possi- 

 ble has been done, but the work is not ended. I should state that I 

 have been compelled by circumstances to adopt a system which I 

 otherwise would not have followed. If, to begin with, I had had am- 

 ple laboratories in the Corte and facilities for study, I should have 

 from time to time recalled assistants, as their field work in certain 

 localities was concluded, to work up their results in the laboratory, 

 and this work would have gone on with the work of the field; but 

 not having sufficient room in the Corte for the Commission, I was 

 compelled to store away in a warehouse the hundreds of boxes of 

 specimens sent by my assistants, and when the present house was 

 taken, I found it necessary to recall my whole force in order to com- 

 mence the systematic study of our results. We had scarcely begun 

 this work when field work was put a stop to at the end of July, and 

 since then we have been confined to the reduction of our reports. 



" Since the end of July the whole of the collections have been ex- 

 amined, great numbers of specimens have been prepared and mounted 

 by Messrs. Derby, Rathbun, Freitas and Branner, and some have 

 been restored or reproduced in plaster by my preparador ; the con- 

 dition of the collection and its classification has been steadily im- 

 proved, and it has been constantly under the most careful inspection 

 to prevent injury by rats and cockroaches, which, without constant 

 vigilance, destroy specimens and preparations, and injure or destroy 

 labels. In no other geological museum that I have examined are col- 

 lections better cared for or in better shape for work than ours. So 

 immense, however, is the collection, and so abundant is it in new 

 species, that only a small part is accurately determined and arranged, 

 the rest bearing only general labels. In case of a suspension of the 

 Commission and the dispersion of its members before an opportunity 

 can be found to study and accurately determine these collections by 

 the assistants who gathered them together, a very large part of this 

 unworked-up material will lose a large part or the whole of its value; 

 for, like the brief notes of a field note-book, their whole significance 

 can only be understood by the one who made them. 



"Besides the work of preparing and arranging the collections, the 

 work of the Commission during the latter half of the year 1877-78 

 has been as follows : — Besides the general direction of the work of 

 my assistants, I have devoted myself to the preparation of a long re- 



