FISHES, REPTILES AND BATRACHIANS 



UNTIL 1901, there were practically no batrachians and fishes 

 on exhibition, and very few reptiles. Lack of space had 

 made this necessary, and the accumulations of the preced- 

 ing thirty years found storage room only. The collection of reptiles 

 and batrachians up to this time consisted of specimens received from 

 the Department of Parks and the Zoological Society, a number col- 

 lected on Museum expeditions to Florida, Mexico, and Cuba, thirty- 

 seven reptiles and batrachians from the Island of Trinidad, twenty- 

 five from Utah, Wyoming, and Nebraska, and 110 collected in 

 Sumatra. Fifty snakes, 40 lizards, and 125 embryos of loggerhead 

 turtles, collected in Florida, were presented by Dr. Charles Stover 

 Allen in 1893. In 1899 Colonel Nicholas Pike presented his large 

 collection of reptiles and batrachians containing about 1,300, mostly 

 from Long Island, New York. 



The collection of fishes was very small, and consisted mainly of 

 painted wax and plaster models, which resembled but slightly the 

 fish in nature. Most of these were received in a collection purchased 

 from the Smithsonian Institution in 1886 ($727). It contained 

 colored casts of eighteen species of fish and fourteen species of rep- 

 tiles. A series of fishes collected by Professor Agassiz was presented 

 by the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, in 1876, and 

 other specimens were received from time to time through the United 

 States Fish Commission. 



When the present Department of Invertebrate Zoology was es- Fishes. 

 tablished in 1901, the collections of fishes and reptiles were placed in 

 its charge. Exhibition space was assigned for them, and efforts 

 toward an attractive exhibition series were at once begun. All known 

 methods of preserving and exhibiting fishes were unsatisfactory, so 

 experiments along this line were begun, and have continued with 



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