6 



COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 



[Jan. 



tainable by museum study alone, shows that the time has come 

 when hirge collections must naturally be supplemented by 

 zoological stations. These, when once established at properly 

 selected localities, will enable museums to dispense with 

 much that is now exceedingly costly. They will become, for 

 certain departments at least, chiefly depositories where the 

 record of work done at the stations — the archives of natural 

 science, so to speak — will be preserved ; so that, while their 

 usefulness for the general instruction of the public and of 

 our higher institutions will not be diminished, they must 

 hereafter be useful to the original investigator in a somewhat 

 more limited field. 



The principal additions during the year consist of the col- 

 lections deposited by Harvard College and of those made by 

 myself, with the assistance of Mr. Garman, on the west 

 coast of South America, from Valparaiso to Lima, and along 

 the line of the railroad leading from the coast to Lake Titicaca. 

 We thus brought together a fair representation of the fauna of 

 the high plateau in which Lake Titicaca is situated. A pre- 

 liminary account of the materials collected is now publishing 

 in the " Museum Bulletin." The fishes and reptiles will be 

 described by Mr. Garman, the fossils by Prof. O. A. Derby, 

 the Crustacea by Mr. Faxon, the birds and mammals by Mr. 

 Allen, and I hope myself to be able to give a short account of 

 the phj'sical geography and geology of the district. Thanks 

 to the generosity of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company in 

 passing our baggage free, we took to Peru a large outfit in 

 the way of ropes, dredges, sounding-leads, thermometers for 

 deep-water temperatures, kindly lent us by Capt. Patterson, 

 the superintendent of the Coast Survey, and all the necessary 

 materials for preserving large collections. Though we were 

 greatly disappointed in the variety of animal life found in 

 the lake and the surrounding shore, we took some very inter- 

 esting deep-water temperatures (to a depth of 154 fathoms), 

 and completed a preliminary hydrographic sketch of Lake 

 Titicaca, which has furnished valuable results, and done much 

 to explain the poverty of its animal life. But while thus disap- 

 pointed in our original aims, we made ex;tensive archaeological 

 collections, which have been given to the Peabody Museum. 



This exploration of Lake Titicaca would hardly have been 



