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I 



10 MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. [Apr. 



secured by the dredge and otherwise, along the coast of Florida, 

 from the shore to tlie deepest waters of the Gulf of Mexico. 

 These specimens, collected chiefly by M. de Pourtales and 

 during the last cruise in part by myself, are now undergoing 

 careful examination by various investigators, and it is hoped 

 that the results thus secured will be shortly published in a 

 fitting manner. 



M. de Pourtales is now engaged upon a monographic descrip- 

 tion of the corals, some of which he has described in our Bulle- 

 tin. xVlexander Agassiz and Theodore Lyman have worked up 

 the Echinoderms, and a summary of their investigations has 

 also been published in our Bulletin, while the Crustacea and 

 Mollusks have been entrusted to Dr. Stimpson, for description, 

 and the Sponges to Professor Oscar Smith in Gratz, and the 

 Annelids to Professor Ehlers in Erlangen. I have also pub- 

 lished in the Bulletin a short report of these deep-sea dredgings 

 and their general scientific results. 



I should not omit to mention that we have had a number of 

 young ladies as assistants in the Museum this year, and have 

 found them very efficient and faithful workers. For several 

 years, I have, at different times, accepted the services of ladies 

 in the Museum, some as voluntary, others as paid assistants. I 

 have been the more ready to do this, thinking that I might 

 assist in securing for women a greater variety of employments, 

 the need of which is now so much felt. With us the experi- 

 ment has succeeded admirably. A large part of the work to be 

 done in a museum is particularly appropriate for women, and I 

 only regret that a necessary economy forces me to diminish the 

 number of young ladies thus employed. Both as students and 

 as assistants they have shown an apt intelligence, with great 

 fidelity and conscientiousness in the performance of their work. 



It is my pleasant duty, in closing this Report, to announce 

 that a scholarship has been founded this year, at the Museum, 

 endowed by the Boston Society of Natural History, and called 

 the Humboldt Scholarship. That Society devoted the whole 

 result of the festival, by which they celebrated the centennial 

 anniversary of Humboldt, to this purpose, thus binding by a 

 new tie, these two scientific institutions, and permanently con- 

 necting both with the memory of that great man. 



With the new building a new chapter opens in the history of 



