1870.] 



SENATE— No. 170. 



81 



been made prominent throughout the year, and in consonance 

 with them the work has been pushed forward with as much 

 vigor as circumstances have allowed. 



Deserving of special notice, and of great importance as 

 respects the security of the collections, is the Museum system 

 of cataloguing. It is the design to enter all the specimens re- 

 ceived into the Institution on blank sheets expressly prepared for 

 the purpose, and which, for convenience of reference, are to be 

 bound when the work is completed. Each entry bears a definite 

 number, and is intended to comprise the generic and specific 

 designation of the parcel catalogued, the name of the person 

 who described the species, of the place at which the collection 

 was made, and its geological horizon ; also that of the collector, 

 followed by an indication of the mode in which the specimens 

 were obtained, whether by donation, purchase, or exchange, the 

 donor's name, when known, being distinctly written, with a brief 

 record of the number and condition of the individual examples. 

 Of the Tertiary Gasteropods, more than ten thousand such lots 

 have been separately entered during the past year. These ten 

 thousand parcels contain some seventy thousand individual 

 specimens. According to a rough estimate, the number already 

 thus catalogued, comprises about four-fifths of the Cainozoic Gas- 

 teropoda belonging to the Museum collections. In order to give 

 some impression of the work done in this direction, it may be 

 added that each entry implies a careful examination of all the 

 parcel contains, specimen by specimen, and that the sheets of 

 the catalogue, as thus far made out, are sufficient to form four 

 quarto volumes of good size. 



Upon a considerable portion of the specimens, of which a 

 permanent record has been in this wise made, the catalogue 

 numbers have been duly placed, by young ladies working under 

 my direction, while all the remaining specimens are in a way to 

 receive their appropriate numbers, with as much rapidity as the 

 care requisite to accuracy will warrant. It may be thus seen at 

 a glance, that this part of the Palaeontological treasures of the 

 Museum is securely guarded against the dangers to which it 

 would be otherwise exposed, from occasional mishaps or accident- 

 al displacements. Indeed, should all the specimens be thrown 

 into a heap, turned upside down, or otherwise mixed, if not 

 broken or destroyed by the process, being numbered they would 



