32 MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. [Apr. 



be, for the most part capable, by means of the catalogue, of 

 restoration to their true position. They could be made to bear 

 witness as before in respect to classification, geographical distri- 

 bution and chronologic succession, to say nothing of all the other 

 important points, on which their testimony might be invoked. 



I have also been busily engaged pushing forward the sys- 

 tematic arrangement of the different parts of the collection, as 

 time has been at my disposal or opportunity has allowed. The 

 aim has been to group the specimens as nature dictates, irre- 

 spective of much that is arbitrary, if not positively false, in the 

 usual modes of arrangement, according to the prevalent syste- 

 matic nomenclature. Meanwhile what has been done in the 

 past, and what others are now doing, has not been overlooked. 

 Great pains have been taken to search out, so far as the means 

 have been at my disposal, the first authentic designation and 

 figuring of each species. The data in this way obtained have 

 been usually either noted with brevity or entered more at large 

 on appropriate labels. The work has been thus carried on by a 

 combined study at once of specimens themselves and of what 

 others have done, in order both that every past investigator 

 may receive his due, and that whatever of progress is made 

 in the present may be organically linked with the valid re- 

 sults reached by those who have gone before, — so linked that 

 there shall be, not a mere juxtaposition of the old and the new, 

 but an interstitial growth in our knowledge of the organic 

 world. 



At the same time the collection has been greatly improved in 

 other respects. By the aid of assistants, many of the specimens 

 have been thoroughly cleaned. By this means, and in other 

 ways, they have been put in readiness for mounting, so far as 

 they need to be by such manual processes. The mounting of 

 the specimens upon tablets has been thus far purposely deferred, 

 but a very large number of tablets are ready to receive them. 

 Other preliminary matters are further advanced. In the work- 

 ing up of a group, — in the selection of specimens for the sys- 

 tematic, the faunal and the chronologic, to say nothing of any 

 other collection or collections to be formed, — it is of great ad- 

 vantage to have all the material at hand and under the eye. 

 Indeed, when one has not such a command of his material it is 

 almost impossible for him to make as choice a selection, or to 



