State Museum of Natural History. 



39 



tions of crystalline rocks ; eighty- eight transparent sections of 

 building stones of New York ; 200 microscopical sections of fossil 

 Brachiopods, for the use of the Director of the Museum in his 

 work on the Palaeontology of the State. 



Arrangement and Addition. 



The changes in the exhibition-rooms of the Museum have been 

 mainly in the rearrangement of the collections and in relabeling 

 the specimens. No additional cases have been constructed, but 

 several alterations have been made, which give more space and 

 display to better advantage the collections as rearranged. 



On the principal floor and at the side of the entrance hall, the 

 general collection of minerals has been arranged, mounted and 

 labeled. The rooms are fairly well-lighted by windows on the front 

 and at the back. The cases built against the walls afford space for 

 the exhibition of large specimens, and three table cases in the body 

 of the room, admit the selected specimens, which may be viewed 

 with more ease and more scrutiny of detail. The case of precious 

 stones also stands in the back-room, in front of the window, 

 where it receives a strong light. In the work of arranging and 

 mounting the collections, Mr. Frank L. Nason, of the Troy Poly- 

 technic Institute (now of the Geological Survey of New Jersey), 

 was employed during the months of January and February. The 

 care shown in the selection of the specimens, the neatness and 

 simplicity in the arrangement on the shelves and the taste in the 

 mounting, are evidences of his skill and painstaking labor. In 

 making this new mineralogical collection, the minerals which were 

 purchased of George F. Kunz, of Hoboken, N. J., in September, 

 1886, constitute the greater part. The old general collection was 

 broken up, and the choice specimens incorporated with the former, 

 as also the Emmons' collection of crystallized minerals of northern 

 New York. What were known as the Gebhard, Pickett, 

 Brazilian and Emmons collections, have thus disappeared 

 as such; the specimens selected retaining, however, on their 

 labels their respective sources, for identification. One lot of 

 calcites from Rossie, St. Lawrence county, in the Emmons 

 collection, is placed intact, in one of the cases of the 

 new room. The arrangement in the wall cases in the rooms is 

 according to the plan of Dana's System of Mineralogy, beginning 

 with the native elements in the first case (No. 1.), at the left hand, 



