352 Forty-second Report on the State Museum. 



have been used in illustration of volume "VI, remain arranged in 

 drawers, but they are essentially inaccessible to students of the 

 science. I have several times urged the importance of selecting 

 from the very extensive mass of material among the Corals and 

 Bryozoa, a very complete series for arrangement and study in the 

 State Museum, and the disposition of the remainder as duplicates ; 

 I have thus far received no authority to do anything in this direc- 

 tion, but I feel confident that such a work would greatly inure to 

 the advantage of the Museum, and would at the same time relieve 

 the overcrowded condition of the storage drawers. We have at 

 the present time scarcely any unoccupied drawer-space remaining 

 for the disposition of current collections. 



At the present time the collections remain in the same condition 

 as when first arranged in drawers in the State Hall in 1886, and 

 there seems no immediate prospect of their being made available, 

 either for systematic arrangement and publication or for the dis- 

 tribution of the large number of duplicates which might be made 

 available for school and college collections or for exchange. 



In my report of last year I was able to communicate a summary 

 of the contents of volume VII, so far as to give a list of the 

 families and genera which were to be described in the volume. 

 Also a list of the plates and their contents, indicating those 

 already lithographed and those yet remaining to be done. Since 

 that time the volume has been published in May, 1888. It 

 includes descriptions and figures of the Crustacea of the Upper 

 Helderberg, Hamilton and Chemung groups ; together with a 

 supplement to volume V, part ii, containing plates cxiv to cxxix. 

 These supplementary plates contain illustrations of the Pteropoda 

 and Annelida of the Silurian and Devonian strata which are 

 illustrated on plates cxiv to cxvi and cxvia, while the plates cxvii 

 to cxxix are devoted to the further illustration of the genera 

 Orthoceras, Gomphoceras, Cyrtoceras, Nautilus and Goniatites. 



For the better appreciation of the character and contents of 

 this volume, I introduce in this place some pages from the intro- 

 duction, embracing the history, classification and chronological 

 distribution of the genera and species together with a synoptical 

 table Joff the genera and species of Devonian Crustacea described 

 in [the volume. This is supplemented by a list of the type 

 specimens which are in possession of the State Museum of 

 Natural History. 



