439 
1889 .] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 
REPORT OF THE PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE 
PALEONTOLOGY. 
The Professor of Invertebrate Paleontology respectfully reports 
that owing to the unfortunate circumstances attending the illness of 
the late Chairman of the Committee on Instruction, and the failure 
to have the course of lectures outlined ratified in time for the spring 
season, he has been obliged to forego the delivery of the regular 
course of instruction in his department this year. An attempt to 
have these lectures delivered in the autumn months was frustrated 
by the unusual amount of work which had fallen into his hands. 
The geological and paleontological collections of the Academy are 
steadily receiving important accessions of material, but, as in all 
other departments of the institution, they suffer largely from lack of 
room for their proper disposition and arrangement. A further sys¬ 
tematic display without stacking is no longer possible; indeed, the 
foreign collections have long since been dispossessed of their proper 
space to make room for the rapidly increasing collections illustrat¬ 
ing American geology. The growth during the last few years has 
been most rapid in the field of tertiary paleontology, where the Acad¬ 
emy’s collections stand unrivalled. This is also true of the repre¬ 
sentation of the cretaceous series, but as regards paleozoic paleon¬ 
tology the Academy has always been sadly deficient. The extensive 
collections of the Pennsylvania Geological Survey, which are now in 
the custody of the Academy, and to the exhibition of which ample 
space will be given in the proposed new building, will make good 
this deficiency, and place the entire collection in a condition of un¬ 
usual completeness. The cataloguing and numbering of the Sur¬ 
vey’s collection was completed during the year by officers of the Sur¬ 
vey. 
Among the more important accessions to the Academy’s collections 
during the year may be instanced the extensive series of tertiary fos¬ 
sils transmitted to the undersigned by the State Geologists of Texas, 
representing the collections recently made by the Survey of that 
State. These have not yet been thoroughly worked over. They rep¬ 
resent much the largest series of tertiary fossils that has been thus far 
obtained from the State, and throw important light upon the geology 
of the Gulf basin. A report will accompany their final study. An¬ 
other important addition to the collections made during the year is 
a series of fossiliferous and highly metamorphosed rocks from the 
Calciferous (?) horizon of the region about Philadelphia, the first 
