ii6 TJic American Geologist. ■ August, i90i 
of Lower Silurian invertebrates from southern Ohio. This 
contains over 20,000 specimens and is referred to in the report 
for 1898 as one of the finest ever made from the rocks of the 
Cincinnati group, l)eing- particularly rich in starfishes, crinoids, 
and trilobites, including- numerous type specimens. 
During- the past 20 years the section has naturally been very 
greatly enriched by materials ttu-ned over by the U. S. Geolog- 
ical Survey. How rapid has been the growth of these collec- 
tions is shown by the record liooks, which, in 1859, had less 
than one thousand entries ; while, in 1898 alone, more than 33,- 
000 specimens were added and the total accumulation is esti- 
mated at some 350,000 specimens, very many of which are, of 
course, duplicates. 
No inconsiderable part of the value of these collections lies 
in their type specimens, or those which have been illustrated in 
the various works on paleontology. It is stated that there are, 
all told, something like 4,575 lots which have been thus de- 
scribed and figured. 
The exhibition space for this section is limited to 300 run- 
ning feet of space on one of the galleries. The exhib- 
its are divided into (i) a historical collection, (2) a 
synoptic collection, and several minor series illustrating de- 
velopment of the faunas of particular areas. The great bulk 
of the invertebrate collections are, how^ever, stored in drawers 
constituting what is known as the reserve series. The paleo- 
zoic collection is very rich in Cambrian and Ordovician types, 
a condition due largely to the efiforts of Mr. Walcott and the 
I. H. Harris bequest. The Devonian and Carboniferous fau- 
nas are, however, only fairly well represented and the Silurian 
series is reported as being comparatively weak. The entire 
paleozoic series, aside from that portion on exhibition, is now 
stored in something like 1,300 drawers. The mesozoic collec- 
tion is rich in materials from the southern and western states, 
but weak in specimens from the Atlantic border. The Terti- 
ary collection is exceedingly rich. 
Section of Vertebrate Paleontology. — Prior to 1898 this 
section, though containing many of the types of Cope, Leidy 
and Newberry, made very little display, the specimens col- 
lected by the earlier geologists and explorers being almost in- 
variably of a fragmentary nature. 
