HYATT: REPORT OF THE CURATOR, 
225 
tion in the affairs of the Society, hut he was always ready to assist 
in every way that he could, and his last generous action shows an 
appreciation which is very grateful, since he was thoroughly con¬ 
versant with what had been done and with the future aims of our 
work. The Secretary’s Report gives the special purpose of this 
donation, and it is only necessary for the Curator to add that Mr. 
Waterston also left his collection under such conditions that we 
were able to take out of it whatever was considered suitable for our 
uses. It was a miscellaneous collection, but we found in it a con¬ 
siderable number of natural history specimens that could be used in 
the laboratory and a few for our Museum. 
The remainder of this report is given under special titles designating 
the different departments of the Museum in which work has been 
done. 
Mineralogy and Geology. 
Professor Crosby has continued the work on the general collec- 
tion of minerals which was interrupted last spring by poor health. 
This consists chiefly in weeding out duplicate specimens, which is 
in itself a great improvement of the collection, besides making room 
for new material. He has gone over the entire collection in this 
way, and will use a part of this material in exchanges. A large 
amount of work has been done in preparation of Part 3 of the 
Geology of the Boston Basin, which, it is expected, will soon be 
ready for distribution. 
Teaching in the Museum. 
A lady of Boston, as stated in a former report, carried on this 
department for a number of years, and Mr. Grabau’s work as 
the lecturer and guide to the collections and in other connected 
lines of public instruction was fruitful in results that justified the 
hope of making this undertaking a permanency. It was a really 
unique and successful effort to make collections effective instru¬ 
ments of instruction in place of the lifeless and comparatively 
inefficient assemblage of facts they now are in museums, and would 
have met with substantial aid if the good work that was done could 
have been made known to the proper persons. The Curator there¬ 
fore, feels that appeals for the re-establishment of this department 
should not be dropped. 
