Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/21

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THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM.
11

attention, and important industrial exhibits have been formed, showing the development of commerce and manufactures in western Pennsylvania.

It is far, however, from the purpose of the Trustees to restrict the Museum to the work which has just been outlined. The whole field of research is before them, and already very large accumulations of material from distant parts of our own continent and from foreign lands have been brought together. The collections already in the possession of the Museum may be approximately classified as follows:

Species and Varieties. Specimens.
Minerals 400 4,000
Geological Specimens 1,000
Botany (recent species) 17,000 100,000
Botany (fossil) 150 1,200
Paleontology (invertebrate) 500 2,400
Paleontology (vertebrate) 160 3,500
Porifera, Echinoderms, etc. 500 1,250
Mollusca 9,500 100,000
Crustacea 100 2,000
Arachnida 300 1,200
Myriapoda 50 1,200
Hymenoptera 1,250 4,000
Lepidoptera 20,000 300,000
Diptera 1,000 5,000
Coleoptera 20,000 275,000
Hemiptera 750 4,000
Orthoptera 400 1,600
Neuroptera 300 1,200
Fishes 500 1,800
Reptilia and Batrachia 150 1,750
Birds 1,200 9,000
Mammals 300 1,050
Total 74,510 822,150

The foregoing table shows that the collections representing the various classes in the vegetable and animal kingdom are somewhat unequal in the matter of extent. The assemblage of shells is already large because of the acquisition by the Museum of several considerable collections, one of them made in South America by Mr. Herbert H. Smith; the other by the late F. E. Holland, which contains a large number of species represented by cotypes and specimens autographically labeled by Adams, Anthony, Bland and other early American conchologists. This collection at the time of its acquisition by the Carnegie Museum contained over six thousand species and is especially rich in West Indian terrestrial mollusca. The collection of Lepidoptera is also exceedingly rich in species, as well as specimens, containing as it does, the entire collection of Mr. W. H. Edwards, the author of the 'Butterflies