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2.
Mr. Stearns was requested by me to take entire charge of the preparation and organization of the exhibit.  He was very busily engaged until the middle of December in perfecting and packing the series which was finally dispatched to its destination.  It comprised twenty large table cases exhibiting the economical mollusks of both coasts and of adjacent seas, the freshwater mussels which form so remarkable a part of the fauna of the great Mississippi basin, etc. a complete review of which will more appropriately come in, in the report of the year now opening, after the close of the exhibition.
To assist in this work Mr. R. Ellsworth Call, who has especial knowledge of the land and fresh water mollusks of North America, was engaged for a period of six months.
In September the Curator desiring to devote his time more especially to biological investigation resigned his position in the U.S. Coast Survey and accepted the post of Paleontologist for the Quaternary invertebrates offered by the Director of the U.S. Geological Survey.  The National Collections of Quaternary shells and their recent allies being necessarily the source of identification of such fossils newly collected and their ultimate repository, with the permission of the Director the Curator  retained his honorary connection with the Museum which has lasted nearly twenty years.  Work was immediately undertaken to put the general collection in such order that the geologist desiring to identify his fossils might do so with the least expenditure of time and labor.
In view of the arrears of work to be made up this was no small undertaking and the conclusion of it is by no means near at hand.