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to acquire certain very useful additions to the collection and to have the land and fresh water species of the fauna of the United States carefully revised by Dr. James Lewis. The following season, at Philadelphia the exhibition of food fishes of which the economic mollusks formed an important part received an honorable award from the jury of the Exposition. There were about 31,000 entries in the register and 195,514 named specimens had been sent out by the department.

In 1878 the curator, at his own expense, visited the principal museums and private collections of northern Europe and compared a series of the arctic shells belonging to the Museum with the types of European writers which were preserved at these institutions. In 1880 another summer was devoted to Alaskan exploration with profitable results for the collection. The chief event of the year was the presentation by Mr. W. G. Binney of his typical series of American land shells upon which in great part his publications on those animals had been based. In October of this year everything taken to Chicago by Dr. Stimpson was destroyed by fire. 

In 1881 the National Museum building was completed and a new era for the collections as a whole was inaugerated; the corps of workers for the first time regularly organized; and a new period of prosperity and usefulness begun.