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13

I conclude this summary with some extracts from my remarks in the report of the Curator of Mollusks for the year 1882, to which the preceding facts will lend sufficient explanation if any were needed. 

"The collection of the mollusca has suffered many vicissitudes in the past. It is about fourteen years since the writer first took charge of it, and his connection with the duties of the position has been that of a voluntary worker, struggling to keep from deterioration a valuable typical collection, without clerical assistance, without any of the mechanical aids to labor employed in all museums of equal importance, without any regular allowance whatever for the needs of the department, with a building and cases which rendered the work of preservation more than ordinarily difficult, and with the necessity of supporting himself by other work which occupied nearly all the ordinary working-hours of the day. It is obvious that under such circumstances the curator who succeeded in making any impression on the material which was added from time to time by gift or exchange, in addition to keeping in order that originally on exhibition, might reckon himself fortunate.

"The original collection was mounted with cement on glass plates by the late Dr. Philip P. Carpenter. Twice the writer replaced the twelve or fifteen thousand specimens upon their tablets, from which the extremes of winter cold and summer heat had detached them. When the third winter passed and the effect of the temperature was again apparent, he spent a month experimenting with cements, found none reliable, and proceeded to relabel and place in paper trays the entire collection.