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5

[i]njuries of dust, accident, or carelessness, collections whose value could not be estimated in money. Meanwhile the curator has bent his energies and employed his leisure in putting into shape for future reference special groups, one by one. In this way something has been accomplished. [[strikethrough]] This has been done especially with the brachiopods, limpets, and chitons, but unfortunately, owing to defects of the only cases available, mice and dust have since made such effective inroads upon the chitonidae that the labor of months has been lost and that part of the collection practically ruined. [[/strikethrough]]

"The immense collection of Alaskan mollusks [[strikethrough]] ,however, [[/strikethrough]] has been registered and systematically arranged, compared, and studied in a preliminary way, and has suffered from nothing worse than dust. The administration upon some thirty or forty thousand specimens has taken several years, and has been carried on wholly out of ordinary office hours."

Since 1884 a totally different state of affairs has characterized the Department, due to the granting of facilities, in the way of museum material, trays, cases, clerical assistance, etc. which the enlarged appropriations for the museum rendered possible. From about 34,000 entries in the register the number has more than doubled; in fact, if vacancies in the old series of entries and duplications reduced, be considered, the number of effective entries has been nearly trebled. The work is now prosecuted on a scale and in a manner more nearly that creditable to a great national institution, a museum of record as well as a laboratory for research; and bids fair loss continue, a review of the various reports by the curator since 1883 will afford the details of this change which need not be repeated here.