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in working up results, and several short papers briefly descriptive of the more interesting groups of animals had been issued, when the entire collection was destroyed in the Chicago fire of 1871. The only collections of marine invertebrates which escaped were the corals, Echini, starfishes, and a few of the Crustacea, which had been left for study at the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and Yale College.

For specimens illustrative of the characters and composition of the sea bottom, and of the minute forms of life that occur upon it, the Museum is indebted to many naval surveying expeditions, not least among which was that of the U.S.S. Tuscarora, in its famous line of soundings across the Pacific Ocean in 1874, while under command of Captain George E. Belknap, U.S.N. On this cruise, undertaken while H.M.S. Challenger was still sounding with rope, the practical utility of steel wire for sounding purposes was first fully demonstrated, and