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4.

Crustacea from the Wilkes Expedition for comparison with his own specimens, these were sent to him. In 1871 occurred the great Chicago fire, in which the building of the Academy of Sciences, with all its specimens and manuscripts was entirely destroyed. In this manner the National Museum lost some of the most valuable of its collections, and the cause of zoölogy suffered severely from the fact that most of the Crustacea and some other groups brought in by the North Pacific expedition were still undescribed.
 
In a catalogue of the Crustacea turned over to the government from the United States Exploring Expedition by Prof. J. D. Dana, 650 species and 812 packages are enumerated. Of these fifty species and 63 packages are now in the Museum. No similar catalogue of the corals was made, but a large number of the types described by Dana are not now in the collection, although it still contains many valuable and showy specimens. 

There is no means of estimating the loss of specimens from the collections of the North Pacific Exploring Expedition, although the total number of species of animals collected was over 5,000. Dr. Stimpson placed the number of species of Crustacea at 980, of which we now have in the Museum only 43 species. Of the corals, Echini, and starfishes collected by him, a comparatively small representation of each group is left. It is probable that other collections of smaller extent were also sent to Chicago, and suffered the same fate as those above described, but as all the records were destroyed there is no positive way of telling.

On the following pages a brief account is given of the principal explorations which have served to enrich this department, and also of the source of collections obtained by other means.