Proceedings

of the Tomsk Technological Institute

of Emperor Nicholas II.

Vol. 12. 1908. No. 4.

IV.

P. A. Kazansky.

Report on a Foreign Trip in the Summer of 1907.

1–3.

REPORT

on a foreign trip in the summer of 1907.

In the summer of 1907 I was sent abroad with the aim of personally selecting collections for the paleontological cabinet of the Tomsk Technological Institute; for the acquisition of these collections the Council of the Institute had allocated 4,000 rubles over the course of two years. My trip lasted about a month, since I could depart only after receiving everything necessary, i.e., money and documents, and had to return to Tomsk by the end of the summer vacation. Since under these circumstances I could go abroad only on July 19, my trip coincided with the foreign vacation period, which somewhat hampered the fulfillment of my task.

During the time I spent abroad, I visited Berlin, Bonn am Rhein, Paris, Geneva, Vienna, and Prague.

In Berlin I stayed from July 20 to July 25. Here I was charged with entering into personal negotiations with the firm “Linnaea” concerning the fulfillment by this firm of an order, placed with it already three years earlier, for zoological collections, and with determining how soon fulfillment could be expected. During the negotiations I received a promise that the order would be filled within two weeks, but upon inspection I became convinced that this was impossible, and that the order could be completed only very much later, since only an insignificant part of it had been prepared. The addresses of several small dealers in natural-history collections, which I obtained at the University through the kind assistance of G. A. Kluge, then a Privatdozent of Kazan University in Berlin, proved almost useless: from such dealers anything interesting can be acquired only by chance, when one has the opportunity to keep track of the collections appearing among them.

In Bonn am Rhein I stayed from July 26 to August 1. Here I visited two large firms offering for sale the paleontological collections of Dr. F. Krantz and B. Stürtz. Of all the firms I saw, Krantz has the richest selection for sale, but the condition in which his extensive ...

collections cannot be called specimens. In the absence, owing to the vacation period, of Professor Polig, Doctor of the University of Bonn, who is in charge of the scientific side of these collections, it was rather difficult to find one's way among these collections, and I sometimes managed to find the things I needed only by chance, in a neighborhood where it was quite hard to have expected them. Having spent three days working through Dr. Krantz’s collections, I was obliged in the end to leave more than half of the order to Prof. Polig to select upon his return, leaving a list with Dr. Krantz. In all, I personally selected and ordered:

which, together with packing, came to 4302 marks; after some negotiations Dr. Krantz kindly agreed to reduce the price to 4000 marks, including packing. From this sum I personally selected chiefly representatives of the groups Protozoa, Spongiae, Coelenterata, and Cephalopoda, amounting to approximately 1000–1200 marks. At Stürtz’s the selection proved considerably smaller, but the exemplary order in the collections greatly facilitated my work. Here I ordered a systematic collection in paleontology for the sum of 1365 marks, and selected regional collections on the Cambrian of France, the Jurassic plants of England, the French Urgonian, the Cambrian, Permo-Carboniferous, and Triassic of the Salt Range of India, the Alpine Carboniferous, as well as a collection of preparations from sponges and some individual items, all for a total of 269¾ marks.

Thus, in all, at Stürtz’s I ordered collections amounting to 1634¾ marks.

From August 2 to 5 I stayed in Paris. Here I visited the firm of the sons of Émile Deyrolle, which sells collections in all branches of natural history. The selection of paleontological collections here corresponds approximately to what I had seen at Dr. Stürtz’s in Bonn, or is even poorer. Here I selected several zoological preparations for the sum of 455 francs, a conchological collection for the sum of 600 francs, a collection of Stone Age implements for the sum of 160 francs, and a collection of fossils of the Paris Basin for the sum of 300 francs. Altogether, including packing, this came to 1565 francs.

From August 6 to 10 I was in Geneva, where I visited the firm “Grébel, Wendler & Co.” The collections offered for sale by this firm are fairly rich, and the prices, in comparison with the prices of other firms, are somewhat lower; but in general the collections bear, to a fairly strong degree, a local Swiss and southern-French character.

Report on a Foreign Business Trip.

character, so that the selection, though large, is not sufficiently varied. Here I selected: the skull of a cave bear with lower jaw (for 120 francs), a small collection of glacial phenomena from the Alps, a series of individual fossils from various groups of mollusks, plants, etc., and a number of regional collections, such as: Tithon of Spain, Callovien of Upper Savoy, Lias, Calovien, Oxfordien of the environs of Besançon, the Permian system of England, Jurassic ammonites of Italy, Ammonitico rosso from Lake Garda, Argovien of southern France, Argovien, Sequaniën, Allien of B. Savoy, Senonien of southern France, Néocomien of Switzerland, Néocomien of southern France, Miocene, chiefly the Sarmatian and Pontian stages of the Vienna Basin, Silurian of the department of Calvados, a series of graptolites from Thuringia, etc.; in all, for the sum of 1099½ francs.

From that moment the entire sum allocated by the Institute Council for replenishing the collections of the Paleontological Cabinet had been spent, and all that remained for me was to stop in Prague, in order to visit the firm of Fritsch there and to find out whether the order not fulfilled by the firm “Linnaea” could be transferred to it. However, I still had to stop in Vienna, since I had a round-trip ticket through it and part of the money had been transferred to Vienna. In Vienna I stayed on 12 and 13 August, making use of the time to visit the museums of interest to me in my specialty, which I did, incidentally, in other cities as well. In Prague, where I stayed only a few hours on 14 August, I visited Fritsch and became convinced that, in the sense of selection, his firm is substantially not inferior to the firm “Linnaea,” and the order not fulfilled by the latter can be transferred to Fritsch, who, apparently, is more diligent than the owners of the Berlin firm.

From Prague I returned to Russia, stopped in St. Petersburg, where I had been instructed to conduct negotiations with Mr. Thomson regarding the acquisition of the library of the late Prof. Romanovsky for the Tomsk Technological Institute, brought these negotiations to a successful conclusion, familiarized myself with the condition of the books of this library, and by 1 September returned to Tomsk.