Summary Guide to the Natural History Museum of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Letters [antikvár]

History. - Collecting of natural history matérials was begun in Kraków already in the XVIII century, in the Jagellonian University, while in the Polish Academy of Science such collecting is associated with the creation, in 1865, of the Physiographic Commission of the Kraków Scientific Society. This Commission took up systematic work aiming at a detailed study of Poland in a 11 of the country's natural aspects. Out of this work, in the course of time, there came into existence the Natural History Museum of the Polish Academy od Science, containing collections in botany, geology together with paleontology, and zoology. These collections have been, and are, in a large degree the basis for numerous scientific studies carried out by Polish naturalists in the realm of the country's physiography, the fact being that the above-mentioned collections constitute an important documentary material vvhich has to be made use of by scientists elaborating systematic or biogeographical monographs. Foreign naturalists-specialists alsó make use of this material. The importance of the Museum's scientific collections is increased by the