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1 il 1 III 1 1 iiii iililii 1 ( \ \ ilijiiiiliiiiilii! liii ii SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM PROGRESS AND CONDITION OF THE UNITED STATES NATIO^ FOR THE YEAR ENDED UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON : 1945 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D. C. Price 35 cents United States National Museum, Undek Direction of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.^ October H, 1944- Sir: I have the honor to submit herewith a report upon the present condition of the United States National Museum and upon the work accompHshed in its various departments during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1944. Very respectfully, Alexander Wetmore, Director, U.S. National Museum. The Secretary, Smithsonian Institution, CONTENTS Operations for the year 1 Appropriations 1 Collections 2 Explorations and field work 3 The Museum in wartime 5 Visitors 8 Library 9 Publications and printing 11 Photographic laboratory 12 Buildings and equipment 12 Meetings and special exhibits 13 Changes in organization and staff 14 Detailed reports on the collections 16 Department of anthropology 16 Department of biology 26 Department of geology 45 Department of engineering and industries 56 Division of history 67 List of accessions 71 List of Museum publications „ 99 III REPORT ON THE PROGRESS AND CONDITION OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDED JUNE 30, 1944 By Alexander Wetmore Assistard Secretary of the Smiihsonian Institution, Director of the United States National Museum OPERATIONS FOR THE YEAR APPROPRIATIONS Funds for the operation of the llDited States National Museum for the year ended June 30, 1944, were included in the appropriation ''Salaries and Expenses, Smithsonian Institution/' which, as an item in the Executive and Independent Offices Act for the fiscal year 1944, was approved on June 26, 1943. All the Federal activities administered by the Smithsonian Institution, excluding the National Gallery of Art, w^ere covered in one appropriation. That portion of the overtime pay due members of our staff under the War Overtime Pay Act of 1943, not covered by savings in the regular appropriation, was provided for in the first Deficiency Act, 1944 (Publ. Law 279, approved April 1, 1944). Moneys required for the Museum were allotted from the regular appropriation and the Deficiency Act, and are summarized as follows: Preservation of collections: Regular appropriation $422, 765 First Deficiency Act 9, 860 Maintenance and operation: Regular appropriation 422, 439 First Deficiency Act 31, 935 Printing and binding 43, 000 Total available for the year 929, 999 In combining the appropriations of the Smithsonian Institution, the former appropriation ' 'Preservation of Collections, Smithsonian Institution" became an allotment, and the name of the project was changed to ''National Museum." By internal reorganization the project ''Maintenance and Opera- tion" was enlarged by adding to it the guard, labor, and char forces formerly included under "Preservation of Collections," as well as the guard force from the project "National Collection of Fine Arts" and laborers from the project "General Administration." This change brought into one project the guard force of the Smithsonian 1 2 REPORT OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1944 Institution and the mechanics, laborers, and char force responsible for the maintenance and operation of all the buildings of the Smith- sonian Institution, excluding the National Gallery of Art. The considerable increase in funds allotted for ''Maintenance and Opera- tion" and the decrease in the allotment for the ''National Museum" (Preservation of Collections) as compared with the previous year are explained by this reorganization. Payment for overtime service of the personnel of the Museum was made throughout the year. The allotment for printing and binding was the same as for the preceding year. With the restrictions the Museum has placed on its publications during the war period, the sum is adequate except that binding of the valuable reference library is in arrears. The sum now available will be entirely inadequate when the usual program of publication is resumed. Science suffers when publication is restricted. The facts discovered from research on the national collections attain their full utility only when they become generally available to other workers. The staff was at a low ebb owing to the fact that 1944 was the first full year under the reduced personnel ceiling placed on the Insti- tution. The National Museum lost 55 positions by the imposition of this ceiling, and the man-years of service by permanent personnel dropped from 373 in 1943 to 321 in 1944. Loss from this sharp decrease was felt in all activities of the Museum, from classification, care, arrangement, and study of the collections to maintenance, operation, and repair of the buildings. The ceiling on personnel cannot be blamed alone for this situation, for the acute manpower shortage made it most difficult to recruit personnel in all categories wherever there were vacancies in positions. The condition imposes a most pressing postwar problem on the Institution. While an acute shortage in personnel can be offset for short periods by increased effort on the part of the reduced staff, this cannot be expected to continue. The collections now housed in the National Museum are of such great value to the science, the culture, and the history of our country that their preservation must be adequate under all conditions. The arrearage in the work of the Museum, already considerable, has been increased unduly. Safety demands that it be reduced. To accomplish this, more personnel and more space must be provided. The need for space has been stressed in previous reports. The situation becomes more acute yearly. Unless provision is made for the continuing growth of the collections, the Museum cannot dis- charge its responsibility to the Nation. COLLECTIONS In summing up the work of this fiscal year it has been interesting again to note the steady inflow of valuable specimens as additions to our great collections in spite of war conditions. These have come mainly as gifts from interested persons, since our usual program of field work has been laid aside except where it has related to some activity concerned with the war. Small sets of natural-history specimens began to arrive in increasing number from members of the armed forces stationed throughout the world, bringing many OPERATIONS FOR THE YEAR 3 useful and interesting things. The total number of specimens received is somewhat larger than that of last year. New material arrived in 1,159 separate accessions, with a total of 239,640 specimens, distributed among the five departments as follows: Anthropology, 852; biology, 229,546; geology, 3,466; engineering and industries, 1,388; history, 4,388. The increase has come in the fields of biology and history, the others showing slight decreases. For examination and report 724 lots of specimens were received, covering all the fields embraced in our laboratories, an increase of 43 over last year. Part of these were returned to the senders when the examination was concluded, some were consumed or otherwise de- stroyed during identification, and some were presented as additions to our permanent collection. Gifts of duplicates to schools, museums, and other institutions numbered 2,382 specimens. Exchanges of duplicate materials with other collections amounted to 10,634 specimens, and 726 specimens were transferred to other governmental agencies. Loans for scien- tific study to investigators outside Washington totaled 21,787 speci- mens. The summary of the collections given below has been adjusted to reflect additions and eliminations from the various series. Anthropology 711, 917 Biology 13,869,472 Geology 2, 687, 129 Engineering and industries 139, 420 History 529, 433 Total 17,937,371 EXPLORATIONS AND FIELD WORK Under the auspices of the Division of Cultural Cooperation of the Department of State, Ellsworth P. Killip, associate curator of plants, visited Colombia during April, May, and June, spending some time in Bogotd for work with Dr. Armando Dugand and his associates upon large collections of Colombian plants recently assembled at the Instituto de Ciencias Naturales. From there he made brief field trips to Apulo and Pubenza, in the western part of the Department of Cundinamarca, and to Monserrate and Fusagasuga. Later he went to Popaydn to join the ornithologist Dr. F. C. Lehmann V in an excursion to the Lehmann hacienda at La Capilla and to Pdramo de Purace. Mr. Killip's last 5 weeks were spent with Dr. Jose Cuatre- casas, Director of the Comision de Botdnica, Secretaria de Agricultura y Fomento, Cali, in examining the herbaria there and at the agricul- tural school, and in exploring the extensive mangrove swamps about Buenaventura Bay and on the delta of the San Juan River. Philip Hershkovitz, holder of the Walter Rathbone Bacon Scholar- ship for 1941-43, returned to Washington in October after spending the better part of two years in Colombia, where he collected in the states of Atlantico, Magdalena, Bolivar, and Norte de Santander. The collection he amassed forms the largest single accession of mam- mals received by the Museum in the past 25 years. In Colombia, also, M. A. Carriker, Jr., continued ornithological field work until October under the W. L. Abbott fund, his investiga- tions in northeastern Colombia extending south into Norte del Santander. In November he brought to the Museum the results of 4 REPORT OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1944 his past two seasons' work, one of the finest collections of birds that has been made in that area. Dr. G. Arthur Cooper, curator of the division of invertebrate pale- ontology and paleobotany, in collaboration with Drs. Byron N. Cooper and K. S. Edmundson, of the Virginia Geological Survey, made an investigation of the relationships of the limestones occurring on the flanks of Clinch Mountain in southwestern Virginia and northern Tennessee.

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