REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 1 23 



year (1904) and is now nearing completion. Most of the types of 

 the described species have been examined, most of them refigured, 

 and much new material has been studied. Free access to the collec- 

 tions at Washington, New York, New Haven, Cambridge, Prince- 

 ton, Pittsburg, Chicago, Lawrence (in Kansas), and other cities, 

 has been granted and enjoyed. Through the cooperation of the 

 Carnegie Institution with the American Museum of Natural History, 

 the writer was enabled to spend seven weeks of the summer of 1903 

 in the Bridger deposits of southwestern Wyoming. A large num- 

 ber of specimens of fossil turtles was secured, and these will throw 

 much light not only on species and genera, based on fragmentary 

 material, but also on questions of morphology and phylogeny. Be- 

 sides the manuscript, there have been prepared over 300 drawings 

 and about 125 photographs to illustrate the characters and the 

 anatomy of the various species. 



Use has been made of the opportunity to visit the principal 

 museums of the continent and of England for the purpose of study- 

 ing their chelonian materials and obtaining clear views regarding 

 the relationship of the European genera to that of North America. 

 All the museums visited have been freely opened to Dr. Hay. 



Q. R. Wieland, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. Grant No. 1 19. 

 For co7itinuation of researches on living and fossil cycads, and illus- 

 traiioji of memoir on the st}2ictnre of the latter. (For first report 

 see Year Book No. 2, p. xxxvii.) $2,300. 



Abstract of Report. — The further studies of the cycads and their 

 illustrations have been carried forward by Dr. Wieland during the 

 year along the lines originally proposed, namely, a first or botanical 

 and a second or taxonomic investigation. The results of the more 

 strictly introductory or structural study have been brought together 

 in an extended illustrated memoir, which will be ready to go to 

 press in the near future. This memoir treats mainly of the gen- 

 eral habits of growth, and the vegetative and reproductive structures 

 of the silicified cycadean stems from the lower Cretaceous and 

 upper Jurassic of South Dakota and Wyoming. As is now well 

 known from the preliminary papers already published by Dr. Wieland, 

 these cycads present structures of the most fundamental importance 

 in our conception of plant morphology and evolution. Their wonder- 

 ful preservation and the greatly improved methods of section cutting 

 noted in the report of last year have made possible a study more 

 complete perhaps than in the case of any other extinct group of 



