Jan. 1935 Annual Report of the Director 207 



kind never before exhibited in any North American museum, is 

 that of the great sloth, Megatherium americanum, which has been 

 prepared and is nearly ready for exhibition. An entire skeleton of 

 the rare Paleocene mammal, Titanoides faberi, was removed from 

 a stony matrix of great hardness and prepared for study and for 

 mounting later as an exhibit. Two fine specimens of great tortoises, 

 consisting of the shell and large parts of the skeleton, have been 

 prepared and mounted for exhibition. 



In H. N. Higinbotham Hall (Hall 31) there was installed a collec- 

 tion of specimens of culture and Oriental pearls, the gift of Mr. 

 Kokichi Mikimoto, of Tokyo, Japan. Materially enlarging the 

 pearl exhibit, this collection contains culture pearls of the kind 

 grown artificially in pearl oysters in Japan, along with a number of 

 Oriental or natural pearls for comparison. It is accompanied by a 

 pearl oyster with one shell removed to show the interior where 

 pearls grow. 



Two gold nuggets received during the year were added to the 

 native gold collection, and some inferior jade was replaced by 

 specimens of better quality. 



The rearrangement of the mineral and economic reserve and study 

 collections in trays in Room 120, which was undertaken last year, 

 has already proved its worth. Use during the year of the reorganized 

 collection indicated that a closer geographical classification of some 

 sections of the economic collection would facilitate ready reference 

 to them. The geographical classification of the gold, silver, and lead 

 ores was already sufficiently detailed. All the other ore and non- 

 metallic mineral collections now have been rearranged in as close 

 geographical sequence as the nature of the material will permit. 

 As the specimens in this room are reserve and study collections, not 

 merely storage material, and are frequently referred to, the new 

 arrangement has effected a worth-while economy of the time of the 

 staff. 



DEPARTMENT OF ZOOLOGY 

 expeditions and research 



Two important zoological expeditions, organized and initiated 

 near the close of 1933, were in the field during 1934. These were the 

 Straus West African Expedition of Field Museum and the Leon 

 Mandel Guatemala Expedition of Field Museum, both of which 

 were mentioned in the Annual Report for 1933. 



The Straus West African Expedition was accompanied during 

 February, March, and April by its patroness, Mrs. Oscar Straus, of 



