46 EEPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1910. 



other cases the material was requested as loans to aid in researches 

 which had been started elsewhere. In essentially all cases the work 

 is carried on gratuitously, the compensation, if any, consisting in the 

 gift of a set of duplicate specimens. When the investigations are 

 being conducted directly for publication by the Museum, the cost of 

 illustrations may be allowed. 



DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGl. 



Accessions. — This department received about 18,000 specimens, the 

 accessions being distributed among the several divisions as follows: 

 Systematic and applied geology, 63; mineralogy, 26; invertebrate 

 paleontology, 33; vertebrate paleontology, 26; paleobotany, 9. 

 Among the additions in systematic and applied geology may first be 

 mentioned a series of volcanic glasses from the island of Billiton and 

 from Australia, included under the names of billitonite, obsidianite, 

 and obsidian bombs, which are at present exciting considerable 

 interest on account of their supposed though unproven meteoric 

 nature. A small complete meteorite from McDufhe County, Georgia, 

 and fragmental portions of others from Ilvittis, Finland; Lampaf) 

 Chile, and Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania, were purchased. Sixty-one 

 rock specimens were obtained in exchange from the museum at 

 Colombo, Ceylon. The following were presented: Two large speci- 

 mens of magnesite from Porterville, California, by the Tulare Alining 

 Company; 62 specimens of rocks and ores from the mines at Mount 

 Lyell, Tasmania, by the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company; 

 a small series of drift rocks from the antarctic region, by Sir Ernest 

 Henry Shackleton; and a small but very interesting series of obsidians 

 from Iceland, by Dr. F. E. Wright. 



The most noteworthy acquisition by the division of mineralogy was 

 a large series of type specimens of mercury minerals from Terlingua, 

 Texas, which had formed the basis of important chemical and crystal- 

 lographic investigations by Messrs. Hillebrand and Schaller, depos- 

 ited by the United States Geological Survey. Among specimens pur- 

 chased were fine examples of calamine, mimetite, calcite, niccolite, 

 sphalerite, crystallized carnotite, bloomstrandite, and alamosite. 

 The Dallas Mining Company, of Coalinga, California, donated a fine 

 showy specimen of the new gem stone, benitoite, associated with 

 neptunite; and the Rhodesia Museum, Bulawa3^o, South Africa, sent 

 in exchange two specunens of the rare minerals tarbuttite and hopeite 

 from the Broken Hill mines. Mr. F. P. Graves, of Doe Run, Missouri, 

 presented some fine amethystine calcite twins from that locality, and 

 Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, of the Museum staff, secured an interesting series 

 of sand barite crystals at Kharga, Egypt, during an anthropological 

 trip to the Lybian Desert in 1909. 



