KEPOKT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1909. 29 



Porto Rico, near which place it was plowed up in a field. Seiior 

 Dias Lira, of Santiago, Chile, contributed an earthenware effigy bot- 

 tle, a perforated stone club head, a double-pitted stone, and a globu- 

 lar stone probably used in games; and Mr. R. E. Lacham, of the 

 same place, 2 stone pestles of unusual form, a stone pigment plate, 

 and 12 fragments of pottery showing incised decorations. Both of 

 these accessions were presented through Mr. Holmes. 



The many objects received during the year were numbered, 

 labeled, and catalogued, and arranged in unit drawers preparatory 

 to their removal to the new building. Only small additions were 

 made to the exhibition series. Investigations have related mainly to 

 the hammer and pitted stones, edge tools, roughly notched imple- 

 ments, and the geograi^hical distribution of aboriginal pottery. 



Historic archeology. — The divisions of historic archeology and 

 historic religions were combined under the former title. An im- 

 portant acquisition by the division consisted of a manuscript of the 

 Mahabharata, the great epic of India, comprising 90.000 couplets 

 written in Sanscrit in Bengali characters on palm leaves, presented 

 by the learned rajah. Sir Sourindro Mohun Tagore. A magnificent 

 silver Hanukah lamp of repousse and fretwork of the Louis XV 

 period, used in the Jewish ceremonial during the feast of Dedication, 

 and an artistically written manuscript of the Book of Ecclesiastes 

 were lent by Haidji Ephriam Benguiat and Son. Mention should 

 also be made of a rubbing and photographs of the Nestorian Stone, 

 the oldest monument of Christianity in China and the Far East, 

 donated by Mr. Frits von Holm. An illuminated Arabic manu- 

 script of the Koran, captured in the Philippines by Capt. Charles F. 

 Bates, U. S. Army, was transferred from the Department of War. 

 It shows the effect of hard usage by the Mohammedan natives of 

 Mindanao. 



To the exhibition collection were added one entire case and several 

 miscellaneous objects of Jewish ceremonial, a series of rosaries, a 

 Dutch Bible of 1742, figures of the goddess Taurt and of Osiris, 

 a piece of mummy cartonage, a lead handle with a human bust, and a 

 wooden statuette. Two papers on material in the division were pub- 

 lished, as follows: " The Collection of Jewish Ceremonial Objects in 

 the U. S. National Museum," by Cyrus Adler and I. M. Casanowicz ; 

 and " The Collection of Rosaries in the U. S. National Museum," by 

 Doctor Casanowicz. 



Physical anthropolofjy. — The principal additions to this division 

 were as follows: Fort}' -five brains of orangs and monkeys from Ma- 

 laysia, presented by Dr. W. L. Abbott ; over 50 skulls and skeletons 

 of prehistoric inhabitants of Arkansas and Louisiana, constituting 

 the first collection of any size made in that region, from Mr. Clarence 

 B. Moore, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 46 skulls and skeletons of 



