REPORT OF ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 35 
these collections, to which were also added the fine casts from the St. 
Louis Exposition. 
Some progress was made toward completing the exhibit of insects, 
and a case of bryozoans was installed in’ the hall of marine inverte- 
brates. A notable addition to the Children’s Room was a copy of the 
old Dutch painting of the dodo, the original of which is in the British 
Museum. 
As a new departure, a special case was brought into use for the 
display of miscellaneous newly acquired objects haying a general pop- 
ular interest, preparatory to their being installed in their proper places 
in the various permanent exhibition series. In this case were also 
placed some small groups of specimens of current interest, such as the 
cotton-boll weevil and the ‘‘culep,” or Guatemalan ant, and mosqui- 
toes which transmit malarial fever, yellow fever, etc. The smaller 
specimens were mounted in anew form of glass cell devised by the 
chief of exhibits. 
Comparatively few changes were made in the exhibition collections 
of the Department of Geology. A large mass of diatomaceous earth 
was added to the economic series; two cases of minerals and one of 
hot spring tubes, returned from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, 
were installed in the west-south range, and the paper casts of the large 
Bacubirito and Cape York meteorites were placed on one of the gal- 
leries facing the rotunda. The exhibit of fossil vertebrates, which 
occupies the southeast court, was extensively overhauled and rear- 
ranged, and there were added to it a skull of Zréceratops calicornis, a 
complete skeleton of the small oreodont, Merycotdodon gracilis, 
skeletons of a small mastodon from Michigan, and a large Dinornis 
from New Zealand, and the remains of a cave bear from France. In 
the gallery of the southeast court a screen was built against the east 
side for the exhibition of ammonites and other large fossil inverte- 
brates, and a beginning was made toward rearranging the fossil plants. 
RESEARCHES. 
The most important researches carried on in the Department of 
Anthropology were those made in connection with the preparation of 
articles for the ‘‘ Handbook of the Indians,” now in course of pub- 
lication by the Bureau of American Ethnology. This work, far from 
being restricted to information in hand, has been extensively based on 
special studies, involving the critical examination of practically all of 
the Museum collections which relate to the subject. The results, more- 
over, have been of service not solely in the compilation of the ‘* Hand- 
book,” but have brought about a more thorough knowledge of the 
collections and a more complete and accurate labeling of many speci- 
mens. The task has been one of great magnitude, extending through 
