28 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1903. 



Botanic Gardens, Durban, Natal, 100 South African plants; the 

 Botanic Gardens, Sj-dney, New South Wales, 30 plants from New 

 South Wales; the Museo Nacional, Montevideo, Urufyuay, 35 i)aleo- 

 lithic implements. 



The material obtained in exchange from individuals abroad was as 

 follows: From Mr. W. E. Helman, London, 30 birds' eggs from Ice- 

 land and England; from Mr. H. W. Parritt, London, iJ3 specimens of 

 echinoderms and crustaceans; from Mr. B. W. Priest, Norfolk, Eng- 

 land, 4 boxes of foraminifera from the island of Jersey; from Mr. 

 H. Sidebottom, Cheadle Hume, near Stockport, Cheshire, foramini- 

 fera from Great Britain and the Seychelles Islands; from M. Ernest 

 Andre Haute-Saone, France, 10 specimens including 4 cotypes of 

 Mutillids; from M. Georges Lachenand, Limoges, France, 30 speci- 

 mens of European mosses and hepatica; from M. Stanislas Meunier, 

 Museum of Natural History, Paris, a meteorite from Tadjera, Algiers; 

 from M. Phileas Rousseau, Notre Dame de Mont, Vendee, 19 speci- 

 mens of trilobites, 5 of BeUeroplion and other fossils from the Silu- 

 rian formation of France; from Mr. A. Callier, Rosswein, Saxony, 

 273 plants from Russia; from Dr. Aristides Brezina, Vienna, meteor- 

 ites from Jellica, Merciditas, and San Juliao; from Mr. Julius Bohm, 

 Vienna, a piece of meteorite from Erghes, Somaliland, Africa, weigh- 

 ing 427 grams; from Mr. Embr. Strand, Christiania, Norway, 261 

 specimens of Lepidoptera and 20 specimens of Orthoptera; froni Mr. 

 G. van Roon, Leiden, Holland, 120 specimens of Coleoptera; from 

 Dr. K. Kishinouye, Imperial Fisheries Bureau, Tokyo, Japan, photo- 

 graphs of Japanese corals; from Dr. T. H. Holland, director of the 

 Geological Survey of India, a meteorite from Shergooty, India; from 

 Mr. F. H. McK. Grant, North Carlton, Melbourne, Australia, a speci- 

 men of Upper Silurian starfish and a specimen of Lower Silurian 

 cephalopod; from Dr. A. Duges, Guanajuato, Mexico, 32 insects. 



RESEARCHES. 



Under the act of Congress founding the Smithsonian Institution the 

 Museum staff is charged with the classification and arrangement as well 

 as with the care and preservation of the national collections, and 

 although many of the accessions have been previously worked up, the 

 greater number reach the Museum unstudied and unnamed. 



In selecting the assistants in every grade, therefore, it has been 

 necessary from the beginning to consider their qualifications with 

 reference to expert knowledge of the groups of specimens to be placed 

 under their charge, and in this manner a very effective though small 

 staff of paid scientific workers has been assembled. The greater part 

 of the time of these assistants has, naturally, to be given to the routine 

 duties attendant upon the receipt, assorting, labeling, cataloguing, and 

 disposition of the collection as received, but by working outside the 



