SECRETARY'S REPORT 19 



D. Hardy, and 478 reptiles and amphibians from Virginia collected 

 by William L. Witt. 



In recent years the division of fishes has received a number of very 

 valuable private collections. This year the largest accession, 2,550 

 specimens, the remainder of the collection of the late Dr. William C. 

 Kendall, was transferred from the University of Maine. Through Dr. 

 J. M. Carpenter, of the University of Kentucky, the division also re- 

 ceived 914 South American fishes, forming the collection of the late 

 Dr. William Kay Allen. Other types of fishes were received from the 

 California Academy of Sciences; Dr. William A. Gosline, of the Uni- 

 versity of Hawaii ; the Chicago Natural History Museum ; the Univer- 

 sity of Hawaii ; and Herbert It. Axelrod, editor of the "Tropical Fish 

 Hobbyist." Among 53 Pacific fishes transferred to the Museum by 

 the Atomic Energy Commission was a giant sea bass (P?'omicrops 

 lanceolatus) , the first record for the Marshall Islands. A gift from the 

 University of California yielded 634 fishes from the eastern Pacific. 

 From the Smithsonian-Bredin Expedition to the Belgian Congo, 550 

 fishes collected by Dr. Waldo L. Schmitt were added to the collections. 

 Worthy of mention also is the fine series of 1,246 Alabama fresh-water 

 fishes received in exchange from Dr. J. S. Dendy, of the Alabama Poly- 

 technic Institute. 



By transfer from branches of the U. S. Department of Agriculture 

 the division of insects received three valuable collections : The largest 

 single accession in the past decade or more, consisting of over 230,000 

 termites transferred from the Forest Service upon the recommendation 

 of Dr. T. E. Snyder, one of the world's leading authorities on these 

 destructive insects; over 13,000 miscellaneous specimens from the 

 Cereal and Forage Insects Laboratory, Lafayette, Ind. ; and nearly 

 70,000 specimens from the Entomology Research Branch. Among the 

 year's notable gifts were the 4,400 specimens consisting of 4,127 exam- 

 ples (including immature stages) of the family Psychidae (Lepidop- 

 tera) and 273 hymenopterous parasites reared from them, donated by 

 Dr. Frank Morton Jones ; the personal collection of Dr. F. W. Poos, 

 comprising 3,433 miscellaneous North American insects ; an important 

 lot of 1,553 midges {Culicoides) from Hawaii, given the Museum 

 by Dr. W. W. Wirth ; 3,577 reared flies of the family Drosophilidae 

 from the Department of Zoology, University of Texas ; and the second 

 most important collection to come from Thailand, 3,331 insects col- 

 lected by Robert E. Elbel with the aid of a grant from the Casey Fund. 



Outstanding among the collections received in the division of 

 marine invertebrates were 1,709 fresh-water crustaceans and other 

 invertebrates obtained by the Smithsonian-Bredin Expedition to the 

 Belgian Congo and 267 Australian decapod crustaceans purchased 

 through the Richard Rathbun Fund from S. Kellner of Sydney. 



