REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 21 



tains in West Virginia, and obtained specimens of use in outlining 

 the local ranges of certain birds. 



Dr. G. S. Myers, assistant curator of fishes, collected fishes in 

 Dismal Swamp and the Chowan-Roanoke River systems, in connec- 

 tion with a survey of Virginia fresh-water fishes begun in 1933. 



Under a grant from the Smithsonian Institution, the curator of 

 mollusks, Dr. Paul Bartsch, began some breeding experiments with 

 the mollusk Goniohasis mrginica of the Potomac drainage, in an 

 attempt to ascertain the effect of different environmental conditions 

 on animals from the upper and lower parts of the river. Dr. J. P. E. 

 Morrison on his own initiative collected mollusks for the Museum 

 in the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah country. 



Other biological field work included that of Austin H. Clark in a 

 study of Virginia butterflies, in which he made a preliminary survey 

 of 75 counties of the State; of P. W. Oman, who made an extensive 

 collection (about 40,000 specimens) of Homoptera in the West; of 

 E. P. Killip, who collected plants on the Florida Keys ; of Dr. C. E, 

 Burt, who continued his collecting for the Museum of herpetological 

 specimens from the south-central States; and of Dr. R. E. Black- 

 welder, holder of the Walter Rathbone Bacon Traveling Scholarship 

 of the Smithsonian Institution, who visited many of the islands of 

 the West Indies in a study of staphylinid beetles. 



Geology. — Mark C. Bandy spent four months in the Atacama 

 Desert region of Chile in the interests of the Museum mineral collec- 

 tions in cooperation with Harvard University. 



At the end of the year Assistant Curator E. P. Henderson was col- 

 lecting in an extensive limestone contact zone on Prince of Wales 

 Island, Alaska. 



Dr. G. A. Cooper, stratigraphic paleontologist, made a number of 

 field trips — to Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York, as 

 well as the Midwest and Ontario — to obtain Middle Devonian rocks 

 and other geological specimens. 



Dr. C. E, Resser, curator of stratigraphic paleontology, spent two 

 months in the southern Appalachians studying Cambrian geology. 



The field explorations of vertebrate fossils under the direction of 

 C. W. Gilmore begun last year were continued, and collections were 

 made in the Two Medicine formation of Montana and the Wasatch of 

 the Big Horn Basin, Wyo., with good results. 



Late in the year Dr. C. L. Gazin headed an expedition into the 

 vertebrate-fossil fields of New Mexico and Arizona. 



MISCELLANEOUS 



Visitors. — Visitors to the various Museum buildings during the year 

 totaled 1,973,673, an increase of 135,981 over last year and over 44,000 

 more than has ever before been recorded for a single year. The 



