40 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1961 



The third and last section of the textile hall gallery, presenting the 

 origin and history of lacemaking and rugmaking and popular types 

 of American needlework, was completed for public inspection on 

 December 9, 1960. Included in this display are old American quilts, 

 samplers dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, laces beginning 

 with 16th-century drawnwork and also machine-made laces of the 

 19th century, and needlework handkerchiefs. 



The completely renovated Hall of Monetary History and Me- 

 dallic Art was formally opened in the Arts and Industries Building 

 on March 18, 1961, in the presence of the Secretary of the Treasury, 

 the Under Secretary of the Treasury, Senator Clinton P. Anderson 

 and Representative Frank T. Bow, Regents of the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution, members of the diplomatic corps, donors, collectors, and 

 representatives of numismatic organizations from all sections of the 

 United States. The central series of 19 specially designed cases 

 traces the major aspects of the development of money economy from 

 primitive barter to the establishment of our modem monetary sys- 

 tem. The hall also features the world's largest collection of gold 

 coins, given to the Smithsonian Institution by the late Paul A. 

 Straub. Almost 4,000 silver coins complement this series. 



The story of life through the ages from the oldest known fossils, 

 dated 1,600 million years ago, to the Cenozoic Era mammals is de- 

 picted in three halls in the Natural History Building. The synoptic 

 display of fossil plants features those that contributed to the formation 

 of coal. Fossil backboneless animals such as sponges, corals, snails, 

 clams, trilobites, and other extinct shelled animals are shown in geo- 

 logical time sequence. The second hall, that of fossil fishes and am- 

 phibians was informally opened in June 1960. This year a life-sized 

 group was completed, showing an encounter between two kinds of 

 pelycosaurs, or fin-backed reptiles, as it might have happened about 

 260 million years ago. The third hall, the Age of Mammals in North 

 America, traces the succession of mammals in the five epochs of Terti- 

 ary time from Paleocene to Pliocene, a period of 70 million years. 

 Skeletons of the better-known groups of mammals are supplemented 

 by a display of skulls for each of these epochs. The large mural 

 painting by Jay H. Matternes depicting some of the characteristic 

 mammals with contemporary reptiles and plants of the Bridger middle 

 Eocene has been completed, and a second mural, showing a Harrisonian 

 or early Miocene life assemblage of mammals, is nearly finished. These 

 three halls were formally opened to the public on the night of June 6, 

 1961. 



The first of two modernized halls of North American Archeology 

 was opened to the public on June 24, 1961. A number of the 34 

 exhibits in this hall portray and explain important aspects of aborigi- 

 nal North American life. About half of the exhibits in the hall inter- 



