38 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1963 



associated Civil War medals awarded Lt. Edward B. Williston were 

 received from the Department of the Navy. 



The division of naval history acquired, from Capt. P. V. H. Weems, 

 the Weems Memorial Library and its associated collection of naviga- 

 tional instruments illustrative of the progressive solution of problems 

 posed by aerial navigation from its earliest days. The collection in- 

 cludes a notably fine run of Bowditch's The New American Practical 

 Navigator from the 1st to 15th editions. Also included are navigation 

 instruments used in the polar flights of Richard E. Byrd and Lincoln 

 Ellsworth. 



The division's miiform collection has been greatly enhanced by the 

 gift of Mrs. Ernest J. King, widow of Fleet Adm. Ernest J. King, 

 which included a number of her late husband's uniforms, orders, and 

 decorations. 



Philip Wrigley presented rare and interesting naval uniforms 

 including the period of World War I, and an extensive collection of 

 contemporary naval uniforms was presented by the Department of 

 the Navy and Jacob Reed & Sons of Philadelphia. 



The U.S. Coast Guard transferred a wide selection of objects per- 

 taining to the history of that service. These included items of 

 ordnance, two sets of gangway headboards, a first order catadioptric 

 lens, original drafts of a wide variety of lighthouse lenses, a lifeboat 

 and fully equipped beach cart, and, most important, eight extremely 

 handsome models of revenue cutters. Floyd D. Houston of New 

 Suffolk, N.y., presented his finely executed model of the submarine 

 Holland^ first submarine in the Navy. 



Through the courtesy of M. E. Tucker and the government of 

 Bermuda, head curator Mendel L. Peterson and museum technician 

 Alan B. Albright collected a significant number of artifacts from 

 underwater sites in the Bermuda reefs. These included materials of 

 glass, ceramics, and metal from sites dating from 1595 through 1838. 



EXPLORATION AND FIELDWORK 



Dr. R. S. Cowan, assistant director of the Museum of Natural 

 History, conducted a 5-week expedition to Baja California, Mexico, 

 in February and March, primarily to collect data and materials for 

 constructing a desert-life group in the future hall of plant life. With 

 the assistance of modelmaker Paul Marchand and sculptor-artist 

 Vemon R. Rickman, fiber-glass models and plaster models were pre- 

 pared of several cacti and other plants characteristic of the desert. 

 Dr. Cowan also made a systematic collection of wood specimens, almost 

 half of which are new to the Smithsonian Institution wood collection. 



During November and December, Dr. I. E. Wallen, assistant direc- 

 tor for oceanography, visited institutions specializing in marine 



