SECRETARY'S REPORT 19 



Striiiiple. As in previous years, the income from the Walcott fund 

 financed paleontological field work which resulted in the acquisition of 

 additional invertebrate fossil materials by Dr. G. Arthur Cooper 

 and W. T. Allen from western Texas and by Dr. Cooper from Virginia 

 and Tennessee. 



Transfers from the United States Geological Survey include, among 

 others, upper Paleozoic invertebrates from the Brooks Range of 

 Alaska, fresh- water mollusks, and ammonites. Exchanges brought to 

 the Museum seeds of Tertiary plants from Germany; lower Ordovi- 

 cian brachiopods from Norway ; Cretaceous and Tertiary Forminifera 

 from Sweden, France, Italy, Algeria, and Cuba; Permian fusulinid 

 Foraminifera from Tunisia; and Jurassic and Recent Foraminifera 

 from Germany. 



Material sufficient for the mounting of a skeleton of the giant 

 ground sloth, MegatTieriwm^ which was excavated by Dr. C. L. Gazin 

 and Franklin Pearce in Panama, constitutes the most noteworthy ad- 

 dition to the vertebrate fossil collection. Beautifully preserved mid- 

 dle Eocene fisli were found in the Green River shales of Colorado, 

 Utah, and Wyoming by Dr. D. H. Dunkle and Franklin Pearce. The 

 field work in Panama and that on fossil fishes was financed from the 

 income of the Walcott fund. Some 80 fossil mammals from the Wind 

 River Eocene of Wyoming and from the Oligocene of Montana and 

 North Dakota, collected by Dr. T. E. "Wliite and transferred to the 

 Museum by River Basin Surveys, deserve special mention. 



Engineering and industries. — The section of wood technology re- 

 ceived 345 samples of woods of Surinam by exchange from the Hout 

 Instituut, Netherlands. In textiles, 407 wooden blocks used as braid- 

 ing and embroidery patterns in the nineteenth century were presented 

 by Edna Plummer, and 15 coverlet drafts of the period 1831-53 by 

 Lelah Allison. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Inc., prepared and 

 presented an exhibit showing the manufacture, properties, and ver- 

 satility of nylon yarn. 



The National Bureau of Standards transferred a collection of 155 

 pieces of historical electronic and electrical apparatus, including a 

 radiosonde and a radiosonde transmitter. Early electrical measuring 

 instruments developed by Europeans and Americans were presented 

 by the Weston Electrical Instrument Corp. The American Screw Co. 

 donated 13 inventors' models and machines illustrating the develop- 

 ment of wood-screw-making machinery in the transition from hand- 

 fed, individually operated machines to the hopper- fed, semiautomatic 

 machines. 



The most important accession by the division of graphic arts was 

 a gift fi'om the Sun Chemical Corp., through the Lithographers Na- 

 tional Association, of 23 lithographs of the Fuchs and Lang collection 

 of historical lithographs. A complete tecluiical exhibit of the half- 



