Report on the United States 

 National Museum 



Sib : I have the honor to submit the following report on the condi- 

 tion and operations of the U.S. National Museum for the fiscal year 

 ended June 30, 1964 : 



COLLECTIONS 



During the year, 1,234,752 specimens were added to the national col- 

 lections and distributed among the 10 departments as follows: An- 

 thropology, 38,484; zoology, 196,427; botany, 30,427; entomology, 

 241,947; mineral sciences, 9,186; paleobiology, 376,007; science and 

 technology, 1,361 ; arts and manufactures, 2,697 ; civil history, 336,393 ; 

 and Armed Forces history, 1,823. This year's accessions were acquired 

 as gifts from individuals, by staff collecting in the field, or as transfers 

 from Government departments and agencies. The complete report on 

 the Museum, published as a separate document, includes a detailed 

 list of the year's acquisitions, of which the more important are sum- 

 marized below. Catalog entries in all departments now total 

 58,755,099. 



Anthropology. — Two large and important North American collec- 

 tions were accessioned in the division of archeology. One, received 

 by transfer from the River Basin Surveys, Bureau of American Eth- 

 nology, included 18,603 specimens fi*om the Medicine Creek Reservoir, 

 Nebraska, and comprises one of the largest and most complete collec- 

 tions extant on the prehistoric agricultural peoples of the Central 

 Plains in the 9th to 14th centuries. The second lot is from the 1931-32 

 investigations of the Bureau of American Ethnology at Signal Butte, 

 a key stratified site in western Nebraska with a series of occupational 

 levels spamiing the period from 2600 B.C. to about A.D. 1700. Other 

 noteworthy accessions include 6,031 pieces collected by the Bureau 

 of American Ethnology from the Parita and Santa Marta areas in 

 Panama ; a group of handaxes from the Fezan and microlithic blades 

 from Tripolitania, Libya, presented by James R. Jones of the U.S. AID 

 mission to Libj^a; and an exceptionally well-preserved Egyptian 

 cat mummy donated by Edith Goldsmith of Methuen, Mass. 



In the division of ethnology, a large portion of the year's acquisi- 

 tions were obtained, chiefly by purchase, for use in the new Hall of 

 Cultures of Africa and Asia. Noteworthy Asian accessions included : 

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