SECRETARY'S REPORT 29 



In October and November Dr. Thomas R. Soderstrom, associate 

 curator of grasses, made extensive collections of plants in the state of 

 Michoacan, Mexico, in collaboration with Robert King, of Texas, who 

 is spending a large part of this year at the Smithsonian Institution. 

 Thorough collections of the flora were made in six diverse localities in 

 Michoacan. Special emphasis was placed on study of the grasses, and 

 the material obtained will be incorporated in a taxonomic revision of 

 the grasses of JMexico, upon which Dr. Soderstrom is now embarking. 



In August, prior to attending the Tenth Pacific Science Congress 

 in Honolulu, Dr. William L. Stern, curator of woods, collected wood 

 samples and herbarium material mostly in the mountain forests of 

 Kauai, Hawaii. It was possible to visit the poorly collected Na Pali 

 Kona coast of Kauai, where Dr. Stem and Dr. Sherwin Carlquist, of 

 the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, gathered specimens of the 

 monotypic lobeloid Brighamia insignis, as well as other rare plants. 

 On his return trip. Dr. Stern visited colleagues in Oregon and Colo- 

 rado and spent several days in the field making collections of wood 

 samples and herbarium vouchers. In continuation of his study of 

 the flora of the Florida Keys, Dr. Stern spent 2 weeks in December 

 and January making collections of wood specimens and herbarium 

 material at Key Largo, Big Pine Key, Grassy Key, and Crawl Key. 



In June and July 1961 Dr. G. Arthur Cooper, head curator of geol- 

 ogy, and Dr. Richard E. Grant, of the U.S. Geological Survey, con- 

 tinued their field studies in Texas and New Mexico. In the vicinity 

 of Marathon, Tex., much of their time was devoted to examining the 

 lower limestone of the Word formation, which proved to be a key bed 

 in their studies, and collecting from it at about 20 localities. Subse- 

 quently the field party spent some days at Van Horn working in the 

 Lower Permian Huaco formation, where they collected from the 

 Capitan limestone and its equivalents, their objective being to obtain 

 a good representation of this fauna to use in comparative studies with 

 their Glass Mountains fossils. This field season essentially completed 

 the coverage of the Glass Mountains area for collecting purposes by 

 Dr. Cooper and Dr. Grant. 



In October Edward P. Henderson, associate curator of mineralogy 

 and petrology, went to the vicinity of Henagar, Ala., to prospect for a 

 meteorite which had first been discovered in 1959. Although the main 

 mass of this meteorite had been removed, Mr. Henderson, using a 

 sensitive metal detector, prospected 5 acres of ground and located one 

 sizable piece and several smaller fragments. A second trip took ]\Ir. 

 Henderson to Fort Worth, Tex., to investigate reports about a mete- 

 orite that fell there on September 9, 1961. With the aid of Oscar 

 Monnig, field work was organized, and after many hours' search the 

 party located a small piece of the meteorite, which is now on deposit 

 in the national collections. 



