SECRETARY'S REPORT 31 



exchanges between the Smithsonian Institution and these various 

 other museums. 



In mid-November Paul E. Desautels, associate curator of 

 mineralogy and petrology, visited Rochester, N.Y., to select specimen 

 materials for the national collections. At the request of the Rochester 

 Academy of Sciences he gave a talk at the Rochester Museum of Arts 

 and Sciences entitled "Crystal Growth and Its Aberrations in Mineral 

 Crystals." 



In June he went to the southern Illinois-Kentucky fluorspar mining 

 district, in the hope that certain dehciences in the museum collections 

 could be eliminated. The trip proved very successful, resulting in the 

 acquisition of about 1,000 pounds of top-quality mineral specimens 

 of fluorite, calcite, barite, galena, and quartz. 



On June 1 Dr. Richard S. Boardman, associate curator of inverte- 

 brate paleontology and paleobotany, left for an extended visit to 

 Europe to facilitate his studies of fossil Bryozoa of the United States 

 and their correlation with European famias. This research is 

 partially supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. 

 Dr. Boardman's objectives are to collect Ordovician fossils, mainly 

 Bryozoa, and to visit musemns and universities in Great Britain, 

 France, Belgium, Germany, and other continental countries. 



Dr. Porter M. Kier, associate curator of invertebrate paleontology 

 and paleobotany, spent the period October 11-16 collecting fossil 

 echinoids on the Chattahoochee River and its tributaries in Georgia, 

 accompanied by Dr. Norman Solil, of the U.S. Geological Survey. 

 The geologists visited all the known echinoid localities in the area 

 and acquired many excellent specimens for the collections of the 

 National Museum. In November and in March Dr. Kier visited the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and the Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology at Harvard University to study the fossil and 

 recent echinoid collections of those institutions. Many specimens 

 were seen, and some were borrowed in aid of his work on the Cassi- 

 duloida, an order of sea-urchins. On Jujie 6 he departed for a brief 

 European trip, during which he intends to examine collections of 

 fossil echinoids in the museums at Paris and Liege. This study, which 

 is part of a project supported by the National Science Foundation, is 

 to aid in the preparation of a monograph on the Cassiduloida. 



Dr. Richard Cifelli, associate curator of invertebrate paleontology 

 and paleobotany, joined a group of biologists from the Woods Hole 

 Oceanographic Institution in marine studies from August 5 to 19. 

 After preliminary work at Woods Hole, Mass., the group went to Ber- 

 muda, whence, aboard the oceanographic vessel R. V. Chain^ they 

 sailed on a more or less direct line to Woods Hole, stopping at 15 sta- 

 tions along the way. Tliey made hydrographic observations and took 



