4 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1942 



seems to be much appreciated. All the Museum buildings are now 

 open all day Sunday for the benefit of service men and war workers. 



8. The War Committee and officials of the Institution have estab- 

 lished definite contacts with the War and Navy Departments and 

 other war agencies ; through these contacts continual efforts are being 

 made to channel more war-time researches and other suitable activities 

 to the Institution. 



The War Committee will continue to function for the duration. 



ENDING OF WRIGHT-SMITHSONIAN CONTROVERSY 

 By anticipation, I report with great relief and peculiar satisfaction 

 the ending of the long controversy between Dr. Orville Wright and 

 the Smithsonian Institution. Negotiations, in which Colonel Lind- 

 bergh and others had taken part, had proceeded intermittently be- 

 tween the Secretary and Dr. Wright since 1928. Since June 1942, in 

 part with the mediation of Fred C. Kelly, an active interchange of 

 communications has gone on. It resulted in a statement acceptable 

 to Dr. Wright which was published by the Institution in its Mis- 

 cellaneous Collections, volume 103, No. 8, October 24, 1942. This 

 statement, which speaks for itself, it is intended to republish as the 

 first article of the Appendix to the Smithsonian Report for 1942. In 

 his letter of October 17, 1942, Dr. Wright says : "I hope the relations 

 between the Institution and myself may again be as amicable as they 

 were in Dr. Langley's administration." 



SUMMARY OF THE YEAR'S ACTIVITIES OF THE BRANCHES OF 

 THE INSTITUTION 



National Mtiseum. — Accessions for the year totaled 284,582 speci- 

 mens, bringing the number of catalog entries in all departments to 

 17,578,240. Among the outstanding accessions may be mentioned the 

 following : In anthropology, 200 artifacts from the old Indian village 

 site of Potawomeke, Stafford County, Va.; cult objects from voodoo 

 shrines in Haiti, and weapons of the Moro of Mindanao, P. I.; in 

 biology, 30 Antarctic seals, 54 Manchurian mammals, 1,845 birds from 

 Colombia collected by Dr. Alexander Wetmore and M. A. Carriker, 

 Jr., 14,219 fishes from the area between Peru and Alaska received 

 from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, a collection of 

 25,000 specimens of Hemiptera received from W. L. McAtee, 7,600 

 specimens, mostly termites, collected in Jamaica by Dr. Edward A. 

 Chapin, and 2,169 specimens of plants of Colombia received in con- 

 tinuation of exchanges from the Instituto de Ciencias Naturales, 

 Bogota, Colombia ; in geology, a large aquamarine from Agua Preta, 

 Minas Geraes, Brazil, purchased from the Roebling fund, a 2,690- 

 gram specimen of the Rose City, Mich., stony meteorite presented by 

 Dr. Stuart H. Perry, 4 tons of limestone blocks of beautifully pre- 

 served silicified Permian fossils collected in Texas by Dr. G. A. 



