24 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1952 



parried Dr. Edwin Kirk, of the United States Geological Survey, to 

 Alabama and Tennessee to obtain Mississippian crinoids. Dr. A. R. 

 Loeblich, Jr., secured foraminiferal samples from the uppermost 

 Lower Cretaceous and basal Upper Cretaceous beds in northern Texas. 

 Mississippian and Pennsylvanian invertebrate fossils were collected 

 in northern Ohio and western Pennsylvania by A. L. Bowsher and 

 William T. Allen in April 1952. Dr. C. L. Gazin continued his investi- 

 gation, during the summer of 1951', of the mammalian fauna! horizons 

 of the lower Eocene Knight formation in the Green River or Bridger 

 basins of southwestern Wyoming and the lower Oligocene deposits in 

 the Wind River basin. During October 1951, Dr. David H. Dunkle 

 examined briefly reported occurrences of Cretaceous fishes at Xilitla, 

 San Luis Potosf, and Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, Mexico. 



A grant of funds from Edwin A. Link, of Binghamton, N. Y., en- 

 abled Mendel L. Peterson to join Mr. Link at Marathon, Fla., and 

 participate in a survey of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Spanish 

 and British ships which had been wrecked on the reefs between 

 Tavernier Key and Vaca Key, and on West Sambo Reef lying off Key 

 West. The 65-ton diesel-powered boat, Sea Diver, owned and equip- 

 ped by Mr. Link for this survey, afforded a base for diving operations. 

 Cannon barrels and balls, iron hull fittings, iron nails, cast-iron ingots, 

 and fragments of wood hulls were recovered from the wrecks on these 

 reefs. 



VISITORS 



During the fiscal year 1952 there were 3,103,651 visitors to the 

 Museum buildings, an increase of 486,425 over the attendance for 

 1951. The average daily number of visitors was 8,767. On one day, 

 May 31, 1952, 50,329 visitors were recorded. Attendance records for 

 the three buildings show the following numbers of visitors: Smith- 

 sonian Building, 661,278; Arts and Industries Building, 1,587,910; 

 and Natural History Building, 854,463. April 1952 was the month 

 of the largest attendance with 450,120 visitors ; May 1952 was the next 

 largest with 423,103; and August 1951 was third with 392,177. For 

 the last 4 months of the fiscal year, March to June inclusive, a record 

 was kept of groups of school children visiting the Museum buildings. 

 During this 4-month interval, 159,784 children in 4,289 groups were 

 recorded. 



CHANGES IN ORGANIZATION AND STAFF 



Dr. Paul L. Illg, associate curator, division of marine invertebrates, 

 resigned on March 13, 1952, to accept a position in the department 

 of zoology of the University of Washington at Seattle. On Octo- 

 ber 19, 1951, Eugene J. Fite, assistant curator, division of graphic 



