142 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 31 



GIFTS 



During the year the library received many gifts. Chief among 

 these was one of several thousand volumes and pamphlets, together 

 with a collection of important letters and photographs, from the 

 library of the late Dr. George P. Merrill, head curator of geology. 

 These were presented by Mrs. Merrill and the other heirs of the 

 estate and are to be kept in the office formerly occupied by Doctor 

 Merrill, both as a permanent memorial to him and as an outstanding 

 addition to the library in the division of geology. Other valuable 

 collections received were as follows: GOO publications of a general 

 scientific nature from Mrs. Dora W. Boettcher, given in memory of 

 her husband, F. L, J. Boettcher, who was once connected with the 

 Smithsonian Institution; 386 volumes and pamphlets from the 

 heirs of the estate of the late Dr. O. P. Hay, of the Carnegie 

 Institution, who for some years before his death used the library 

 in the National Museum almost daily and gave it many valuable 

 publications; 34 volumes, especially on atomic weights, together 

 with a package of letters from the first four Secretaries of the 

 Smithsonian, from the late Dr. Frank Wigglesworth Clarke; 30 

 publications by or about Prof. Henry Carvill Lewis, from his 

 sister, Mrs. Edward S. Sayres; and 50 or more early numbers of 

 periodicals on art, from Mrs. Marietta Comly. Among other gifts 

 were 8 volumes on the history of Japan, from the Historiographical 

 Institute, Tokyo; 4 volumes, namely, A Handbook of Mohammedan 

 Decorative Arts, by M. S. Dimand, and Catalogue of European Dag- 

 gers, Catalogue of European Court Swords and Hunting Swords, 

 and Handbook of Arms and Armor, European and Oriental, by 

 Bashford Dean, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and The 

 Permian of Mongolia, by Amadeus W. Grabau, from the American 

 Museum of Natural History. About 600 publications came from the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 267 from the 

 International Catalogue of Scientific Literature, 255 from the Geo- 

 physical Laboratory, 55 from the American Association of Museums, 

 and many from the Library of Congress. 



Preeminent among the books presented to the library was a copy 

 of Nippon, by Phillip Franz von Siebold, as reissued recently in five 

 volumes by the Japaninstitut of Berlin. The narrative of the 

 author's experiences in Japan during the years 1823 to 1830 is illus- 

 trated with pictures of the Japanese people and life during that 

 period. This handsome and costly work, highly significant for its 

 worth both as art and as history, was given to the Smithsonian by 

 G. A. PfeilTer, of New York, and was deposited in the library 

 of the Freer Gallery of Art. Other unusual gifts included Machu 

 Picchu, a Citadel of the Incas, by Senator Hiram Bingham, from 



