REPORT OF ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 17 



volumes will be required to complete the work. Specimens in greater 

 or less number have been sent for study to the representatives of over 

 twenty prominent museums and universities in different parts of the 

 United States. 



More of the Museum staff than usual were in the field, the duration 

 of their absence from Washington varying from two or three weeks 

 to as many months. Mr. William H. Dall, Mr. Robert Kidgway, 

 Dr. C. Hart Merriam, and Mr. F, V. Coville accompanied the Harri- 

 man Alaskan Expedition. Mr. Leonhard Stejneger, Dr. Charles W. 

 Richmond, Mr. William Palmer, and Mr. J. H. Riley visited Cuba 

 and Porto Rico in the interest of the Pan-American Exposition. The 

 whale fishery of Newfoundland was investigated by Dr. Frederick W. 

 True, and the anthropology of Cuba and Jamaica by Mr. William H. 

 Holmes. Collections of plants were made in Mexico by Dr. J. N. 

 Rose and Dr. Walter Hough; of vertebrates in Venezuela by Mr. 

 Marcus W. Lyon, jr.; of fishes in the Vineyard Sound region of 

 Massachusetts by Mr. Barton A. Bean, and of fossils in Wyoming by 

 Mr. Charles Schuchert and Dr. Lester F. Ward. 



From the appropriation of $300,000 made by Congress for the Gov- 

 ernment exhibit at the Pan-American Exposition of 1901 $50,000 

 have been allotted to the use of the Smithsonian Institution and its 

 bureaus. Before the close of the year the plans for the display by 

 the Museum had been practicall}'^ settled, and considerable progress 

 had been made in bringing the necessary collections together and in 

 starting the work of preparing them. 



NAT MUS 1900 2 



