REPORT OF ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 107 



A tanned skin of an albino buffalo calf was received from Lieut. 

 Colonel Kellogg. II was cleaned, poisoned, and placed on exhibition 

 in the fur collection. Five boxes of specimens were packed for ship- 

 ment. Nine mounted mammals have been repaired, poisoned, and put 

 in good condition. Two seals and a large walrus were placed on new 

 stands. Casts have been made of six bodies or parts of bodies of mam- 

 mals received in the flesh. These are often of great assistance in 

 mounting - , since the}- furnish the best idea of the size and shape of 

 the species. Quite a number of these are now on hand and form a 

 very interesting and instructive collection. 



Congress having provided for the fitting up of the Armory building 

 for the use of the Fish Commission, the third floor of that building has 

 been reserved for the modelers and taxidermists of the Museum. It 

 became necessary therefore to remove this department from the second 

 and fourth floors to new rooms on the third floor. This department 

 now occupies three rooms in the Armory building, a shed outside, con- 

 taining the collection of pickled skins, and a number of storage rooms 

 in the Smithsonian basement, containing molds and casts. 



MODELING AND PAINTING. 



Mr. J. W. Hendley has continued his work during the year. For the 

 Department of Transportation he has made two lay figures, an In- 

 dian hunter on snow shoes with gun in one hand and three birds in the 

 other, and an Eskimo seated on a sled. He has repainted a Japanese 

 carrying-box. For the food collection he lias cast and painted a beef- 

 steak, a platter of butter, two loaves of bread, and repaired a num- 

 ber of articles. For the Department of Ethnology he has repaired and 

 cleaned seventy small statuettes, cast and painted thirteen implements, 

 made ten casts of Assyrian seals, together with numerous flat impres- 

 sions of the same. For other departments : Eight casts of fossil shark's 

 teeth, nine casts of fossil bones, casts of contents of two jars of phos- 

 phorus, repaired and painted cast of skull of the fossil bull (Bos tints), 

 made fourteen casts of a rare trilobite, and of numerous minor objects. 



Mr. Joseph Palmer has done very little taxidermic work during the 

 year, most of his time having been taken up in work on the series of 

 porpoise casts, and in casting and setting up large casts of antique 

 objects. A statement of the most important work accomplished is as 

 follows: Several weeks were spent in changing and repairing the orna- 

 mentation of the columns in the Smithsonian building. A complete set 

 of casts was made from the molds of Assyrian antiquities, taken at the 

 Fairfax Seminary, Virginia. He repaired and set up for exhibition a 

 series of Assyrian and Egyptian easts, received from Berlin, twenty live 

 large and small specimens; repaired and painted a bust of the King of 

 Siam, and made a east of the Indian chief Osceola; made a mold and 



