332 Annals of the Carnegie Museum. 



On March 15 we completed the installation of the aeroplane in 

 which Mr. Calbraith Perry Rodgers made his memorable flight across 

 the continent from Sheepshead Bay to Los Angeles, California. The 

 aeroplane, together with a portrait of Mr. Rodgers, and a map delin- 

 eating his route, were presented by his mother as a memorial of her 

 son. It is appropriate that this aeroplane, in which a daring Pitts- 

 burgher made the first flight across the continent, should be preserved 

 in the city in which Professor Samuel P. Langley, while a professor in 

 the Western University of Pennsylvania, made his first scientific 

 investigation of the laws of flight, which laid the foundation for the 

 conquest of the air. The modern science of aeronautics had its birth 

 in the city of Pittsburgh, and the Director of the Carnegie Museum 

 recalls with pleasurable emotion his long friendship with Professor 

 Langley, with whom he was associated personally and officially, and 

 his acquaintance with Calbraith Perry Rodgers, dating from his 

 infancy. He well remembers a snowy winter afternoon when, coming 

 out from the city on the street-car line he was chatting with his mother's 

 cousin, who was accompanied by Calbraith, than a little boy. As 

 they neared their destination Miss Munson exclaimed: "How shall 

 I ever get up to the house through the snowdrifts with this little boy!" 

 The difficulty was quckly solved by lifting the little fellow upon my 

 shoulder and marching up the hill with him to the warmth of his 

 mother's home. I little dreamed then that the curly-headed boy 

 whom I was carrying on my shoulder should later be borne on the 

 circumambient air of the globe across the continent from sea to sea 

 through the perfection of a device even then being thought out by one 

 of my friends. 



The H. W. Johns-Manville Company has presented to the Museum 

 a very large and most interesting collection repersenting the mineral 

 asbestos and all the various products which are manufactured there- 

 from by this enterprising and highly successful firm. The collection 

 is beautifully installed in the Hall of Minerals, and from the outset has 

 attracted a great deal of attention on the part of visitors. 



