MUSEUM NOTES 37 



The year has closed with much work in progress, although many things 

 are so hinged together that one cannot move without the other. For 

 example, the section of the Big Tree in the Darwin hall has been waiting 

 many years for a suitable place in the hall of forestry. The rearrangement 

 of the forestry hall permits the removal of a case that provides room for 

 the Big Tree, that in turn leaves room for the erection of a case to hold the 

 domesticated dogs illustrating variation under domestication, and the 

 removal of these permits a rearrangement of the mammals that will ulti- 

 mately lead to the assembling of new bird groups. 



Similarly the removal of the groups of New York mammals to the hall 

 of North American mammals permits the taking down of the large cases and 

 provides a home for the exhibits of the department of public health and the 

 closely related department of anatomy and physiology. At the same time 

 the cases once containing the groups of mammals will be transferred to the 

 African hall for the extension of that part of the collection. 



Mr. Walter Granger, associate curator of fossil mammals, has been 

 abroad since early November engaged in part upon researches among the 

 fossil mammals of the English and French museums, especially the Old 

 World relatives of the four-toed horse. 



The exhibit illustrating the evolution of the horse has been reinstalled 

 and extended. It now displays upon a single panel the principal stages in 

 the evolution in size and general proportions, in skull and feet, teeth, brain 

 and limb-bones, all arranged in accordance with the successive geologic 

 formations in which they are found. The panel is to the right of the en- 

 trance of the mammal hall. The Amblypoda, gigantic quadrupeds of the 

 early Tertiary Period are being reinstalled upon the panel system at the 

 opposite end of the hall. Other recent additions to the fossil vertebrate 

 collections are the Fort Lee reptile and the skeleton of a smaller relative, 

 the Rutiodon, from the coal fields of North Carolina, displayed in the 

 corridor opposite the elevator; and in the quaternary hall, skeletons 

 (casts) of the extinct South American ciuadrupeds Marraiichcuia and To.vo- 

 don, with a number of small models illustrating the extinct animals of the 

 Quaternary Period in South America. 



Dr. William H. Holmes, curator-in-chief of the anthropological 

 division of the National Museum, visited the Museum December 19 to 

 view the North American archaeological collections. Dr. Holmes is gen- 

 erally recognized as the leading archaeologist in America 



Professor Charles-Edward Amory Wixslow will represent the 

 American Museum of Natural History at the forthcoming International 



