MUSEUM XOTES 269 



miles distant among the uncivilized Eskimo which he has discovered in the 

 Coronation Gulf region of Arctic America. These collections have been 

 placed on e.\hil)ition and will l)e open for inspection at the close of Mr. 

 Stefansson's lecture. 



The AIorgan collectiox of gems and gem material has received a 

 recent addition of some superb mineral material. The most conspicuous 

 of the specimens perhaps are the two crystals of kunzite (lilac-colored 

 spodumene), seven and ten inches long respectively. After them in interest 

 are three large rubellite (tourmaline) crystals. The deep gerardia tone of 

 these is in one instance heightened by a partial immersion in the side of a 

 gray translucent cjuartz. There are also a green tourmaline with pink 

 nucleus in a heavy quartz block from Rumford, Maine, a shell of amethyst 

 from the famous Brazilian grottoes, a large topaz pebble clouded on its 

 surface by minute abrasions, a "water-bottle" (enhydros) from Salto, 

 Uruguay, a mound of crystals of epidote from Alaska and three groups of 

 the unrivaled Brazilian phenacite. 



Besides the above, the gift includes also a quartz sphere, a quartz slab 

 infiltrated with gold, one exquisite fresh water pearl and a valve of the 

 pearl oyster {Mdracjrhia margaritifcra). The last from Thursday Island is 

 of most lustrous quality and bears an attached pearl. 



President Henry Fairfield Osborx and Dr. J. A. Allen will repre- 

 sent the Museum at the Ninth International Congress of Zoology to be held 

 at Monaco in March 1913. 



Ax interesting specimen recently presented to the Museum is the skull 

 of a walrus dre<;iged from the bottom of Penobscot Bay, Maine. The 

 donor, Mr. Langdon Gibson, has supplied the following record of its dis- 

 covery. " It was found by Sidney Norton in his scallop dredge in December, 

 1911, in fifty fathoms of water, two miles to the southwest of Andrews 

 Island, off Owl's Head, Penol)scot Bay." The skull agrees fairly well with 

 that of the Atlantic walrus, Trichcchus rosmariis. One of the tusks is 

 complete, the other lost, and the occiput and zygomatic arches are missing. 

 The bone is in fairly good preservation and quite well petrified, indicating 

 that the .specimen is not at all recent ; it must be thousands of years old 

 to have attained this degree of petrifaction under ordinary circumstances. 



The especial interest of this skull is that it shows the more southerly 

 range of the walrus in former times, probably during the Glacial Epoch. 

 At the present time the southern limit of range of the walrus is the Labrador 

 coast. Fossil remains of walruses have been found along the Atlantic 

 coast as far south as South Carolina, but it is doubtful whether they all 

 belong to the modern species. 



