MUSEUM NOTES 271 



lot of miniature weapons, tools, etcetera, for the most part carved of wood, 

 which Dr. Knowlton reports were found in a small cache at a grave. The 

 objects were covered by a small heap of stones placed at the front of the 

 corpse and were no doubt made that " their respective souls might accom- 

 pany and serve the deceased in the future land." 



Among the visitors to the Museum during the autumn was Dr. Carlos 

 de la Torre, professor of geology in the University of Havana and one of the 

 most distinguished Cuban scientists. Dr. La Torre is known not only as a 

 naturalist of high repute, but also as an influential leader in the prolonged 

 struggle which culminated in the independence of Cuba, and as a former 

 mayor of Havana. He has brought to the Museum for study and com- 

 parison a remarkable collection of fossils more fully noticed elsewhere. 



Mr. Julian S. Huxley, a grandson of the great English scientist, 

 visited the American Museum early in October on his way to Houston, 

 Texas, to take part in the inaugural ceremonies of the Rice Institute. He 

 will be a member of the scientific faculty of the Institute, his duties com- 

 mencing with the year 1913. 



At the meeting of the Executive Committee on October 16, Mr. Alanson 

 Skinner was appointed assistant curator in the department of anthropology. 



Through the kindness of Dr. Ales Hrdlicka of the United States Na- 

 tional Museum, the department of anthropology has received casts of all 

 the large fragments of the famous Neanderthal man discovered near Diissel- 

 dorf on the Rhine in the spring of 1857. This skeleton must ever be re- 

 nowned as the first positive evidence of a new and very ancient type of man. 

 Since that date more complete and better preserved examples have come to 

 light so that many European museums now possess real skeletons of this 

 type. 



The Museum has received from ]Mr. D. C. Stapleton the gift of valuable 

 prehistoric objects in gold and platinum from the Province of Esmeraldas, 

 Ecuador, and the head-waters of the San Juan Ri\er, Colombia, and has 

 placed the collection on exhibition in the South American gallery on the 

 third floor. The objects show examples of casting and beating, of plating 

 where copper has been covered with thin gold, of the union of two pieces of 

 gold by welding and of the solilering of two minute surfaces in such man- 

 ner that it is difficult to detect the solder. The objects in platinum are 

 of most interest, as it is not known that this metal was ever worked, except 

 in this locality, by a prehistoric people. 



Mr. Rodman Wanamakkk has presented to the Museum the \alual)le 

 collection of pliotographs made on the Roihnaii Wanamaker historical 



