320 THE AMKRICAX Ml'SKi'M JOURXAL 



Mk. Leo E. ^Miller having returned from his very successful expedition to Co- 

 lombia, on which he secured material for a group illustrating the nesting habits of the 

 cock-of-the-rock, sailed on Novembei- 26 for the Orinoco region to be gone one year. 

 Mr. Francis X. Iglseder accompanied Mr. Miller as assistant. 



Eight pearl oysters {Meleagrina margnritifera) showing newly-formed pearls 

 in situ have been sent to the Museum by Mr. Gaston J. Vives, manager of the pearl 

 fishery at La Paz, Cahfornia. Two of the specimens bear large saclike cysts such as 

 are believed to contain a majority of the pgarls found. The attached pearls are appar- 

 ently spherical and vary in size from about one-quarter grain to three grains. One 

 specimen shows two pearls close together, one about four times as large as the other. 

 All of the pearls are located on some portion of the free mantle of the oyster, gener- 

 ally on the branchial surface of the inner edge, and all are thinly covered by the 

 epidermis. 



There are probably no sp(>cimens of this character in any museum of the country. 

 The pearl-shell company of which Mr. Vives is the manager has for a few years been 

 engaged in the artificial cultivation of the pearl oyster and has already succeeded 

 in growing a considerable quantity of pearl shell for the market. The company has 

 an extensive station on Espiritu Santo Island near La Paz. 



The department of geology has received as a gift from Mr. Marcos J. Trazivut 

 of New York City an officer's sword which he found this year in the ruins of the mili- 

 tary barracks at St. Pierre,. Martinique, a memento of the great eruption of Mont 

 Pelee which took place in 1902. 



A NEW group in the insect hall shows a nest of the mound building ant {Formica 

 exsectoides) and about four hundred of the workers. The latter are so small as to 

 require careful looking to see them, yet they make mounds which, as illustrated in 

 this exhibit, are frequently more than four feet in diameter and two feet high. De- 

 tailed activities of ants and other social insects will be shown in nearby railing cases. 



The recent publication in the Bulletin of the American Museum of a list of 619 

 types and cotypesof insect species which have been depo.sited in the Museum, empha- 

 sizes not only the great amount of work being done and to be done in discovering 

 undescribed in.sects but also the esteem in which the Museum is held as depository 

 of these priceless objects. The number listed is exclusive of Lcpidoptera and ants, 

 and additional to former lists. 



A OROUP showing the marine invertebrates on the i)iles of old wharves is being 

 prepared for the Darwin Hall, and will be ready for exhibition early in January. 

 Th(! anemones, sponges, hydroids and other animals which live on these piles cluster 

 in larg(! colonies often of great beauty and delicacy, and since in most cases it is im- 

 possible to preserve the real creatures they have been represented in this group by 

 models of wax, glass and celluloid, accurate in form and color. The photographic 

 transparency background portrays the shore of Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, 

 where field studies for the group were made. 



Tnnovr.n an exchange of specimens with the United States National Museum, 

 the American Museum has now come into possession of all the objects belonging with 

 the remarkable mummy found in November, 1899, in the Restauradora Copper Mine, 

 Chuquicamata, Chile. These objects are such as were used in collecting copper 

 ore — three stone hammers and a large stone maul, all witii wooden handles; two 

 scrapers, one of wood and the other of stone, and tliree baskets and a hide bag for 

 holding copper ore. They are now on exhibition beside the mummy in the case in 

 the South American gallery. 



