MUSEUM NOTES 47 



Dr. Clark Wissler and Dr. Robert H. Lowie of the department of anthro- 

 pology attended the meetings of the American Anthropological Association at Cleve- 

 land, December 30 to January 3. President J. Walter Fewkes of the affiliated 

 Anthropological Association being absent, Dr. Wissler presided at the meetings. 

 Dr. Lowie read a paper on the "Ceremonies of the Eastern Sioux." Of the Museum 

 staff, Dr. Herbert J. Spinden and Mr. Nels C. Nelson were elected to the council of 

 the American Anthropological Association, and Dr. Lowie was made associate 

 editor of the American Anthropologist and editor-in-chief of Current Anthropological 

 Literature. Dr. P. E. Goddard was elected a member of the committee on a uniform 

 alphabet for recording Indian language. 



Mr. Frank M. Chapman sailed January 8, on the steamship "Zacapa" of the 

 United Fruit Company, in charge of an expedition to Colombia. He was accom- 

 panied by Mr. Louis Agassiz Fuertes as artist, and by Messrs. George K. Cherrie, 

 formerly of the Brooklyn Museum, Paul G. Howes of New Haven, Connecticut, 

 Thomas Ring of Saginaw, Michigan, and Geoffrey O'Connell of Ithaca, New York 

 as general assistants. Mr. Chapman returns to South America to continue his 

 studies of the Colombian fauna with the special object of ascertaining the limits 

 of the various life zones, and also to secure material for a new habitat group of 

 birds for the American Museum. It is designed that this group shall portray the 

 Magdalena Valley with the snow peaks of the Central Cordillera as seen about 

 Honda. 



Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, superintendent of schools of Chicago, with a committee 

 from the Chicago Board of Education recently visited the American Museum to 

 study the institution's methods of cooperative work with the New York public 

 schools, with a view to introducing a similar cooperation between the public schools 

 of Chicago and the Field Museum. 



Captain Roald Amundsen presents to the American Museum one of the 

 sledges which made the trip with him to and from the South Pole. He gives it as 

 an acknowledgement to the American people and especially to American scientific 

 associations for the encouragement and assistance shown to him. This sledge 

 makes a fitting companion to the sledge already in the Museum's possession, the 

 "Morris K. Jesup," which accompanied Admiral Peary to the North Pole. 



A report comes that the South Georgia Islands expedition under Mr. Robert C. 

 Murphy reached the Bay of Islands, November 27 and was waiting for the sea ele- 

 phant season to open in order to obtain the desired specimens for a Museum group 

 of this Antarctic species. Mr. Murphy's statement that there were already on the 

 ground twenty-one steamers representing seven commercial companies, mainly 

 Norwegian, is discouraging for the future of the southern sea elephant race even with 

 the close season set upon the species by the English. The South Georgia Islands 

 expedition, made possible through the liberality of Mr. Arthur Curtiss James, hopes 

 to obtain young penguins needed for completion of a penguin group under construc- 

 tion at the American Museum, in addition to sea elephants and a general collection of 

 birds. 



Through Mr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson the department of fishes has obtained 

 specimens of capelin (Mallotus villosus), a delicious Arctic food fish allied to our 

 smelt, from Point Barrow, Alaska, where they appeared in immense numbers in 

 early August, spawning at the very edge of the sand. Mr. Stefansson gathered from 

 the residents at Point Barrow that the abundance and season of appearance of these 



