48 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



capelin were uncertain, that in fact the species was often absent during a consider- 

 able period of years. Although these are the first capelin of recent time which have 

 come to the Museum, its collections for several years have contained fossil specimens 

 of the same species from the Pleistocene of Canada. 



Dr. Robert H. Lowie of the department of anthropology has been given the 

 rank of associate curator, the promotion dating from January 1, 1913. 



The LinNjEan Society of New York held its first annual banquet at the Hotel 

 Endicott on December 17. Mr. Frank M. Chapman in recognition of his unequaled 

 services in popularizing ornithology, was the guest of honor and was presented 

 with a medal. About sixty members and guests were present, Dr. Jonathan Dwight, 

 Jr., president of the Linnsean Society, presiding. At the speakers' table in addition 

 to Dr. Dwight and Mr. Chapman were Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, Dr. Fred- 

 eric A. Lucas, Mr. John Burroughs, Dr. A. K. Fisher, Mr. John H. Sage, Mr. Ernest 

 Thompson Seton, Mr. T. Gilbert Pearson, Dr. George Bird Grinnell and Dr Spencer 

 Trotter. 



Dr. W. D. Matthew, Mr. Walter Granger and Dr. William K. Gregory 

 represented the American Museum at the New Haven meeting of the Pala?ontological 

 Society, December 28-31, and contributed a number of papers to the proceedings. 



By the death of the artist, Louis Akin, at Flagstaff, Arizona, on January 2, the 

 Museum's plans for mural decorations for the Southwest Indian hall have received 

 a check. Mr. Akin had been commissioned to prepare tentative sketches for 

 sixteen panels and had made a number of preliminary figure studies with that end in 

 view. He expected to have finished the sketches during the present year. It is 

 hoped that it may be possible to exhibit Mr. Akin's studies during the spring months 

 when there is proposed a special exhibit of material and paintings illustrating the 

 life of the Indians of the Pueblo region. Mr. Akin is best known to the world by 

 his paintings of Hopi Indians. His work is a faithful portrayal of the tribe, with 

 which he lived during the years of his study and of which he was made a member. 



Last summer Mr. Walter Granger, associate curator of fossil mammals, sent in 

 to the Museum a tiny fossil skull which he had found in a Basal Eocene formation 

 in New Mexico. The specimen is of the greatest scientific interest as it belongs to 

 an excessively rare and primitive group of Insectivora and carries back their record 

 to the beginning of the Age of Mammals. But it was partly buried in a hard flinty 

 nodule, the rock being harder than the delicate substance of the teeth and bone and 

 not nearly as brittle. The whole skull is less than an inch in length, and to extricate 

 it completely from its matrix without damage to the minute sharp-pointed teeth or 

 the delicate structures of the skull is a remarkable accomplishment. It was not safe 

 to employ acid or other chemicals to soften the rock; all had to be chiseled away, 

 grain by grain, under the microscope with special tools devised for the work by Mr. 

 Anderson. Enlarged photographs of the specimen were then secured and it was 

 sealed up inside a small plate glass box and placed among the fossil Insectivores 

 in the small mammal case in the Tertiary mammal hall. 



The department of invertebrate zoology has just acquired two notable additions 

 to its collections. One contains representatives of one hundred and forty-two species 

 of Neuropteroids, practically all of them being species not hitherto possessed by 

 the Museum. It was obtained from Mr. Nathan Banks, a recognized authority on 

 these insects. The other is a collection of thrips (Thysanoptera) obtained from J. 

 Douglass Hood. Previously the Museum did not have a single well-determined 

 example of this whole order; now it has a valuable and complete collection. 



