MUSEUM NOTES 149 



lending a number of surveying and other instruments; and the Department of 

 Agriculture through the Weather Bureau is providing a full equipment for the estab- 

 lishment of a meteorological station at the permanent headquarters on Bache Penin- 

 sula. The Bureau of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution is to supply 

 the instruments required for making and recording the magnetic observations. The 

 Georgetown University, Washington, D. C., is loaning the party a Wiechert seismo- 

 graph for the establishment of a station at the home headquarters on Flagler Bay, 

 which is to be under the care of Mr. Green. Other assistance in the way of money 

 and equipment is promised. 



Dr. E. O. Hovey, curator of geology and invertebrate palaeontology has devoted 

 about six weeks to a trip to Panama and Costa Rica in the interests of the Museum. 

 Specimens giving a fairly complete section from the Atlantic to the Pacific across the 

 Isthmus and illustrative series from the volcano of Poas and the gold district of Agua- 

 cate, Costa Rica, were secured together with many photographs. The Isthmian 

 Canal Commission has presented to the Museum a selected series of most excellent 

 photographs of the Panama Canal and the Zone. 



The friendly cooperation between this Museum and the great natural history 

 museum at Frankfurt (Senckenberg Museum) has been shown in the past by ex- 

 changes from one to the other institution of fine exhibition specimens of fossils. 

 The latest are the skeletons of Phenacodus and Sinopa, duplicates of those in our 

 Tertiary mammal hall, purchased by the Frankfurt museum and restored after 

 the more perfect originals in our collection by members of our preparation staff. 

 These are important types of the early Tertiary fauna?, representing the primitive 

 hoofed and clawed animals respectively. The Phenacodus has already been hand- 

 somely installed in a prominent position in the galleries of the Senckenberg Museum. 



Professor George Grant MacCurdy of Yale University spent a few days at 

 the Museum recently cataloguing the collection of palaeolithic implements he secured 

 for the Museum on his last trip to Europe. 



Mr. Francis la Flesche, an educated Omaha Indian from Washington, D. C, 

 visited the Museum in March. He is now occupied with an anthropological 

 investigation of the Osage Indians of Oklahoma under the direction of the United 

 States National Museum. These Indians speak a Siouan language and are noted 

 for the great number of medicine bundles to be found among them. 



Rev. Gilbert L. Wilson of Minneapolis has just filed the report of his investi- 

 gation of the agricultural customs of the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians. This prom- 

 ises to be one of the most complete and suggestive studies of this particular phase of 

 American Indian culture. It brings out among other things the aboriginal origin of 

 methods of fertilization and propagation. Certain fields were not only the habitual 

 planting places of particular families, but the right to them was hereditary. This 

 is important because it approaches the modern conception of individual ownership 

 of land, a rarity among the communal Indian tribes. A series of primitive agricul- 

 tural implements from this tribe is on exhibition in the Plains Indian hall. 



The great collection of dinosaurs secured in western Canada last year keeps busy 

 most of the staff of preparators of the department of vertebrate palaeontology. 

 Several fine specimens are well-nigh completely cleaned up and can be placed on 



