320 THE AMERICAN 
California, who led this excursion, has been 
instrumental in presenting to the Museum 
recently several very fine skeletons of the 
mammals from the Rancho La Brea deposits 
near Los Angeles, including a complete 
sabre-tooth tiger and a complete wolf, which 
are now being mounted as an addition to the 
group exhibit prepared two years ago. 
A sEerIEs of enlargements of the remarkable 
photographs taken by the Australasian-Ant- 
arctic expedition under Sir Douglas Mawson 
has been placed on temporary exhibition in 
the west assembly hall of the Museum. 
Mr. N. C. NELson assisted by Mr. E. W. 
Morris of the University of Colorado, has 
completed for the time being the survey and 
excavation of the Galisteo ruins. At San 
Marcos, one of the largest of the ruins south 
of Santa Fé, Mr. Nelson excavated 475 rooms. 
Besides the San Marcos ruin five other ruins 
were excavated. Mr. Nelson will also visit 
the Mesa Verde country to inaugurate joint 
work between the University of Colorado 
and the American Museum. 
TuHeERE has been on exhibition during the 
past few months in the west assembly hall of 
the Museum a collection of paintings and 
bronzes by William de la Montagne Cary 
from studies made by him in the West be- 
tween 1861 and 1874. Mr. Cary’s sketches 
are unusually interesting from the historic 
standpoint. They record the phase of 
western life when the buffalo was still on the 
Plains and the Indians were living according 
to their old ways. 
Proressor A. L. Krorser of the Univer- 
sity of California spent the month of July 
and part of August among the Zuni of New 
Mexico where he secured over nine hundred 
specimens illustrating the everyday and re- 
ligious life of these people. He made a de- 
tailed study of their system of relations and 
the terms employed to denote relationship. 
Dr. Ciark WIssiLER, curator of the de- 
partment of anthropology, has spent the 
summer in an intensive study of the religious 
ceremonies of the Pawnee, with the aid of 
James Murie, the religious leader and chief of 
the tribe. Mr. Murie is able to read and 
write not only English but his own language 
as well, using for the purpose an adapted 
form of our ordinary alphabet. 
MUSEUM JOURNAL 
ATTENTION has already been called in the 
notes of the JourRNAL to the remarkable 
Laysan Island group in the University of 
Iowa. The photograph published in this 
number (page 266) represents one-tenth of 
the whole cyclorama. Laysan Island in the 
mid-Pacific has a surface of sand and ‘‘phos- 
phate” rock and is encireled by an irregular 
series of coral reefs. It has no human in- 
habitants but in 1902 was said to be populated 
by nearly ten million birds. 
The group reconstructs this island, at- 
tempting to show the real conditions on the 
island and the twenty-four species of birds 
nesting there. The canvas (138 ft. long) was 
painted by Mr. C. A. Corwin and the fore- 
ground (400 sq. ft.) was built by Mr. Homer 
R. Dill, requiring three years to mount the 
many birds and make the more than fifty 
thousand artificial leaves and the grasses 
used in the construction. 
THE annual meeting of the National Asso- 
ciation of Audubon Societies will be held at 
the American Museum Tuesday, October 26. 
Among other features there will be an exhi- 
bition of motion pictures by Mr. Herbert K. 
Job, who was sent by the Association on a 
tour of inspection of the bird reservations in 
Florida and Louisiana. It was during this 
trip that Mr. Job was detailed by the Na- 
tional Association as Colonel Roosevelt’s 
photographer when the latter inspected the 
bird islands off the Louisiana coast, made 
reservations during his presidency. 
Mrs. Wixi1aM M. Ivins has recently pre- 
sented to the Museum a very valuable col- 
lection of baskets from Arizona, California 
and British Columbia. 
Durina the past summer Mr. Roy C. 
Andrews spent several weeks in the Adiron- 
dack Mountains securing specimens and 
material for a group of Virginia deer which 
will be placed in the North American mam- 
mal hall of the Museum. The site selected 
for field study for the group was Shingle 
Shanty Stream on the Brandreth Preserve. 
Mrs. WILLIAM CHURCHILL, who was born 
in Samoa and lived there for many years, has 
presented to the Museum a large collection 
of photographs and ethnological specimens 
illustrating the native life of the Samoan 
Islands. 
