MUSEUM NOTES 
Range, Montana,’”’ by Prof. W. M. Davis of 
Harvard; “Crystallization of Quartz Veins,” 
by Waldemar Lindgren of the United States 
Geological Survey. 
President Henry Fairfield Osborn of the 
American Museum, will speak on ‘‘The re- 
cently mounted skeletons of Tyrannosaurus 
and Ornithomimus in the American Museum 
of Natural History.”” He will describe the 
two extremes of carnivorous dinosaur adap- 
tation which these specimens respectively 
represent. Dr. Frank M. Chapman, curator 
of ornithology at the American Museum, will 
read a paper on “The Distribution of Bird 
Life in Colombia: a Contribution to a 
Biological Survey of South America,” and 
Mr. C. William Beebe, curator of birds, New 
York Zodlogical Park, on “The Origin of 
Flight in Birds.” 
Since Mr. Donald B. Macmillan has not 
returned from the Arctic in time to present 
to the members this fall an account of the 
Crocker Land expedition which he led North 
in 1913, arrangements have been made to 
show to members of the Museum on the 
evening of December 9 the motion pictures 
secured by Sir Douglas Mawson on the 
Australasian-Antaretic expedition. <A_ brief 
account of the expedition and a description 
of the action of the films, will be given by 
Mr. George H. Sherwood, curator of educa- 
tion at the American Museum of Natural 
History. These films give a wonderful pic- 
ture of the coastal animal life of the Ant- 
arctic: penguins, seals, sea-elephants, sea- 
leopards, snow petrels, cormorants, giant 
petrels and many other little-known species 
in apparently limitless number. The violent 
windstorms and blizzards so common in the 
Antarctic, and the giant icebergs and tower- 
ing ice cliffs of that region are strikingly 
shown in the pictures. 
A RESTORATION of the dodo has been pre- 
sented to the Museum by Walter Winans, of 
Surrenden Park, England, and is now on exhi- 
bition in the bird hall of the second floor. It 
has been suggested that this bird should prop- 
erly find a place in the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, among the representations of figures 
of ancient mythology; but although there ap- 
pertains to the restoration no actual relic of 
any dodo, it is not a work of imagination only, 
having been prepared in the taxidermy studio 
of Rowland Ward in London, from existing 
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paintings of an actual dodo, the skull and legs 
of the restoration being cast from relics in the 
British and Oxford museums. The accuracy 
of the representation of the dodo presented 
by Mr. Winans is vouched for by Ogilvie 
Grant of the Zodlogical Society of London. 
Art a recent meeting of the Executive Com- 
mittee of the American Museum the new posi- 
tion of research associate was created on the 
scientific staff of the institution. Dr. C. R. 
Eastman was appointed research associate in 
vertebrate paleontology, and Mr. M. C. D. 
Crawford, research associate in textiles. 
Tue Board of Supervisors of the County 
of Los Angeles has acknowledged the receipt 
from the American Museum of a gift of casts 
of Charles R. Knight’s restorations of the 
imperial mammoth, the northern mammoth 
and the American mastodon. These casts 
have been placed in the Museum of History, 
Science and Art of Los Angeles, associated 
with the skeletons of these animals found in 
the La Brea asphalt beds. 
Tue American Museum has recently pur- 
chased a fine mastodon skull found on the 
farm of Mrs. V. Frye at Fulton, Indiana. 
With it were another incomplete skull, two 
lower jaws, and a considerable part of a 
skeleton. Both skulls are of females, dis- 
tinguished by small size and short and 
slender tusks. The three fine specimens of 
Mastodon americanus in the Quaternary hall, 
the Warren skeleton, the Shawangunk skull 
and the Ashley skull are all males. The new 
acquisition enables us to compare male and 
female skulls in the mastodon as well as in 
the mammoth, in which there was a similar 
difference in size of tusks. These tusks, 
about three feet long and three inches in 
diameter, are well worn at the tips, and 
would seem to have been much more useful 
weapons or tools than the huge tusks of the 
male mastodon. One can scarcely avoid the 
conclusion that the massive tusks of the 
males were chiefly ornamental and of very 
little service to their owners — detrimental 
indeed rather than useful in fighting, in 
digging, or in traveling through woods or 
brushland. These and various other speci- 
mens of the mastodon ‘and its Tertiary an- 
cestors will shortly be arranged in the 
northwest corner of the Quaternary hall on 
the fourth floor of the Museum, 
