REPORT OF THE ACTING SECRETARY. 45 



An exceptionally large quantity of fishes and marine invertebrates, chiefly 

 representing explorations at the Hawaiian Islands, the Philippine Islands, 

 and Japan, and on the northwest coast of America, were received from the 

 United States Bureau of Fisheries. Much of the material was still unstudied, 

 but among the fishes were the types of 143 recently described species. Mr. 

 Robert Ridgway, who spent part of the year in Costa Rica, returned with 

 over 1,800 specimens of interesting birds, of which more than one-third was 

 donated by the National Museum of that country. Specimens of the same 

 group from the Philippines and Guam were presented by Dr. E. A. Mearns. 



Important collections of reptiles and batrachians were received from Japan 

 and the Philippines ; of fishes from Mexico, through the Field Museum of Nat- 

 ural History ; of marine invertebrates from Hawaii, Japan, Burma, South 

 Africa, and South America, and of insects from Texas, Central America, 

 Guatemala, the West Indies, and Japan, chiefly through the Department of Agri- 

 culture. Dr. J. N. Rose brought back from his explorations in Mexico a large 

 collection of plants, especially rich in cacti, and many specimens from different 

 parts of the United States were transmitted by the Department of Agriculture. 



The Department of Geology was chiefly enriched through transfers from the 

 United States Geological Survey, of specimens of rocks, minerals, and fossils. 

 The rocks illustrated detailed surveys in several regions. The fossils included 

 many described species and figured specimens from the Miocene, Upper Cre- 

 taceous, Ordovician, Devonian, and Silurian. Especially noteworthy were sev- 

 eral thousand Mesozoic plants, which had been worked up and described by 

 Ward, Fontaine, Bibben, and Wieland. Tw'O thousand Russian Ordovician 

 bryoza were received as a gift from Dr. A. von Mickwitz, of St. Petersburg, and 

 several hundred examples of fossil woods and plants from the Permo-Carbon- 

 ifei'ous of Suo Paulo and Santa Catharina, Brazil, were presented by Mr. I. C. 

 White. 



EXPLORATIONS. 



The Museum depends chiefly for its scientific collections upon the explorations 

 of the various Government bureaus and of private individuals, having scant 

 means to expend in this direction. The principal field work by members of the 

 Museum staff was conducted by Doctor Hough in Arizona and New Mexico, 

 Doctor Hrdlieka in Florida, Mr. Ridgway in Costa Rica, Doctor True in Mary- 

 land, Doctor Rose in Mexico, and Doctor Bassler in the southern Appalachians, 

 Virginia, and the Mississippi Valley. 



CARE AND CLASSIFICATION OF THE COLLECTIONS. 



The first duty devolving upon the Museum staff is the care and preservation 

 of the collections, all of which has been conscientiously performed and with as 

 satisfactory results as Is possible in the present crowded condition of the rooms. 

 In fact, much improvement is to be noted for the year in the closer segregation 

 of some parts of the reserve series, but with the effect of changing the Museum 

 halls more and more into the condition of storerooms. 



Notable progress has been made in the classification of collections, their 

 labeling, cataloguing, and scientific arrangement, resulting in many important 

 contributions to knowledge. The preparation by members of the Museum staff 

 of articles for the Handbook of the Indians, soon to be issued by the Bureau 

 of American Ethnology, necessitated extensive investigations based upon the 

 collections in anthropology, and much was accomplished toward working up 

 the rich ethnological material recently acquired from Malaysia, Arizona, and 

 New Mexico. 



