SECRETARY’S REPORT 33 
of visiting mineral dealers and obtaining material for the Smith- 
sonian collections. Short visits were made to the American Museum 
of Natural History in New York and the Academy of Natural 
Sciences of Philadelphia; a valuable collection of minerals from the 
famous zinc mine at Franklin, N.J., was examined and purchases 
from it were made for the Smithsonian collections. During August 
1958 and March 1959 Mr. Desautels made separate trips to Asheville, 
N.C., and to several cities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Mas- 
sachusetts to acquire and examine mineralogical specimens for the 
Museum. 
K. P. Henderson, associate curator of mineralogy and petrology, 
spent the period November 80-December 10, 1958, in Boston, New 
Haven, and New York. He discussed meteorites with members of 
the staffs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard 
University, Yale University, and the American Museum of Natural 
History. 
In addition to participating in the field trip to New York State 
discussed above, Dr. Richard S. Boardman traveled in Tennessee and 
southern Virginia between September 22 and October 24, 1958, in 
the company of two visiting paleontologists, one from Australia and 
one from Norway. The principal objectives were to study the regional 
stratigraphy and to collect Bryozoa in the Middle Ordovician rocks 
of the Central Basin area of Tennessee and the southern Appalach- 
ians of eastern Tennessee and southern Virginia. This preliminary 
survey will form the basis for planning a continuing program in the 
largely unstudied bryozoan faunas of the Middle Ordovician of the 
region. Collections totaled 2,500 pounds and include many bryozoan 
colonies that have biological and taxonomic interest in addition to 
their potential stratigraphic value. 
In connection with his work on fossil echinoids, Dr. Porter M. 
Kier, associate curator of invertebrate paleontology and paleobotany, 
spent the period between July 19 and August 29, 1958,in Europe. Dr. 
Kier’s trip was sponsored by a grant from the National Science 
Foundation. He spent several days in England examining speci- 
mens in the British Museum (Natural History) in London and the 
Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge and subsequently visited museums 
at the University of Liége and the Institute Royal des Sciences 
Naturelles in Brussels. In Paris he visited three museums where 
there are important collections of fossil echinoids. During part of 
his stay in Europe. Dr. Kier collected fossils in Belgium, Holland, 
and France in company with various specialists. Between March 9 
and 13, 1959, he visited the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Har- 
vard University to study the fossil echinoid collections. Several 
