38 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1912. 



dition and as well arranged as the accommodations permit. A num- 

 ber of old skins require to be made over, however, and some work 

 in this line was done during the year. The cleaning of skulls and 

 skeletons was continued by the Museum force and by contract, the 

 number of skulls so treated having exceeded 2,800. The small skulls 

 and skeletons, stored in the attic, await appropriate cases for their 

 final disposition. The specimens preserved in alcohol were brought 

 over from the older building and placed in the new stacks, in which 

 their systematic arrangement was well advanced. Much progress 

 was made in the preparation of labels for the smaller skins, and in 

 cataloguing and labeling the Merriam collection. 



Mr. Gerrit S. Miller, jr., curator of the division, continued his 

 studies of Old World and American mammals, describing a large 

 number of new species, and Mr. Ned Hollister, assistant curator, re- 

 ported on the mammals collected by the Smithsonian expedition to 

 British Columbia and Alberta. The assistants of the Biological 

 Survey of the Department of Agriculture made frequent use of the 

 collections, and the division was visited for the examination of 

 material by Dr. J. A. Allen, of the American Museum of Natural 

 History; Dr. Glover M. Allen, of the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology; and Mr. W. H. Osgood and Mr. Charles B. Cory, of the 

 Field Museum of Natural History, to all of whom small numbers of 

 specimens were also lent for use in their investigations. Loans for 

 the same purpose were likewise made to the University of North 

 Dakota, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology of the University of 

 California, and the British Museum of Natural History. 



Birds. — The collection of several hundred birds from the African 

 expedition of Mr. Kainey, although not yet worked up, is known to 

 contain two genera and several species not previously represented in 

 the Museum. A collection of 600 Philippine birds received from 

 the Minnesota Academy of Sciences through exchange and purchase 

 also includes a number of species new to the Museum, such as the 

 pheasant from Palawan {Polyplectron nayoleonis) ^ the Samar broad- 

 bill {Sarcophanops samarensis) , and several sunbirds. Of two acces- 

 sions of birds from China, aggregating over 260 specimens, one was 

 obtained from Mr. Andrew Allison and Mr. L. I. Moffett by dona- 

 tion and purchase, the other from the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology in exchange. A number of birds and eggs from the 

 Aleutian Islands, including a skin of Calliope calliope camtschat- 

 kemis, new to the North American fauna, were added by Mr. A. C. 

 Bent, as a result of his Alaskan expedition under the auspices of the 

 Institution, and the type of a neAv subspecies, Lagopus rupestris san- 

 fordi, secured by Dr. L, C. Sanford on the same trip, was also 

 acquired. Specimens of the crow, Corvus kuharyi, from Guam, pre- 



