68 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1921. 
possible after they are received, and held ready for installation when- 
ever one or more specialists can be secured. 
RESEARCHES FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE MUSEUM, 
It is mainly by the quality and amount of its research work upon 
the material intrusted to its care that the reputation of this Museum 
rests and its existence is justified. I am happy to say that the past 
year in no way falls short of the traditions of the Institution. The 
appended bibliography clearly demonstrates this. It does not, how- 
ever, fully represent the work accomplished during the current year, 
as of necessity many of the papers published in 1920-21 were prepared 
previously, nor does publication necessarily reveal the extent of the 
research work going on. Briefly, the scientific activities of the staff 
will be enumerated below, but before taking up the work in the divi- 
sions I wish to call attention to the signal honor which was bestowed 
by the National Academy upon a member of the staff for one of the 
publications issued by the Museum. During the April meeting of 
the academy this year, the Daniel Giraud Elliot gold medal, together 
with the honorarium, was voted to Dr. Robert Ridgway in recogni- 
tion of the eighth volume of The Birds of Middle and North America, 
which forms part 8 of Bulletin 50 of the United States National 
Museum, an award which is open to the zoologists and paleontologists 
of the world. When announcing the award the chairman of the 
Elliot medal committee said: 
In undertaking this great work Ridgway was not only placing the crown on 
his labors of a third of a century, but was giving expression to a plan made 
by Baird a half century before. Ridgway was therefore doubly inspired when, 
in 1901, he undertook the stupendous task of preparing a 10-volume treatise 
on all the birds of the Western Hemisphere north of South America. With 
unremitting zeal, and always maintaining the standard of thoroughness and 
accuracy set by the first volume of the series, he continued his labors until 
eight volumes have appeared, the last in 1919. Each volume contains about 
850 pages, a total of 6,800 pages in all. Nearly 900 genera are defined and 
over 3,000 species and subspecies described. 
While giving expression to his exceptional powers of analysis and description 
trained by years of experience and observation, Ridgway has produced a work 
which in method, comprehensiveness, and accuracy, aS well as in volume, has 
never been surpassed in the annals of ornithology. 
This will give you an idea of some of the work which is being 
quietly and unostentatiously performed in the divisions of this 
Museum. Taking them up one by one the work of the scientific staff 
may be epitomized as follows: 
Mr. Gerrit S. Miller, jr., found but little time for scientific investi- 
gation during the past year. Some progress was made, in conjunc- 
tion with the late William Palmer, in investigating the characters 
of the whale from Pablo Beach, Fla., and in conjunction with Mr. 
