REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 27 



Additions to the meteorite collection were obtained largely through 

 the Eoebling fund. The total number of distinct meteoritic falls 

 represented in the Museum was increased from 606 to 635 during the 

 year. The new material came from Chile, Australia, Canada, and the 

 United States. Outstanding additions to the rock collections were 

 from Easter Island, Mexico, the Carolinas, Arkansas, Wyoming, and 

 Colorado. 



In the field of stratigraphic paleontology most of the year's acces- 

 sions were obtained by members of the staff : 30,000 Devonian inverte- 

 brates collected by Dr. G. A. Cooper and P. E. Cloud in the Eastern 

 States and 20,000 Tertiary and Cretaceous invertebrates obtained by 

 Dr. R. S. Bassler in Europe. Exchanges arranged with other mu- 

 seums and with individuals brought in many other specimens from 

 Africa, Australia, Austria, Bohemia, England, France, Hawaiian Is- 

 lands, Italy, and the United States, representing various geologic 

 periods and formations and many classes of fossil animals and plants. 



About 625 fossil vertebrates were added to the paleontological series. 

 These included 600 Paleocene and Pliocene mammals collected by Dr. 

 C. L. Gazin and party in New Mexico and Arizona last year, a mount- 

 able skeleton of the giant sloth Mylodon harlani from the Rancho La 

 Brea deposits in California, a mounted skeleton of the antilocaprid 

 Merycodus from the Miocene of Montana, an excellently preserved ex- 

 tinct musk-ox skull {Symbos cavifrons) from the Pleistocene of Indi- 

 ana, a nearly complete fossil turtle {Aspideretes swperstei) from the 

 Paskapoo formation of Alberta, and two eggs of Struthio andersoni, 

 an extinct ostrich, from China. 



Arts and industnes. — The outstanding accession in aeronautics was 

 the gondola of the stratosphere balloon Explorer 11^ in which Capts. 

 A. S. Stevens and O. A. Anderson in 1935 established the present 

 altitude record of 72,395 feet for a manned balloon, presented by the 

 National Geographic Society. The collection of scale models of air- 

 craft was increased by 12 of commercial airmail planes (made for 

 the Great Lakes Exposition), 4 of current Navy types, 2 of World 

 War German planes, and several others including the Stinson De- 

 troiter and Lockhead Vega used by George Hubert Wilkins in his 

 1927 and 1928 Arctic flights. Mrs. Wiley Post presented instruments 

 that were used on the Winnie Mae. There were also accessioned vari- 

 ous objects connected with the historic flights or aircraft of Calbraith 

 P. Eodgers (1911), Maj. Russell L. Maughan (1924), John Moisant 

 (1910), and Alberto Santos-Dumont. 



An interesting accession in watercraft is a collection relating to 

 the life and work of John W. Griffiths, naval architect, writer, and 

 editor, whose ships the Rainhoio^ 1845, and the Sea Witch., 1846, were 

 the first of the famous American clippers. A number of half -models, 



