72 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



On December 25, 1899, Dr. Elliott Coues died suddenly. While he was not an 

 officer of the Bureaii, he had frequently cooperated with the Director and the col- 

 laborators, especially during the earlier portion of the fiscal year, when he was 

 attached to a party engaged in work in the pueblo region. An enthusiastic student 

 of early American history, he was brought in frequent touch with ethnologists and 

 ethnologic problems, thereby acquiring extended and accurate knoM'ledge of the 

 aborigines; hence his death waa a serious loss to the science. 



Dr. Walter J. Hoffman, for many years an attache of the Bureau, died November 

 8, 1899. He entered the Bureau in its earlier years as an assistant to the late Col. 

 Garrick Mallery, and spent some years in the collection f)f petroglyphs and other 

 aboriginal records. SuVjsequently he made independent studies in different tribes, 

 notably the Menominee of Wisconsin. His principal publications in the Bureau 

 Reports are "The Midewiwin, or Grand Medicine Society of the Ojibwa," in the 

 Seventh Report, and "The Menominee Indians," in the Fourteenth Report. His 

 connection with the Bureau was temporarily severed in 1895, when he undertook 

 certain special work for the United States National Museum; in 1897 he was 

 appointed United States consul at Mannheim, Germany, where he availed himself 

 of opportunities for study of aboriginal American collections and records. His 

 health failing, he returned to his home near Reading, Pa., in the autumn of 1899, 

 where his death occurred. Although he was Imt 53 years of age at the time of his 

 death, he was one of the pioneers in American etjinology. 

 I have the honor to be, yours, with respect, 



J. W. PowET.L, Direclor. 



Mr. S. P. Langley, 



Secrektrij Smithsonian Inslitutiori, Uushimjton, I). C. 



