468 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 45 



regions. The units of the Institution most concerned with inter- 

 American cooperative work were the National Museum, the Bureau 

 of American Ethnology, and the Institute of Social Anthropology. 



All the field work of the National Museum during the war was 

 diverted to Latin America. Expeditions during the war years in- 

 cluded an investigation of ancient skeletal collections in Peru ; a wide- 

 ranging reconnaissance of Mexico's resources o,f strategic minerals; a 

 study of the geology of Sonora, Mexico, as a basis for the location of 

 mineral deposits; field researches in Brazil on mammals that serve 

 as hosts of vectors of transmissible diseases ; conferences with museum 

 staffs in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina on problems concerning 

 crustaceans and other invertebrates; collecting and identifying 

 plants of little-known regions of Venezuela ; studies of the plants and 

 mammals of Colombia; exhaustive researches on the snakes of Mex- 

 ico ; collecting and studying the insects of Colombia and Jamaica ; and 

 a comprehensive investigation of the fishes of Venezuela as a scientific 

 aid to that country. Another phase of the Museum's inter-American 

 work was the identification of large lots of biological material received 

 through scientific and medical organizations and private individuals 

 in the other American countries. The Museum also made available 

 for the use of visiting scientists from the other American republics its 

 laboratory, study, and library facilities. A wartime publication proj- 

 ect of the National Museum is the very large checklist of coleop- 

 terous insects of all the Western Hemisphere to the south of the United 

 States. The first three parts of this work have been printed and the 

 remaining parts are in preparation. When completed, the checklist 

 will be an indispensable tool for all entomological workers in those 

 regions. 



The Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology, M. W. Stirling, 

 has for several seasons conducted archeological expeditions to south- 

 ern Mexico under the joint sponsorship of the National Geographic 

 Society and the Smithsonian Institution. Many interesting and im- 

 portant discoveries have been made, the collections going to the Na- 

 tional Museum in Mexico City. The Mexican Government has 

 evinced much interest in the expeditions and has facilitated the work 

 whenever possible. The Bureau is publishing the monumental 

 "Handbook of South American Indians," a project undertaken by the 

 Smithsonian Institution as a part of the State Department's program 

 of inter- American cultural cooperation. Under the editorship of Dr. 

 Julian H. Steward, the Handbook progressed steadily, and at the end 

 of 1945 volumes 1 and 2 were in type, volumes 3 and 4 were in the 

 hands of the printer, and the remaining volume was practically com- 

 pleted. The preparation of articles on the various groups was kept 

 on a truly cooperative plane, as 50 percent of the contributors to the 

 Handbook were scientists of the other American republics. 



