20 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1948 
ons Project, and the Atomic Energy Commission. This investigation 
was made for the purpose of determining the possible long-range 
effects of the Operation Crossroads atom-bomb experiments on the 
animal and plant life of the area. Extensive collections were made, 
with emphasis on fishes and marine invertebrates. 
Donald S. Erdman, biological aid in the division of fishes, left on 
March 21 to make a survey of the fishery resources of the Persian 
Gulf. 
Other zoological field projects participated in by the Museum in- 
cluded the following: A survey of the small mammals of eastern 
Pennsylvania and their ectoparasites, sponsored by the United States 
Public Health Service; a similar survey at Air Transport Command 
bases in Greenland, Labrador, Newfoundland, Quebec, and Maine, in 
cooperation with the Army Medica] Center; two ornithological ex- 
peditions financed by the W. L. Abbott fund, one in Colombia and one 
in Panama; aleyonarian studies in southern Florida; a survey of 
Lithia Spring, Fla., following the reported occurrence there of an 
Asiatic snail known as the intermediate host of the disease paragoni- 
miasis of the western Pacific. 
No formal expeditions were participated in by the department of 
botany during the year, but various members of the staff did collecting 
work in eastern Canada, Maryland, and southern Oregon and north- 
ern California. Dr. F. A. McClure, research associate, was in Central 
America from December to June, continuing field studies of American 
bamboos. 
In the department of geology, field work again yielded interesting 
and needed study specimens of fossils. Dr. G. A. Cooper, curator of 
invertebrate paleontology, and party collected Devonian and Missis- 
sippian fossils in the region of Alamogordo, the San Andres 
Mountains, and Silver City, N. Mex., and later Permian fossils in the 
Glass Mountains, Tex., and Lower and Middle Ordovician material] in 
the Arbuckle Mountains and Criner Hills, Okla. Associate Curator 
A. R. Loeblich’s field work took him to western New York and Ontario. 
where he collected from Middle Devonian deposits; to Sylvania, 
Ohio, where he obtained more Devonian invertebrate fossils; to Ih- 
nois (Pennsylvanian rocks) and eastern Missouri (Silurian) ; and to 
Tennessee, where he collected Ordovician and Silurian fossils in the 
Central Basin and also visited important Silurian and Devonian 
localities in the western part of the State. 
Dr. C. Lewis Gazin, curator of vertebrate paleontology, resumed his 
program of mammalian collecting in the Middle Eocene Bridger 
formation, Wyoming, and obtained outstanding primate, creodont, 
insectivore, perissodactyl, and rodent material, as well as some good 
reptile skulls. 
Under the leadership of Dr. David H. Dunkle, associate curator 
