REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 9 
life and conditions in the Appalachian Trough and the great upper Mississippi 
embayment of Upper Cambrian time. 
In the interval between the snow storms of September 5 and 9 several new 
fossil zones were found in the Lower Ordovician rocks of the Johnston-Wild 
Flower Canyon Pass section, and also in the Upper Cambrian west of Badger 
Pass. The latter find enabled Doctor Walcott to identify the Arctomys forma- 
tion of the Glacier Lake section and to clear up the uncertainty as to the posi- 
tion of the strata hitherto referred to the lower portion of the Bosworth 
formation. 
* * * * * * * 
This year probably completes the field work in the Canadian Rockies. A few 
of the problems encountered have been cleared up in the past nine years, but 
many remain to be studied by young, well-trained men with strong hearts, 
vigorous muscles, and the high purpose of the research student seeking to dis- 
cover the truth regarding the development of the North American Continent 
and of the life of the waters in which the miles in thickness of sands, clay, 
and limey muds accumulated during a period of several million years of lower 
Paleozoic time. 
Your secretary was engaged at the close of the year, during such 
times as he was able to spare from administrative duties, in preparing 
for publication the geological results of many seasons of work in the 
Canadian Rockies. This summary of the Canadian work will 
appear as one of his series on Cambrian Geology and Paleontology 
in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. 
COLLECTING FOSSIL FOOTPRINTS IN ARIZONA 
Through a cooperative arrangement with the National Park Serv- 
ice, Mr. C. W. Gilmore, curator of vertebrate paleontology in the 
National Museum, visited the Grand Canyon during the past field 
season for the double purpose of preparing a permanent exhibit of 
fossil footprints in the rock along the Hermit Trail, and of making 
for the National Museum a collection of these footprints to send back 
to Washington. Mr. Gilmore succeeded in both of these projects, 
and in his preliminary report on the work, he writes: 
A series of slabs, some 1,700 pounds in weight, carrying good examples of 
the various kinds of imprints occurring there, were collected and shipped to 
the Museum. The tracks occur in the Coconino sandstone in Hermit Basin, 
on the trail down to Hermit Camp, and from 900 to 1,080 feet below the rim 
of the canyon. Their excellent preservation and variety of kind, coupled with 
their great antiquity, make this collection of more than usual interest. Pre- 
liminary study of the tracks has demonstrated that they represent not only 
a new Ichnite fauna but probably the best preserved and most extensive series 
of Permian footprints known anywhere in the world. 
It was found that the natural conditions were most favorable for the prepara- 
tion of an exhibit of fossil tracks in situ. The rather steep slope of the 
sandstone on whose surfaces the tracks are impressed stands at an inclination 
of 30° facing toward the Hermit Trail, over which in the course of the year 
hundreds of tourists travel on mule back in making their pilgrimage to the 
bottom of the Grand Canyon. The upper layers of the sandstone cleared off 
in large sheets, thus uncovering whatever tracks and trails there were to be 
