72 REPORT OE NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1918. 



products ; Mr. John P. Neligh and Mr. G. W. Barghausen, of Wash- 

 ington, weaving apparatus with a view to constructing a bedside 

 loom for convalescent soldiers; Mr. R. G. Richards, of the United 

 States Shipping Board, ivory and casein; Mr. EL F. Grady, also of 

 the United States Shipping Board, hairs, furs, and kapok samples; 

 Mrs. M. P. Harland, of Washington, period designs and fabrics for in- 

 terior decorations; Mr. George C. Zwiebel, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsyl- 

 vania, natural and artificial pearls for the purpose of manufacturing 

 the latter; Mr. H. C. Eyer, East Rochester, New York, oil-yielding 

 seeds of palms for commercial use; Mrs. F. C. Norlin, La Harpe, 

 Illinois, old coverlets ; and Mr. A. E. T. Hausmann and Mr. Ivan P. 

 Tashof of Washington, Mr. H. W. Lawson of Takoma Park, District 

 of Columbia, and Mr. Willard L. Pollard, of Chicago, various col- 

 lections for patent investigations. 



Owing to the resignation of Mr. Roger B. Maxwell, the assistant 

 curator of wood technology, in September, the section of wood tech- 

 nology was practically inactive until the appointment of Mr. W. M. 

 N. Watkins to that place in January. Almost the entire effort of 

 the staff was then given to securing exhibition material and to 

 properly installing and cataloguing the same. The 16 accessions to 

 the section during the year compared very favorably in value with 

 those of 1917, and far exceeded them in amount. Without doubt 

 the most scientifically important accession was a wood collection 

 transferred from the United States Naval Academy of Annapolis, 

 Maryland, through Rear Admiral E. W. Eberle, United States Navy. 

 This series is made up of woods produced by 344 of the trees indig- 

 enous to North America and is in the form of convenient hand 

 samples for study. For the wood of each species represented in the 

 collection, there is authentic data as to its specific gravity, ash con- 

 tents, fuel value, weight per cubic foot, etc., which were obtained 

 during the preparations of the Tenth Census Report in 1880. In 

 compiling the data for volume 9 of this report a careful exami- 

 nation of the woods produced by the indigenous trees of North 

 America, exclusive of Mexico, was made, the object being to determine 

 the fuel value and the value as material for construction of the prin- 

 cipal timber trees of North America. The latter was obtained by 

 experiments made with the United States testing machine at the 

 Watertown Arsenal. In order to secure proper material for the 

 experiments, it was necessary to obtain a much larger amount of 

 wood of the various species than was actually used. This surplus 

 was worked up into sets of hand samples, showing as far as possible, 

 the bark, sap and heart wood, by Dr. C. S. Sargent, director of the 

 Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University. These sets, more or less 

 complete, were sent to educational institutions of the United States 



