EXPLORATIONS AND FIELD-WORK OF THE 

 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION IN 1924 



INTRODUCTION 



Scientific exploration and field-work has from the beginning 

 formed an important phase of the Institution's work in the " increase 

 of knowledge." This pamphlet serves as a preliminary announce- 

 ment of the work along these lines accomplished during the past 

 calendar year, 1924. The accounts are written and the photographs 

 taken for the most part by the field workers themselves, and the 

 scientific results of many of the expeditions will later be presented 

 fully in the various series of publications of the Institution and its 

 branches. With the very limited funds at its command, the Institu- 

 tion is unable to finance many major expeditions, but it endeavors to 

 cooperate in this work, whenever possible, with other institutions, by 

 furnishing men, materials, etc. The many expeditions initiated or 

 cooperated in by the Institution during the 79 years of its existence 

 have resulted in many important additions to knowledge as well as 

 in valuable and instructive material for exhibition to the public in the 

 U. S. National Museum.' 



GEOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES 



Secretary Charles D. Walcott continued geological field-work in 

 the Canadian Rockies of western Alberta for the purpose of com- 

 pleting his reconnaissance study of the pre-Devonian formations north 

 of the Bow Valley. 



The field season was most unfavorable owing to cold and stormy 

 weather (see figs. 2, t,) that made it difficult and often impossible 

 to work on forty-two days of the season. Eighteen camps were made 

 while on the trail (see figs. 3, 10), and collections of fossils from 

 typical localities were obtained. Incidentally, the party succeeded in 

 getting a fine pair of mountain sheep and a black -tailed deer for the 

 National Museum. At a beautiful but stormy camp just below Baker 

 Lake the Lyell larches were scattered in clumps on the slopes a little 

 below tree line (fig. 4), and wild flowers occurred in profusion about 

 the small lakes south of the camp (figs. 18, 19), Mrs. Walcott made 

 water-color sketches of sixteen flowers new to her collection. 



^ See Report on Cooperative Educational and Research Work Carried on by 

 the Smithsonian Institution and its Branches, Smithsonian Misc. Coll., Vol. 76, 

 No. 4, 1923. 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 77, No. 2 



