158 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIII. No. 1364 



for 1919. Appreciation was also expressed for 

 the generous response to requests for mem- 

 bership and for support of exploration work. 



The popularity of the museum as an educa- 

 tional center was evidenced' by the visits of 

 1,040,000 persons during the year. 



Kegarding the museum's work of coopera- 

 tion with the public schools, it was reported 

 that 1,180,000 students had made use of the 

 nature study collections which are loaned, 

 without cost, to the schools; that 88,000 pupils 

 had attended the lectures in the museum pro- 

 vided so that they might visualize the sub- 

 jects treaited in their studies; that 1,650 blind 

 children had " seen " the material selected for 

 their use and attended special lectures; that 

 136,500 people had made use of the collections 

 loaned to the public libraries; and that 116,500 

 slides had been distributed to public-school 

 teachers to enable them to give illustrated 

 talks on travel and natural history subjects 

 to their pupils. A new line of contact with 

 the schools has been developed through a 

 series of background lectures, given by the 

 museum staff to the city's teachers in training, 

 designed to give the student teachers a greater 

 fund of information and breadth of vision 

 and to familiarize them with the museum ma- 

 terial and the ways in which it can be used to 

 supplement class-room work. As a further 

 development of this cooperative work with the 

 public-school system, the museum's depart- 

 ment of health, at the request of the Board of 

 Education, has prepared a set of twenty ex- 

 hibits, each set including food models, com- 

 position blocks and charts, and constituting 

 an aid to the instruction of school children in 

 dietary hygiene. 



EXPEDITIONS AND ACQUISITIONS OF THE 

 AMERICAN MUSEUM 



The field work of the year included several 

 important expeditions. In September, an ex- 

 pedition financed by Mr. Harry Payne Whit- 

 ney and headed by Mr. Rollo H. Beck, started 

 on a five-years' investigation of the birds of 

 Polynesia. This is the most important expe- 

 dition ever sent into the field by the depart- 

 ment of ornithology. Mr. George K. Chorrie 



collected birds in southern Ecuador, and Mr. 

 Harry Watkins worked in Peru. Mr. H. E. 

 Anthony collected mammals and vertebrate 

 fossils in Jamaica and southern Ecuador. Mr. 

 J. C. Bell obtained specimens and casts of 

 sharks and rays at Cape Lookout, North 

 Carolina. The department of anthropology 

 continued excavations at the Aztec, New 

 Mexico, ruin (which work was provided for 

 by the Archer M. Huntington Fund), sent a 

 party into the Grand Gulch region of Utah 

 to explore cliff-dwellings, and began with the 

 Bishop Museum of Honolidu a joint investi- 

 gation of racial problems in Hawaii. Mem- 

 bers of this department also represented the 

 Musemn in Honolulu at the First Pan-Pacific 

 Scientific Congress, at which plans were made 

 for future Polynesian exploration and investi- 

 gation, in which the American Museum will 

 participate. The department of geology made 

 investigations in New York and Pennsyl- 

 vania, Tennessee and Kentucky, Arizona, 

 California and Hawaii, coUeeting in these 

 regions being done by Curator E. O. Hovey, 

 Associate Curator Chester A. Reeds, and Mr. 

 E. J. Foyles. Messrs. Albert Thomson and 

 George Olsen excavated large fossil verte- 

 brates in Nebraska, for the department of 

 vertebrate paleontology. Dr. Henry E. Cramp- 

 ton, curator of the department of invertebrate 

 zoology, began an extended trip through the 

 South Seas and the Far East. Dr. F. E. 

 Lutz, associate curator of the same depart- 

 ment, explored in Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, 

 Utah and Indiana, and Mr. F. E. Watson did 

 field work in Jamaica. Mr. Paul Ruthling 

 collected in Mexico and Mr. Elwood Johnson 

 obtained specimens in Colombia for the de- 

 partment of herpetology. Through coopera- 

 tion with the New York Zoological Society, 

 under the supervision of Mr. C. WiUiam 

 Beebe, collecting has been carried on for the 

 museum in British Guiana at the Zoological 

 Society's Tropical Research Station there. 



Important new acquisitions made during 

 the year, other than material secured by the 

 expeditions just mentioned, included a large 

 collection of paleolithic stone implements 

 from Egypt, presented by August Heckscher; 



