June 11, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



587 



by Dr. Harold Gifford. Four artists will be 

 at the station during the present year and 

 will devote especial attention to recording the 

 coloring of creatures too delicate to bear 

 transportation alive to a temperate zone. 



Among the incidental results of the work 

 of the station is a rich and continuous supply 

 of living animals to the New York Zoological 

 Park, including such animals as the jaguar, 

 ocelot, capybara, agouti, anaconda, and jabiru. 

 This season a very much larger collection of 

 living animals will be made and sent north. 

 Henry Fairfield Osborn 



President op the New Yoek 

 ZooLOGiCAi Society, 

 May 6, 1920 



SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 



COLLECTIONS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The annual report of the director of the 

 U. S. National Museum states that the total 

 number of specimens acquired by the museum 

 during the year was approximately 526,845. 

 Eeceived in 1,198 separate accessions, they 

 were classified and assigned as follows: De- 

 partment of anthropology, 12,333; zoology, 

 442,383; botany, 40,357; geology and mineral- 

 ogy, 4,750; paleontology, 26,050; textiles, 

 woods, medicines, foods, and other miscella- 

 neous animal and vegetable products, 884; 

 mineral technology, 62; and National Gallery 

 of Art, 26. As loans for exhibition, 3,096 

 articles were also obtained, mainly for the 

 divisions of history and American archeology 

 and the Gallery of Art. 



Material to the extent of 539 lots was re- 

 ceived for special examination and report. 



The distribution of duplicates, mainly to 

 schools and colleges for educational purposes, 

 aggregated 3,441 specimens, of which 1,378 

 were contained in seven regular sets of fossil 

 invertebrates averaging 47 specimens each 

 and six regular sets of moUusks of 174 speci- 

 mens each. The balance comprised 19 special 

 lots, consisting of marine invertebrates, rep- 

 tiles, fishes, fossils, minerals and ores, stone 

 implements, and basketry specimens. 



In making exchanges for additions to the 



collections, a total of 5,227 duplicate speci- 

 mens were distributed. These consisted 

 largely of plants. 



Material sent out to specialists for study 

 on behalf of the Museum amounted to 19,851 

 specimens, mainly biological. 



In furtherance of its extensive historical 

 exhibits, the Museum, early in the year, 

 through cooperation with the War and Navy 

 Departments, luidertook the assembling and 

 installation of a collection of materials con- 

 nected with the World War, which may ulti- 

 mately, require a separate building. 



APPROPRIATIONS FROM THE HENRY DRAPER 



FUND OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY 



OF SCIENCES 



At its recent meeting the National Academy 

 of Sciences made the following appropriations 

 on the recommendation of the committee on 

 the Henry Draper Fund : 



$400 to S. A. Mitchell, of the University of Vir- 

 ginia, to complete the purchase of a measuring 

 microscope for use in the photographic determina- 

 tion of stellar parallaxes, on the basis of observa- 

 tions made with the 27-ineh refracting telescope. 

 The academy awarded the sum of $250 from the 

 Draper Fund to apply on the purchase of this in- 

 strument and the proposed grant of $400 will com- 

 plete the purchase. The microscope, costing $650, 

 becomes in effect the property of the academy. 

 Professor Mitchell will devote an equivalent sum, 

 $400, to other needs of his parallax research. 



$300 to Joel Stebbins, professor of astronomy in 

 the University of Illinois, to assist in the further 

 development of the photo-electric-cell photometer. 



$400 to Prank Schlesinger, director of the Alle- 

 gheny Observatory, to enable him to test an auto- 

 matic zenith camera for the determination of ter- 

 restrial latitude, with the expectation that the 

 results will be more accurate than any hitherto 

 obtained by other means. It is proposed that this 

 instrument be mounted temporarily at the Inter- 

 national Latitude Observatory at Ukiah, California, 

 where the astronomer in charge will operate it for 

 a year or two as a labor of love. The grant is 

 needed to install the instrument at Ukiah and to 

 make certain auxiliary apparatus required in its 

 operation. The Allegheny Observatory is loaning 

 the objective and the photographic plates obtained 

 will be measured by Dr. Schlesinger himself or 

 under his immediate direction. 



