8 AXXUAL REPOBT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1922. 



and Doctor Bassler ^Yas able to make a considerable collection of 

 these needed for the Museum study series. He also secured several 

 large exhibition specimens illustrating various geological phe- 

 nomena, among these being a large mass of limestone composed en- 

 tirely of the dismembered calices and columns of a large species of 

 crinoid or sea lily in which the individual fragments are perfectly 

 preserved and admirably illustrate the formation of a limestone 

 through the accumulation of this type of animal remains. 



An interesting stratigraphic observation vras made on the efficacy 

 of the coral reefs of the Ordovician in rock formation. A massive 

 limestone bed about 15 feet thick, representing a middle Ordovician 

 formation, here contains but a single coral reef, but -within 10 miles 

 the number of intercalated coral reefs has so increased that the for- 

 mation attains a thickness of over 250 feet. 



In April Mr. C. W. Gilmore, associate curator of vertebrate pale- 

 ontology, was authorized to undertake a trip into Xev. Mexico " for 

 the purpose of making collections of geological material for the Na- 

 tional Museum and determining the advisability of preserving cer- 

 tain lands in northern Xew Mexico for national monumental pur- 

 poses." Mr. Gilmore was obliged to report that — 



Since the many square miles of "bad lands" surrounding the reserved area 

 are equallj' fossiliferous and in places present much more favorable territory 

 for the recovery of fossil remains than any observed within the boundaries of 

 the monument, and also since the greater part of these surrounding areas lie 

 within Pueblo grunts, over which Federal control has been relinquished, there 

 would be no advantage in retaining governmental control of so small a part 

 of the area as is represented in the proposed monument. 



Mr. Gilmore did, however, find a contiguous fossiliferous area in 

 the Santa Clara Pueblo grant and secured for the Museum a well- 

 preserved skull and other bones of a small rhinoceros, and, in an 

 adjoining Pojoaque Pueblo area, remains of an extinct camel. The 

 most promising area for collecting would appear to lie within land 

 grants over which the Government has at present no control. 



In January, this same year, Mr. J. W. Gidley, assistant curator of 

 this division, was authorized, in cooperation with the United States 

 Geological Survey, to conduct field explorations in the San Pedro 

 and Sulphur Springs Valleys of southern Arizona, and on the com- 

 pletion of this work to visit the La Brea asphalt deposits of southern 

 California, and from there go to Agate, In Nebraska, for the pur- 

 pose of securing other exhibition material. The work in Arizona 

 was eminently successful, Mr. Gidley shipping some 24 boxes having 

 an aggregate weight of 5,000 pounds. The bulk of this collection, 

 he reports, represents " a practically new Pliocene fauna containing 

 about 60 vertebrate si:)ecies, most of which are mammalian." 



