Report of the President 37 



service in the department. Advancing age and continued ill- 

 health have made it necessary for him to give up his work, and 

 the Trustees have taken pleasure in appointing him Curator 

 Emeritus of the Department. Professor Whitfield came to the 

 Museum in 1877, and during this period of more than thirty- 

 two years he has labored efficiently in developing the Museum's 

 collection of fossil invertebrates. 



Dr. Edmund Otis Hovey, who has been in the department 

 for sixteen years, first as Assistant Curator and later as 

 Associate Curator, has been promoted to the curatorship, the 

 appointment dating from January i, 1910. 



During the past year the collections have been enriched 

 through the purchase of a slab about five feet square showing 

 sixty-eight bodies (with arms) of the crinoid Uititacrijius socialis 

 and a giant lamellibranch shell, I?ioceratnus platinus (?), more 

 than four feet across. Both of these specimens are from the 

 Niobrara Cretaceous beds of Kansas. Another important pur- 

 chase was that of a series of Cretaceous fossils from the Mt. 

 Lebanon district of Syria. 



The geological material of the department has been under 

 the immediate care of the Associate Curator, Dr. Edmund 

 Otis Hovey. Under his direction the routine work of acces- 

 sioning and cataloguing the material received has been accom- 

 plished. In addition to his regular department work, Dr. 

 Hovey has continued his editorship of the Museum J^ournal 

 and the Guide Leaflets, in which he has been ably assisted by 

 Miss Mary C. Dickerson. 



Among the material acquired during the year, first place 

 must be given to the meteorites. Although the three Cape 

 York meteorites (one of which is the largest known), or the 

 "Peary" meteorites, as they are sometimes called, have been 

 on deposit in the Museum for several years, it was not until 

 1909 that their purchase was finally concluded and that these 

 unique specimens actually became the property of the Museum. 

 This was accomplished largely through the instrumentality 

 and generosity of Mrs. Morris K. Jesup. 



The acquisition of three such specimens is noteworthy, but 

 in addition the Museum has acquired by purchase a twenty- 

 pound fragment (the largest known) of the Modoc stone 



