Report of the Pi-esident 41 



preserve material which it would have been necessary to dis- 

 card if the grosser methods of maceration had been used. 



During the year, 2,262 skulls, 75 skeletons, 16 sterna, 93 

 sets of leg bones and the appendages of four birds have been 

 prepared for exhibition or study purposes. The most important 

 among these are the skeletons of one giraffe, two whales, one 

 blackiish, one rhinoceros and one goose-fish. 



In addition to the regular work of the department, a con- 

 siderable portion of the assistant's time has been occupied in 

 the numbering, cataloguing and assorting of specimens in the 

 Department of Mammalogy. 



WOODS AND FORESTRY 



With the approval of the Committee on Woods and For- 

 estry, of which the Honorable Gifford Pinchot is Chairman, 

 the Jesup Collection of North American Woods is being rear- 

 ranged and installed in a way to bring out more clearly the 

 classification of trees, their relationship and their economic 

 uses. 



THE LIBRARY 



Department of Books and Publications. — It is grati- 

 fying to note the progress made in the growth and develop- 

 ment of the library. As stated in an earlier report, the 

 purpose of the Curator is to build up a special library of 

 natural science, and therefore no effort is made to secure 

 books not germane to the work and research of a museum 

 of natural history. More and more is our library being 

 recognized by workers in science as the centre where such 

 publications may be consulted. During the year the fol- 

 lowing new accessions have been received: bound volumes, 

 1,359; unbound volumes, 632; numbers, 6,369, and pamphlets, 

 1,495. The working library at the close of 1909 numbered 

 volumes 40,000 and pamphlets 20,000. 



Noteworthy gifts have been received from Miss Grace 

 H. Dodge, Prince Ludwig Salvator, Messrs. Anson W. Hard, 

 William G. DeWitt and J. Pierpont Morgan and Professor 

 Ernst Haeckel. The bibliographic catalogue has been in- 

 creased by the intercalation of 12,706 cards received from 



