Report of the President 5 7 



polar expeditions of 1896 and 1897, when the great meteorites 

 on Cape York, Greenland, now in the Foyer of the Museum, 

 were visited and secured. From Dr. George H. Girty of 

 Washington, D. C, came as a gift some 800 well-selected, 

 cleaned and labeled invertebrate fossils from Cambrian and 

 Devonian beds at several typical North American localities. 

 Many interesting gold, silver and copper ores from localities 

 in Alaska were received as a gift from the Honorable William 

 Sulzer. A large series of invertebrate fossils, comprising 

 representatives of more than 1,000 species illustrating the 

 Triassic, Cretaceous and Tertiary palaeontology of the Vienna 

 Basin, was received from the Imperial Natural History Museum 

 at Vienna, Austria, in exchange for vertebrate and inverte- 

 brate fossils. A large amount of petrified wood was obtained 

 from the famous " forests " near Adamana, Arizona, on special 

 permits from the federal Department of the Interior, most of 

 which was collected by the Curator on a special expedition. 

 On this expedition, supplementary material was obtained at 

 Bisbee, Arizona, for the interior and the exterior of the Copper 

 Queen cave which is being built in the department. Some 

 interesting trilobites, ancient crustaceans, were received from 

 an expedition maintained near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The 

 great collection of fossil plants and insects from Florissant, 

 Colorado, obtained by expeditions in which the Department of 

 Invertebrate Zoology participated years ago, was turned over 

 to this department and part of it placed on exhibition. A 

 beautiful model, 1/40 natural size, of "Pulpit Rock," Nahant, 

 Massachusetts, was purchased as a good example of the 

 naturalistic school of modeling natural scenery which is now 

 coming into deserved prominence. 



The Curator visited the town of Russell, St. Lawrence 

 County, New York, in August, to inspect a particularly perfect 

 glacial pot-hole whose existence had been reported to the 

 Museum. The pot-hole being found to be in a conveniently 

 situated ledge, arrangements were made with the Gouverneur 

 Marble Company to cut it out. The excavation was suc- 

 cessfully effected, and the block containing the hole will be 

 transported to the Museum during the cold weather. The 

 pot-hole is 2 feet in diameter and 4 feet in extreme depth. 



