36 Report of the President 



well down to date through the energy of the Bursar, Mr. 

 Smyth. 



A good beginning has been made in classifying and cata- 

 loging the 35,000 lantern slides belonging to the Museum and 

 the first of the cases to contain them, provided with 120 

 drawers, has been constructed. 



Mr. Beers, Chief of Construction, has devised and carried 

 out a system for designating the various halls and rooms by 

 letters and numbers, and it is now possible to refer with exact- 

 ness to any one of them. 



Publications. — The publications issued are noted else- 

 where under that heading; it remains to be said that the sale 

 of Guide Leaflets at the Bureau of Information and by the 

 attendants has been good, the total number of copies sold 

 being 6,496. Several of the Guide Leaflets are now out of 

 print, and new editions of those most needed are being 

 prepared. 



The supply of the General Guide was exhausted in August 

 and a new edition is now being prepared. In the meantime, 

 its place is, to some extent, taken by an index or Key to Build- 

 ing and Collections originally prepared by Dr. Hovey, in con- 

 nection with the meeting of the Eighth International Congress 

 of Applied Chemistry. The second edition of this Key, which 

 contains plans of the various floors and notes the principal 

 exhibits on each, has just been issued. 



It is a difficult matter with the other work of the Museum 

 to provide for popular publications, the more that with the 

 steady increase in the collections and improvement in their 

 arrangement it is practically necessary to rewrite each and 

 every leaflet when a new edition is required. For example, 

 the new edition of the Evolution of the Horse, now in press, 

 contains fifty pages and twenty-five illustrations, as against 

 thirty pages and eleven illustrations of the previous leaflet. 



The first of a series of Handbooks, The North American 

 Lndians of the Plains, by Dr. Wissler, was issued during the 

 year, and others of the series, on The Lndians of the Southwest, 

 by Dr. Goddard, and on The Antiquities of Mexico and Central 

 America, by Dr. Spinden, will appear during the coming year. 





