turkey "buzzard, the object being to learn something of the secrets 
of flight and their possible application to the development of the 
flying machine, later a third visit was made to Mexico during 
which interesting studies, scientific and artistic, were made. 
On the death of Major Powell in 1902, Holmes became 
Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology, retaining, however, the 
honorary position of Head Curator in the national Museum. It 
should be explained here that the national Museum and the Bureau 
of American Ethnology are co-ordinate bureaus under the Smithsonian 
Institution. A noteworthy feature of this period was the publi- 
cation under his immediate direction, and to the contents of which 
he was a leading contributor, of the two volume "Handbook of the 
American Indians," edited by Mr. F. W. Hodge. In 1909, being 
deeply interested in Museum work, he retired from the Bureau of 
Ethnology to devote his entire time to that work and to archeologi- 
cal researches, conducting investigations in many fields. Perhaps 
his most important achievements of this period were the classifica- 
tion and installation in the national Museum, second floor, of the 
great collections of American Archeology, and in 1903 the estab- 
lishment of the Division of Physical Anthropology in the national 
Museum with Dr. — les Hrdlicka, the noted physical an thro polo gist , 
as Curator. i'he latter achievement was the direct result of his 
accidental observation of the fact that in the Army Medical Museum, 
adjoining the national Museum on the Mall, there was a collection 
of 2200 human skulls assembled for 
research purposes, but which, 
