^ 3 , 
UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 
ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY 
NATIONAL AIR MUSEUM 
NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK 
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 
Washington 25,D.C. 
' i:s. a. 
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART 
NATIONAL COLLECTION OF FINE ARTS 
FREER GALLERY OF ART 
INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE SERVICE 
CANAL ZONE BIOLOGICAL AREA 
March 9, 1949. 
Dr. Alexander Wetmore, 
c/o James Zetek, 
Canal Zone Biological Area, 
Drawer C 9 
Balboa, Canal Zone. 
Dear Alex: 
We have just received a letter from Mr, Harry O. Cole 
in answer to your letter of February 24, dealing with the Du Val 
paper and the “Puzzle in Panama,” He states Unless the 
Directors of the Smithsonian Institution take the necessary steps 
to have the Du Val article included in the present Annual Report 
volume, I am strongly of the opinion that a great injustice will 
have been done, both to the Smithsonian Institution and to Captain 
Du Val, and that the advocates of the so-called ‘sea-level canal,’ 
will gleefully and wrongfully place the Smithsonian in the position 
of having taken sides in one of the most controversial issues now 
before the Congress. ” 
While I do not agree with Cole as to his full statement I 
am not in too good a position to argue with him in his own field 
since he is an expert and I am only a layman. We could write him 
and tell him that we stood on your letter to him, that the report 
volume was already in press, and that it could not by any means 
be enlarged because we had already withdrawn an article to stay 
within our financial limitations. We could stand on this and I think 
reasonably so /but I would not want them to take the matter up 
further and have it come to the attention of the Chairman of our 
Subcommittee on Appropriations because he would become more 
vitriolic than ever about our putting in our two cents worth in matters 
that lay outside our field and on which we have no authoritative in¬ 
formation. 
You will remember that we put up this point in connection 
with our reprinting articles relating to the Atom. 
There is another way out which, while it might be a little 
