UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 
ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY 
NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK 
ALL CORRESPONDENCE 
SHOULD BE ADDRESSED 
TO THE SECRETARY 
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 
WasAinyton, US.A. 
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART 
FREER GALLERY OF ART 
INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES 
INTERNATIONAL CATALOGUE OF 
SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE 
May 20, 1927. 
Dear Doctor Wetmore; 
Your very interesting letter of May 3 was received. You certainly 
are a versatile traveler - down in the bottom of the sea one day and up in 
the air on another. It is too bad that you had no fresh salt to pour on the 
birds 1 tails while you were passing over them. 
We are getting together the estimates for the Budget, and I have 
requested the research people to suggest their most choice projects, for, as 
you recall, Mr. Morrow and Mr. Delano were proposing to go for us to General 
Lord, and it seems to me that this year, after the meeting of February 11, 
we are in good position to take a step forward. Dr. Mann has included in his 
estimate both the extension of the bird house and the house for reptiles. 
Probably we shall all get stepped on at the Bureau of the Budget, but there 
is nothing like trying. 
Mrs. Walcott came back from the Southwest looking somewhat better, 
but is still very easily moved to tears. However, the third volume of her 
wild flower oook is expected to issue in two or three months, and I understand 
that they are beginning engraving on the fourth volume. 
They had an explosion of carbon bisulphide in Agriculture a little 
while ago, and I have asked the Secretary of Agriculture to join with us in 
