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Annual Report of the Board of Regents

of the

SMITHSONIAN
INSTITUTION

PUBLICATION 4272

Showing the Operations, Expenditures, and Condition of the

Institution for the Year Ended June 30

1956

UNITED STATES
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 1957

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office
Washington 25, D.C. - Price $4.50 Cloth

LETTER.OF TRANSMITTAL

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION,
Washington, December 28, 1956.

To the Congress of the United States:

In accordance with section 5593 of the Revised Statutes of the
United States, I have the honor, on behalf of the Board of Regents,
to submit to Congress the annual report of the operations, expendi-
tures, and condition of the Smithsonian Institution for the year ended
June 30, 1956. Ihave the honor to be,

Respectfully,
Leonarp CarmicHazEL, Secretary.

‘4 en:

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DEQA 7 cs)

Liby. OF

CONTENTS
or, Page
Nes GrOl OM ClAlS yee er en ee Se ee ee ee ee ete Vv
SPECS AEE INIOI Geet yore a ne oe ae! 8 3h ee ee ee eee a 1
SrerHstalolishm erties ee eek ete eee re re Be er Eee oe 6
Sibrom Es OArGnOl Regenta: == 2 se 2 26 te eS ye a ea ane 7
InAN CORR Beek Aan Se ae te ak Pal Re De Sa 8
\YTTS RON GSI <n ee A I mpc eo cy nly eh pl ae pea a ee 8
Mee tires sets ee rt en oe ee ee Ee lS ee ee 9
mip-ociences Mniormation Exchange 22255"). 2 Soe ee 10
maoisiemeapie GOCeENt ACHVIICS 2 2220 5.0 ea ek oe ce eee ne 11
Summary of the year’s activities of the Institution______-___-_---------- 13
Reports of branches of the Institution:
Wmatedsstates National Musee 202.8. oe ne eee Sel ao 16
Bureau of American Wihnolwgy.to- ses FSi 7...) 52 eee 42
Pea COPMy PICSIEO DREEV GLORY = =o = Sein ie ok ae Se ee 65
Mationd) Collection Gf Pine ATS. 2. 2-2-2222 2 Se ee 75
Pree ries HeT OL ATG es ee or et ee a eee 3 AO ee ee oe 89
APSE CS TTSU PRN E VETS UREN 2 oo cnn any oo = gs 101
Malia AOGIIIGal bank. = oe co ke Aes see ee ae Liv.
Serre no DIOlOPICAl ATCA eta ee eee eee ee 161
PALeCrUAOUAL MXCHANES SELVICC .—— eo See ie 169
PIU Nery Ol ALU sc. 2 i noon eee an oo ee ee 178
SPIE UEOLIOU MO ORAL Yo oso ie ere ee ee gk ee ee Sk 193
Beri OH PUDNCHOUN: Jf 8st. hae a ee eg en ta 197
Report of the executive committee of the Board of Regents___---------- 204
GENERAL APPENDIX

Page
Mhe edge. of-thesuns by) Donald HerMenzeltace sue let See Le 215
@hoemmystery, of: Mars; by He Ps! Wilking®s 222 2k ye et eee e 229
fehe story..of. cosmic rays; by«W. Bs GuSwann S250 see See 2k Sed 245
Atmospheric pollution in growing communities, by Frangois N. Frenkiel__ 269
Hurricanes, by R.-C. ‘Gentry and: Ri’ HASimpsone )iosee soe seo 2 fe SL 2 301
Plantlike features in thunder-eggs and geodes, by Roland W. Brown_---- 329

Exploration for the remains of giant ground sloths in Panama, by C.

eu st Gari Tie fino Un tetnid a Bct) pints yin I FE a ee 341
Dherkitimat story, by Angela Groome:) oe so 2 2 -seee seed 355
Sewage treatment—how it is accomplished, by C. E. Keefer____-------- 363
Pioneer settlement in eastern Colombia, by Raymond E. Crist and Ernesto

RRR tiie 5 kai hay ee he Ae ha cena US ero he ose te ats att 391
‘he soutces.of animal behavior, by G. P. Wells__-.....-2.-..------.-- 415
iiversin theses, by i. .G., Waltom Smith. ..2.....=.-..2--.-.-==2+-4. 431
A narrative of the Smithsonian-Bredin Caribbean Expedition, 1956, by

Rgidoprseehnvittiee 22 33s esos ee eee nae BS tee pede 2 443
Man as a maker of new plants and new plant communities, by Edgar

IAI COTS OTe tes ieee ees eee ee ee: see eae ce tS 461
Project Coral Fish looks at Palau, by Frederick M. Bayer and Robert R.

PE ESSTeg LECCE F312 SOUR IS EE TA IE eS ee ca ea oe 481
Archeological work in Arctic Canada, by Henry B. Collins__-_----------- 509
The Cherokees of North Carolina: Living memorials of the past, by

Pereisivinlt Gilseriadn 22s wee Wee eens pee a ls 529
Dried meat—early man’s travel ration, by Edward N. Wentworth_------ 557

LIST OF PLATES

Secretary’s Report: Facing page
Plates iy oe an a areca ole fee eee rey ep are 54
Plates $)°400 te es ee See ee a eee rae 94
PIA CEs 1D = Birr ee ne rn ie 134

Hdge of the sun (Menzel): Plates 1—4__ 32 oes Sees ee eee eee 222

Mystery of Mars (Wilkins) 5 Plates 1,.2--- "= 22-52 ee 230

(Cosmic rays: (owann)s Plates 1) 2.522595 see ee eee ee 262

Hurricanes (Gentry and Simpson): Plate 222 2 = > =e aes ee 310

Thunder-eggs and geodes (Brown): Plates 1-6--_______-_-_-._______._- 334

Giant ground sloths in Panama (Gazin): Plates 1-8_____._.-.__-.----_-- 342

Kitimat story: (Croome); Plates l=42222 2ass0- 22 eee eee ee 358

Sewage treatment (Keefer) :\Platesyi=6s. 34394932325 Soo ea ot = 2 374

Pioneer settlement in eastern Colombia (Crist and Guhl): Plates 1-8__ __- 406

Rivers inthe sea (Smith) > Plates: 1-6. 2-2 = se eee eee eee 438

Smithsonian-Bredin Caribbean Expedition (Schmitt): Plates 1-8____.._. 454

Project Coral Fish (Bayer and Harry-Rofen): Plates 1-10___.-_-------- 486
Plates 11-20... 225-22 25 ee he ed ee e_ ae 502

Archeological work in Arctic Canada (Collins): Plates 1-14___-_-_-_---- 518

Cherokees of North Carolina (Gilbert): Plates 1-8_____-_-_------------ 550

THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

June 30, 1956

Presiding Officer ew oficio—Dwicut D. EIseNHOWER, President of the United
States.
Chancellor.—BHarL WARREN, Chief Justice of the United States.
Members of the Institution:
Dwicut D. EISENHOWER, President of the United States.
Ricuarp M. Nrxon, Vice President of the United States.
HaRL WakkREN, Chief Justice of the United States.
JOHN Foster DULLES, Secretary of State.
Grorce M. HUMPHREY, Secretary of the Treasury.
CHARLES E. WILSON, Secretary of Defense.
HERBERT BROWNELL, JR., Attorney General.
ARTHUR E. SUMMERFIELD, Postmaster General.
Frep A. Seaton, Secretary of the Interior.
Ezra Tart Benson, Secretary of Agriculture.
S1ncLatr WEEKs, Secretary of Commerce.
JAMES P. MITCHELL, Secretary of Labor.
Marion B. Foutsom, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.
Regents of the Institution:
EARL WaAkkREN, Chief Justice of the United States, Chancellor.
RicHarD M. Nixon, Vice President of the United States.
CLINTON P. ANDERSON, Member of the Senate.
LEVERETT SALTONSTALL, Member of the Senate.
H. ALEXANDER SmMiTH, Member of the Senate.
OveRTON Brooks, Member of the House of Representatives.
CLARENCE CANNON, Member of the House of Representatives.
JoHN M. Vorys, Member of the House of Representatives.
ARTHUR H. Compton, citizen of Missouri.
EVERETTE L. DEGOLYER, citizen of Texas.
RosBERT V. FLEMING, citizen of Washington, D. C.
CrAWForD H. GREENEWALT, citizen of Delaware.
CARYL P. Haskins, citizen of Washington, D. C.
JEROME C. HUNSAKER, citizen of Massachusetts.
Executive Committee.—RoBERT V. FLEMING, Chairman, CLARENCE CANNON, CARYL
P. HASKINS.
Secretary.— LEONARD CARMICHAEL.
Assistant Secretaries.—J. E. GraF, J. L. Keppy.
Administrative assistant to the Secretary—Mrs. Louise M. PEARSON.
Treasurer.—T. F. CLARK.
Chief, editorial and publications division—Pavut H. OEHSER.
Librarian.—Mrs. LEmA F. CLarKk.
Superintendent of buildings and grounds.—L. L. OLIVER.
Chief, personnel division.—J. B. NEWMAN.
Chief, supply division—A. W. WILDING.
Chief, photographic laboratory.—F. B. KESTNER.

VI ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM

Director.—A. REMINGTON KELLOGG.
Assistant Director.—F. A. TAYLOR.
Planning officer.—J. C. EweErs.

Chief exhibits specialist.—J. BE. ANGLIM.
Chief exhibits preparator.—W. L. Brown.
Registrar.—HrLeEnA M. WEISS.

DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY:
F. M. Setzler, head curator.
Division of Archeology: W. R. Wedel, curator; Clifford Evans, Jr., associate
curator.
Division of Ethnology: H. W. Krieger, curator; C. M. Watkins, associate
curator; R. A. Elder, Jr., G. C. Lindsay, assistant curators.
Division of Physical Anthropology: T. D. Stewart, curator; M. T. Newman,
associate curator.
DEPARTMENT OF ZOOLOGY:
W. L. Schmitt, head curator.
Division of Mammals: D. H. Johnson, acting curator; H. W. Setzer, C. O.
Handley, Jr., associate curators.
Division of Birds: Herbert Friedmann, curator; H. G. Deignan, associate
curator.
Division of Reptiles and Amphibians: Doris M. Cochran, curator.
Division of Fishes: L. P. Schultz, curator; E. A. Lachner, associate curator.
Division of Insects: J. F. G. Clarke, curator; O. L. Cartwright, W. D. Field,
Grace E. Glance, associate curators.
Division of Marine Invertebrates: F. A. Chace, Jr., curator; F. M. Bayer, ©
T. H. Bowman, C. EH. Cutress, Jr., associate curators.
Division of Mollusks: H. A. Rehder, curator; J. P. H. Morrison, associate
curator.
DEPARTMENT OF BoTANY (NATIONAL HERBARIUM) :
J. R. Swallen, head curator.
Division of Phanerogams: A. C. Smith, curator; E. C. Leonard, L. B. Smith,
I. H. Walker, Velva 1). Rudd, associate curators.
Division of Ferns: C. V. Morton, curator.
Division of Grasses: Hrnest R. Sohns, associate curator.
Division of Cryptogams: C. VY. Morton, acting curator; P. S. Conger, asso-
ciate curator.
DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGY:
G. A. Cooper, acting head curator; J. H. Benn, museum geologist.
Division of Mineralogy and Petrology: G. S. Switzer, E. P. Henderson,
associate curators.
Division of Invertebrate Paleontology and Paleobotany: G. A. Cooper, cura-
tor; A. R. Loeblich, Jr., David Nicol, associate curators.
Division of Vertebrate Paleontology: C. L. Gazin, curator; D. H. Dunkle,
associate curator.
DEPARTMENT OF ENGINEERING AND JNDUSTRIES:
R. P. Multhauf, acting head curator.
Division of Engineering: R. P. Multhauf, curator.
Section of Civil and Mechanical Engineering: R. P. Multhauf, in
charge.
Section of Tools: R. P. Multhauf, in charge.

SECRETARY’S REPORT VII

DEPARTMENT OF ENGINEERING AND INDUSTRIES—Continued
Division of Engineering—Continued

Section of Marine Transportation: K. M. Perry, associate curator.

Section of Electricity: W. J. King, associate curator.

Section of Physical Sciences and Measurement: R. P. Multhauf, in

charge.

Section of Horology: S. H. Oliver, associate curator.

Section of Land Transportation: S. H. Oliver, associate curator.
Division of Crafts and Industries: W. N. Watkins, curator; H. C. Kendall,

associate curator.

Section of Textiles: Grace L. Rogers, assistant curator.

Section of Wood Technology: W. N. Watkins, in charge.

Section of Manufactures: E. C. Kendall, associate curator.

Section of Agricultural Industries: E. C. Kendall, associate curator.
Division of Medicine and Publie Health: G. B. Griffenhagen, curator.
Division of Graphic Arts: Jacob Kainen, curator.

Section of Photography: A. J. Wedderburn, Jr., associate curator.

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY:

M. L. Peterson, acting head curator.

Division of Military History and Naval History: M. L. Peterson, curator;
J. R. Sirlouis, assistant curator.

Division of Civil History: Mrs. Margaret W. Brown Klapthor, associate
curator.

Division of Numismatics: M. L. Peterson, acting curator.

Division of Philately: F. R. Bruns, Jr., associate curator.

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

Director.—M. W. StT1riina.

Associate Director.—F. H. H. RoBerts, Jr.
Anthropologist.—H. B. Cottins, Jr.

Ethnologist.—W. C. STURTEVANT.

River Basin Surveys.—F. H. H. Rosenrts, Jr., Director.

ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY

Director.—F. L. WHIPPLE.
Assistant Director.—J. S. RINEHART.
Table Mountain, Calif., field station—F. A. GREELEY, A. G. Fromanp, 8. L. AL-
DRICH, physicists.
DIVISION oF RADIATION AND ORGANISMS:
Chief.—R. B. WiTHROW.
Plant physiologists —W. H. Kixern, Mrs. Atice P. WirHRow, LEonARD PRIcE,
V. B. Exstap, C. C. Mou.
Biochemist.—J. B. Wourr.

NATIONAL COLLECTION OF FINE ARTS

Director.—T. M. Brces.
Curator of ceramics.—P. V. GARDNER.
Chief, Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service.—Mrs. ANNEMARIE H. Pops.

vil ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

FREER GALLERY OF ART

Director.—A. G. WENLEY.

Assistant Director.—J. A. POPE.

Assistant to the Director.—B. A. STUBBS.

Associate in Near Eastern art.—RIcHARD ETTINGHAUSEN.
Associate in technical research.—R. J. GETTENS.
Assistant in research.—H. P. STERN.

NATIONAL AIR MUSEUM

Advisory Board:

LEONARD CARMICHAEL, Chairman.

Maj. Gen. JoHn P. Doyte, U. 8. Air Force.

Rear Adm. JAMgEs S. RUSSELL, U. S. Navy.

GROVER LOENING.
Head curator.—P. HE. GARBER.
Associate curator.—W. M. Mate.

NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK

Director.—W. M. MAnn.
Assistant Director.—E. P. WALKER.
Veterinarian.—T. H. RrEeEp.

CANAL ZONE BIOLOGICAL AREA

Resident Naturalist.—C. B. Kororp.

INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE SERVICE

Chief.—D. G. WILLIAMS.

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
Trustees:
Hart WarRkEN, Chief Justice of the United States, Chairman.
JOHN Foster DuLiss, Secretary of State.
Grorcet M. HumpuHrey, Secretary of the Treasury.
LEoNARD CARMICHAEL, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
F,. LaMMot BELIN.
DUNCAN PHILLIPS.
CHESTER DALE.
Pau. MELLon.
RusH H. KRgEss.
President.—CHESTER DALE.
Vice President.—F. LAMMorT BELIN.
Secretary-Treasurer.—HuUNTINGTON CAIRNS.
Director.— JOHN WALKER.
Administrator.—ERNEST R. FEIDLER.
General Counsel.—HUNTINGTON CAIRNS.
Chief Curator.—(vacancy).
Assistant Director.—MAcGILL JAMES.

SECRETARY’S REPORT

Honorary Research Associates, Collaborators, and Fellows

Mrs. Arthur M. Greenwood
N. M. Judd
T. W. McKern

Paul Bartsch, Mollusks
A. G. Boéving
L. L. Buchanan, Coleoptera
M. A. Carriker, Insects
R. S. Clark, Zoology
R. A. Cushman, Hymenoptera
D. C. Graham, Biology
C. T. Greene, Diptera
A. B. Howell, Mammals
W. L. Jellison, Insects
. M. Mann, Hymenoptera

Mrs. Agnes Chase, Grasses
K. P. Killip, Phanerogams

R. S. Bassler, Paleontology

R. W. Brown, Paleobotany

Preston Cloud, Invertebrate
Paleontology

Anthropology

Betty J. Meggers
W. W. Taylor, Jr.
W. J. Tobin

Zoology

J. P. Moore, Marine Invertebrates
C. F. W. Muesebeck, Insects
Benjamin Schwartz, Helminthology

5».

Mrs. Harriet Richardson Searle, Marine

Invertebrates
C. R. Shoemaker

R. E. Snodgrass, Insects
Alexander Wetmore, Birds
Mrs. Mildred S. Wilson,

Crustacea

Botany

¥. A. McClure, Grasses
J. A. Stevenson, Fungi

Geology

Copepod

Mrs. Helen N. Loeblich, Invertebrate

Paleontology

S. H. Perry, Mineralogy
J. B. Reeside, Jr., Invertebrate

J. B. Knight, Invertebrate Paleontology Paleontology

W. T. Schaller, Mineralogy

Engineering and Industries
F. L. Lewton, Crafts and Industries

History

P. A. Straub, Numismatics

Bureau of American Ethnology

Frances Densmore

J. P. Harrington

R. F. Heizer

Sister M. Inez Hilger

R. S. Solecki

R. J. Squier

J. R. Swanton
A. J. Waring, Jr.

Astrophysical Observatory

Cc. G. Abbot

Freer Gallery of Art

Grace Dunham Guest
Max Loehr

Katherine N. Rhoades

Canal Zone Biological Area

C. C. Soper

| James Zetek

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Report of the Secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution

LEONARD CARMICHAEL
For the Year Ended June 30, 1956

To the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution:

GENTLEMEN: I have the honor to submit a report showing the
activities and condition of the Smithsonian Institution and its
branches for the fiscal year ended June 380, 1956.

GENERAL STATEMENT

Botanists have learned in their study of the rings in the cross sec-
tions of trees that all years are not equally favorable for growth.
When sun and moisture are just right, development is best. In the
life of the Smithsonian Institution, the one hundred and tenth ring,
which is covered by this report, shows what is probably an unparal-
leled period of healthy growth in this old and honored institution.

Museum of History and Technology Assured

Last year it was possible to report that $2,288,000 had been appro-
priated to plan the already authorized new Museum of History and
Technology building for the Smithsonian. This year the additional
$33,712,000 has been appropriated to make possible the building of
this great and most urgently needed new museum structure.

The established site for this building is an admirable one. It is in
the Mall area of the Capital, near other Smithsonian buildings, and
is bounded on the north by Constitution Avenue, on the east by 12th
Street, on the south by Madison Drive, and on the west by 14th Street.
It is expected that the construction of the foundation of the building
will begin in the spring of 1957, and it is hoped that the building will
be completed in 1960.

The Smithsonian Regents selected the New York firm of McKim,
Mead & White as architects for the building. Under its direction
the development of the necessarily elaborate plans for the structure is
progressing in a most promising manner. These plans are being
worked out so as to meet the requirements for the new building
that have been set by the staff of the Smithsonian Institution on the

&

DEC 1 - 1057

2 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

basis of detailed study of similar buildings and especially on the
basis of the knowledge of the objects to be displayed in it.

The Joint Committee on Construction of a Building for the Museum
of History and Technology for the Smithsonian Institution, of which
our Regent Senator Clinton P. Anderson is chairman, and our Regent
John M. Vorys, House of Representatives, is secretary, has devoted
much careful attention to the architectural problems presented by the
building. When the new structure becomes a reality, the Nation will
owe a deep debt of gratitude to the wisdom and effective assistance
that this committee has provided in the development of the new
museum. The full membership of the committee is as follows:

Clinton P. Anderson, Senator from New Mexico.
Leverett Saltonstall, Senator from Massachusetts.
H. Alexander Smith, Senator from New Jersey.
Stuart Symington, Senator from Missouri.

Edward Martin, Senator from Pennsylvania.
Clarence Cannon, Representative from Missouri.
Overton Brooks, Representative from Louisiana.
Robert E. Jones, Jr., Representative from Alabama.
John M. Vorys, Representative from Ohio.

Laurence Curtis, Representative from Massachusetts.

Now that the Museum of History and Technology building is becom-
ing a reality, we must remember that even this great structure is but
one step, although a very important one, in providing our Nation with
suitable modern buildings in which to house and display its unequaled
collections that tell the story of the rise to greatness of the United
States of America.

Other Buildings Needed

Of all the urgent additional building needs of the Smithsonian,
that which has highest priority is the expansion of the Natural History
Museum. In 1930 the two wings needed for this building were au-
thorized by the Congress. This was done because at that time—a
quarter of a century ago—the crowding of the Nation’s great Natural
History Museum had come to seem intolerable. In the intervening
years, conditions in this building have become progressively worse.
Now world-famous study collections must be piled to the ceiling in
the hallways of certain parts of this building. It is most sincerely
to be hoped that during the present year funds may be appropriated
for this long-delayed, although already authorized, addition to the
plant of the Institution.

As indicated in my report a year ago, by a special gift of private
funds an architectural study of an adequate building for the National
Air Museum was made last year. The site that had been tentatively
allocated to the Smithsonian for this building, on Independence
Avenue at 10th Street, near other Smithsonian structures, now has

SECRETARY’S REPORT 3

been declared unavailable to the Institution. Other promising loca-
tions, however, are ready for consideration. The National Air
Museum today maintains, mostly in storage for the future, effective
displays of the world’s most comprehensive collection of historic air-
craft, including innumerable devices and pieces of scientific apparatus
that are related to this important phase of modern life. It is hoped
that funds may soon be provided to make possible a suitable building
for the National Air Museum in close proximity to the other units of
the Smithsonian.

The Congress, in 1846, authorized the establishment, within the
Smithsonian organization, of an art gallery, which later was desig-
nated as the National Collection of Fine Arts. The important works
of art in the custody of this bureau are now inappropriately housed
in the Natural History Museum. A new and proper building to ac-
commodate this notable collection and to make possible the acceptance
of other available collections in the fine and decorative arts was au-
thorized by the Congress in 1938. In spite of many efforts, however,
the private funds that were expected to finance the planning and
erection of this building have not been secured. Each year pressure
from the public to make this building a reality becomes greater. Soon
some positive action in regard to this problem must be taken.

Congressional proposal has been discussed in the public press for
the establishment, possibly as a new and separate bureau of the Smith-
sonian Institution, of a National Portrait Gallery. It has been sug-
gested that this collection be housed in the old Patent Office Building.
This handsome building is now occupied by offices of the Civil Service
Commission, but it is not too well suited for a modern office building.
It is believed that this architectural monument of early Washington
could be transformed without too great cost into an admirable gallery
to house collections of portraits of Americans who have contributed
importantly to our country. The possibility that the National Col-
lection of Fine Arts could also be housed in this building deserves
study.

Besides the buildings mentioned above, additional structures are
urgently needed by the Smithsonian Institution at the National
Zoological Park. There is also continued discussion by interested
members of the public of the need for the erection of a National
Planetarium in connection with the Smithsonian’s Astrophysical
Observatory. Such a building would have great educational value
for the millions of citizens who come each year to Washington.

Rebuilding of Exhibits Continues

The program for the renovation of the exhibits in the old existing
Smithsonian buildings, which has been discussed previously, continued

4 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

during the period covered by this report. On March 22, 1956, the
new Bird Hall of the Natural History Museum was opened to the
public. It has been described by one internationally known ornitho-
logical expert as the most effective and most instructive museum
display of birds in the world. Dr. Herbert Friedmann, curator of
birds in the United States National Museum of the Smithsonian
Institution, is an artist as well as a scientist, and he and his associates
developed this hall in such a way as to make it not only beautiful and
eye-arresting but also instructive. The notable success of this hall,
with its many new display features, illustrates a function of the
Smithsonian Institution that is not always remembered. This is an
age in which museums are becoming very common throughout the
country. Leadership at the Smithsonian in the development of effec-
tive museum displays is thus especially important because, as the
world’s largest museum in number of cataloged objects, it almost auto-
matically sets for many other museums a pattern for guidance in
developing new and small museums throughout the country. There
is broad advantage, therefore, when the Smithsonian leads the way
in new museum display ideas as it has done in the Bird Hall and in
the other recently opened halls that are transforming the old
exhibitions of the Institution.

During the year progress was made in the renovation of the second
secion of the American Indian Hall, the Engineering Power Hall,
and the Health Hall. The notable artistic work required for the back-
grounds of the new North American Mammal Hall was produced
under special contracts. Part of the Printing Art Hall in the old
Smithsonian Building was renovated and is now open to the public.
The lights that have been installed in this hall are, so far as is known,
the first artificial illumination of any kind ever to be used in this
section of the Institution. Progress was also made in preparing a hall
displaying the style of life of the early American colonies.

Under the difficult conditions already referred to, improvements in
displays were made both in the National Collection of Fine Arts and
in the National Air Museum. Many of the plaster casts, which were
in far too great a variety of scales and which have long confused
the visitor on entering the Rotunda of the Natural History Museum,
have been placed on exhibit. elsewhere or are in storage.

Rehabilitation of the structures of the older Smithsonian buildings
went on during the year covered by this report. Painting of the re-
maining halls and courts in the Arts and Industries Building, started
last year, was completed. It is believed that some of this painting,
such as that on the underportions of the roofs, is possibly the first since
the building was completed in 1878. New and safer entrance and
exit doors were installed in this building.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 5

Nine halls of the Natural History Building were also repainted,
and a contract was let for the urgently needed repair of the roof of
this great structure. The ancient so-called “converter” heating system
of this building was modernized and made more economical. Steam
lines in various buildings, which were in a dangerous condition, were
replaced.

Work on the air-conditioning of the Freer Gallery of Art was
begun. The air-conditioning of this building will protect the price-
less objects of art contained in the Freer collections which were deteri-
orating under the extremes of temperature and humidity of Washing-
ton. Also, possibly for the first time since this building was opened,
the gallery has been completely repainted, and its library has been
renovated and provided with adequate lighting fixtures. Modern rest
rooms for the public were opened in the Natural History Building and
in the old Smithsonian Building.

Research in Astrophysics

It is always important to remember that Smithson, in establishing
his institution, and the Congress, in founding it, directed that it should
not only “diffuse knowledge” but also “increase knowledge.” During
the current year, effective research has continued in all the scientific
and artistic departments of the Institution. A particularly notable
development, as is indicated in the detailed report that follows (p. 65)
has taken place in the program of the Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory.

Astrophysics has long been one of the principal research activities
of the Institution. With the retirement a year ago of Loyal B.
Aldrich as head of this bureau, it became clear that, because of the
growing importance of astrophysics in national defense as well as in
pure science, the future program of this bureau required careful study.
With the assistance of Mr. Aldrich, authorities in this field were con-
sulted and it was agreed that the time was ripe to expand both the
bureau’s facilities and programs. The Smithsonian was fortunate
in securing as director Dr. Fred L. Whipple, then chairman of the
Department of Astronomy at Harvard University. The scientific
headquarters of the Observatory have been moved from temporary
buildings behind the old Smithsonian Building to more adequate
quarters in immediate association with the Harvard College Observa-
tory in Cambridge, Mass. By this physical change, the Astrophysical
Observatory of the Smithsonian Institution, without compromising its
independence, has gained the advantage of close association with an
active group of scientists in the mathematical and physical as well as
astronomical sciences. Without such association, modern advances
in astrophysics are severely handicapped.

6 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Dr. Finley Retires

The National Gallery of Art, a bureau of the Smithsonian, has had
a notable year. The art world has been saddened by the fact that at
the close of June, the Director of the National Gallery, Dr. David E.
Finley, whose unremitting labor has done so much to make this insti-
tution world famous, reached retirement age. It is most gratifying
to announce, however, that this important post has been filled by the
promotion of John Walker, Chief Curator of the Gallery, to the post
of Director. Mr. Walker has been connected with the Gallery from
its beginning and brings to his new post an outstanding international
reputation as a student of art.

Financial Support

Grants continue to be made to the Smithsonian by private founda-
tions, by individuals, and by other agencies in support of specific
service functions, such as the Bio-Sciences Information Exchange,
and many research projects. One of the most interesting of these
grants names the Smithsonian Institution as the agency to organize
throughout the world the program of observing the artificial earth
satellites that are to be launched under the auspices of the International
Geophysical Year. The fact that the Smithsonian Institution was
selected for this important function attests the recognition accorded
to it by the scientists who are responsible for this great and novel
project.

Detailed reports of all the ten bureaus under the direction of the
Smithsonian Institution follow. In addition, there are included a
report on the Smithsonian Library (p. 193) and a report of the Edi-
torial and Publications Division (p. 197) with a complete list of the
publications issued during the year. These publications have had a
most enthusiastic reception by the scientific and learned world.

In concluding this general introduction to the 1956 Smithsonian
Annual Report, it is impossible to resist an expression of deep appre-
ciaton to the Regents of the Institution for all that they have done
during the current year to advance the welfare of the Smithsonian.
The executive committee of the Board of Regents has been most active
and effective in the difficult tasks of managing the details of the private
funds of the Institution. In many other ways the Regents, not only
as a corporate body but also as individuals, have made possible the
really memorable advances in the Smithsonian that are recorded in
this report of the operations of its one-hundred and tenth year.

THE ESTABLISHMENT

The Smithsonian Institution was created by act of Congress in 1846,
in accordance with the terms of the will of James Smithson, of Eng-

SECRETARY’S REPORT rf

land, who in 1826 bequeathed his property to the United States of
America “to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian
Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowl-
edge among men.” In receiving the property and accepting the trust,
Congress determined that the Federal Government was without au-
thority to administer the trust directly, and, therefore, constituted
an “establishment” whose statutory members are “the President, the
Vice President, the Chief Justice, and the heads of the executive
departments.”
THE BOARD OF REGENTS

The affairs of the Institution are administered by a Board of Regents
whose membership consists of “the Vice President, the Chief Justice
of the United States, and three members of the Senate, and three
members of the House of Representatives; together with six other
persons, other than members of Congress, two of whom shall be resi-
dent in the city of Washington and the other four shall be inhabitants
of some State, but no two of them of the same State.” One of the
Regents is elected Chancellor of the Board. In the past the selection
has fallen upon the Vice President or the Chief Justice.

The past year brought the resignation of a highly valued member
of the Board, Dr. Vannevar Bush, who had been a Regent since April
5, 1940. He was also a member of the executive committee of the
Board and in this capacity, too, rendered distinguished and outstand-
ing service to the Institution.

The Board is honored to welcome as new members the following:
Everette Lee DeGolyer, to succeed Harvey N. Davis, deceased ; Craw-
ford Hallock Greenewalt, to succeed Vannevar Bush, resigned; and
Caryl Parker Haskins, to succeed Owen Josephus Roberts, deceased.

The annual informal dinner meeting of the Board was held in the
main hall of the Smithsonian Building on the evening of January 12,
1956, amid various exhibits showing phases of the work being carried
on at present. Brief talks on their special fields of research and ac-
tivities were made by two staff members: Dr. T. Dale Stewart and
Dr. Fred L. Whipple.

The regular annual meeting of the Board was held on January 13,
1956. At this meeting the Secretary presented his published annual
report on the activities of the Institution and its bureaus; and Robert
VY. Fleming, chairman of the executive and permanent committees of
the Board, presented the financial report for the fiscal year ended
June 30, 1955.

The roll of Regents at the close of the fiscal year was as follows:
Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren, Chancellor; Vice
President Richard Nixon; members from the Senate: Clinton P. An-
derson, Leverett Saltonstall, H. Alexander Smith; members from

412575—57——2

8 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

the House of Representatives: Overton Brooks, Clarence Cannon,
John M. Vorys; citizen members: Arthur H. Compton, Everette Lee
DeGolyer, Robert V. Fleming, Crawford H. Greenewalt, Caryl P.
Haskins, and Jerome C. Hunsaker.

FINANCES

A statement on finances, dealing particularly with Smithsonian pri-
vate funds, will be found in the report of the executive committee of
the Board of Regents, page 204.

APPROPRIATIONS

Funds appropriated to the Institution for its regular operations for
the fiscal year ended June 30, 1956, total $4,166,000, obligated as
follows:

Mia rial gern Gri bet Sc ee Se a ck te a ed eS es a $77, 906
WnitedStatessNational Museums. =e eee ee oe ee ee 1, 386, 023
BUreCa TOL -AINeriGAN HLT Ol Oya a ee eee eee 59, 248
Astrophysical Observatoryeee= eee 2 eS Se 121, 102
National¥CollectioniofiminerArisz 22: 262 Fase eee ee 47, 635
National SAir Musetime!.. 23% 0 os 8 aos be ee OY oe Ed een 120, 334
International suxchanges Service 2s 225 9s ee ee 90, 946
Canal Zone: Biolog) Cal Aw Ca ees case ee EB es ee ee 14, 326
Maintenance and operation of buildings___________________-_______- 1, 826, 376
Other general'services #2232) _ 2 Nh OE Sh eee oe BS 422, 104

MOG a ep 2 ee Ee ee he ee ee 4, 166, 000

In addition, the Institution received an appropriation of $2,288,000
for the preparation of plans and specifications for the new Museum
of History and Technology.

Besides these direct appropriations, the Institution received funds
by transfer from other Government agencies as follows:

From the District of Columbia for the National Zoological Park______ $690, 900
From the National Park Service, Department of the Interior, for the
RiversBasiniSurvey sss: i: ue einige. een. ofa) Se eee eee ae 92,360
VISITORS

Visitors to the Smithsonian group of buildings during the year
reached an all-time high of 4,145,591, which was approximately a
quarter of a million more than the previous year. April 1956 was the
month of largest attendance, with 667,752; May 1956 second, with
597,566; June 1956 third, with 489,999. Largest attendance for a
single day was 54,466 for March 31,1956. Table 1 gives a summary of
the attendance records for the five buildings. These figures, when
added to the 3,788,229 estimated visitors at the National Zoological
Park and 1,013,246 recorded at the National Gallery of Art, make a
total number of visitors at the Smithsonian of 8,947,066.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 9

TABLE 1.—Visitors to certain Smithsonian buildings during the year ended

June 80, 1956
Smithso- | Arts and Natural Aircraft Freer
Year and month nian Build | Industries | History Building | Building Total
ing Building | Building

1955
DULY 2 - 26S. - Sets sees 2a bee oe 72, 782 191, 975 $3, 645 62, 162 10, 392 430, 956
WAUIRUS Ge se ae fe Ene 79, 521 195, 036 100, 443 62, 002 11, 021 448, 023
Septenmmper 22220427 tia2 . Sa 47,146 110, 582 64, 918 37, 020 7, 914 267, 580
October ss see tee 4 39, 978 107, 259 70, 290 29, 331 6, 553 253, 411
IWOVOIIDGI= 2-2 soot 52 238 £525 33, 959 76, 639 59, 150 26, 801 5, 371 201, 920
IDSC 0”. ee 20, 632 44, 485 40, 088 20, 058 3, 209 128, 472

1956
UANUATY oo eset ke es 22, 059 54, 566 43, 515 21, 325 3, 604 145, 069
Hepruary 4 9 = 2 aa et 30, 761 66, 471 58, 645 26, 793 4, 756 187, 426
Nrarchaessiee eee ee to 52, 088 148, 340 84, 211 36, 145 6,633 | 327,417
Amrit ts 8 eT! 132, 642 284, 232 155, 494 82, 412 12,972 | 667, 752
17 ES is Sa SS ae 101, 112 281, 049 135, 286 69, 102 11,017 597, 566
FUNG Se 4) a= Sons ose ee 83, 368 235, 846 101, 839 58, 058 10, 834 489, 999
sPotalese eases en ee! 716,048 | 1,796,480 | 1,007, 578 531, 209 94,276 | 4,145, 591

A special record was kept during the year of groups of school
children visiting the Institution. These figures are given in table 2:

TABLE 2.—Groups of school children visiting the Smithsonian Institution, 1955-1956

Year and month Number of | Number of
groups children
1956
Ahh a eS ee 24 ce ee ae eae es eee eee 37 1, 054
PAURTEEUIS beeen rte ose ocr rae TS eta ee ee ee 139 4,379
NeEplrempersanne se we ore mehr a laergs icles selorr 94 2, 585
October 2 sn ee ee eat ee 313 10, 559
INO Veber eet we ia te eae eae eh tee eA 389 12, 392
Ietembery. 2S od sireyiys To aun lage je et! 167 4,717
1956
Januaryeaeoina lanrsnianaswier rye ota thyeep T 190 5, 086
HD RUA ete eee eo ee i Sevan 369 10, 621
1 LAT x ia a a «at ee cs 2p eas 1 il 41, 655
April: pemets hin eetote heatnn) TL Anti wares) 2, 501 94, 569
OPS 2 le eee eRe rp TR ee 2 853 152, 961
Abie ey ofa atime) a eckig as thE “dott a apap ade ee SON pag poe Eas wo ee cae 1, 194 44, 609
AUG Lapeptpinene ota Ulery 1a Be plies OnEee oy ENE hoe, 10, 457 385, 187
LECTURES

In 1931 the Institution received a bequest from James Arthur, of
New York City, a part of the income from which was to be used for
an annual lecture on some aspect of the study of thesun. The twenty-
third Arthur lecture was delivered in the auditorium of the Natural
History Building on the evening of April 26, 1956, by Dr. Donald H.

10 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Menzel, director of the Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge,
Mass. This illustrated lecture, on the subject “The Edge of the Sun,”
will be published in full in the general appendix of the Annual Report
of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1956.

John K. Marshall, of the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Mass.,
showed his color film “The Hunters—African Bushmen” before a
large audience in the Natural History Building auditorium on the
evening of February 9, 1956. This showing was under the joint
sponsorship of the Smithsonian Institution and the Anthropological
Society of Washington.

Prof. Millar Burrows, chairman of the Department of Near Eastern
Languages, Yale University Graduate School, delivered his lecture on
“The Dead Sea Scrolls” before an overflow audience in the Natural
History Building on the evening of February 29, 1956. This lecture
was sponsored jointly with the Archaeological Institute of America.

Dr. Gunnar Thorson, of the Zoological Museum, Copenhagen, Den-
mark, on the evening of May 10, 1956, lectured on the subject “The
Relationship Between Prey and Predator on the Sea Bottom” in the
auditorium of the Natural History Building. This was one of a series
of lectures that this distinguished foreign scientist delivered in
America that season.

Several lectures were also sponsored by the Freer Gallery of Art and
the National Gallery of Art. These are listed in the reports of these
bureaus.

BIO-SCIENCES INFORMATION EXCHANGE

The Bio-Sciences Information Exchange continued during the year
under the directorship of Dr. Stella L. Deignan. This agency operates
within the Smithsonian Institution under funds made available to the
Institution by other governmental agencies. By performing the
unique function of effecting an exchange of information on work just
beginning or not yet published, it serves as a clearinghouse for current
research in the biological, medical, and psychological sciences. Its
services are provided, free of charge, to investigators associated with
recognized research institutions in the United States and abroad.

The body of information within the Exchange now consists of brief
abstracts of over 10,000 active research projects and of a somewhat
greater number of summary statements on investigations which are
no longer current. The studies registered with the Exchange are for
the most part being carried out in laboratories in the United States.

Requests for information on work in scientific fields come to the
Exchange from granting agencies, committees, and from individual
investigators. For the first two groups, detailed surveys of current
work in broad fields are provided; for the individual investigator the
service is limited to information on work on one or a series of specifi-

SECRETARY'S REPORT 11

cally defined problems. The purpose is not that of a reference library
to provide guidance to publications, but to place investigators in
contact with others having immediate and similar interests.

During the fiscal year 1956 replies to over 900 requests for subject
information were supplied by the Exchange. Among these were
requests for rosters of scientists to be used in planning symposia, con-
ferences, and international scientific meetings, and calls from scientists
abroad who were planning itineraries for visiting United States
laboratories, as well as from investigators planning problems and
wishing to know of others in related fields.

A primary purpose of the Exchange is to prevent the inadvertent
duplication of support by granting agencies of a field of research or
of an investigator. To carry out this responsibility, the Exchange
prepares, at the request of government and nongovernment granting
agencies, résumés of the support of men, research institutions, and
departments of such institutions. Approximately 7,500 such reports
were prepared during the year.

Because a large proportion of the research registered is supported
by grants and contracts, the Exchange prepares for its cooperating
agencies and, within the limits of its charter, for other qualified groups,
statistical information on the amount and distribution of research
support. As a correlation to liaisons with granting agencies, it pro-
vides also a considerable body of information on the general policies
of granting agencies. As staff and time permit, this information is
employed to aid scientists in locating possible sources of support.

JUNIOR LEAGUE DOCENT ACTIVITIES

In the fall of 1955, through the cooperative assistance of the Junior
League of Washington, a program was inaugurated for a volunteer
docent or educational guide service in Smithsonian exhibition halls
for elementary school children in the Greater Washington area. Such
a service has long been needed at the Institution. The project is one
of many voluntary programs undertaken by members of the Junior
League.

This program is under the immediate supervision of Frank M.
Setzler, head curator of the National Museum’s department of anthro-
pology, who undertook the task in addition to his regular duties.
Representing the Junior League are Mrs. Robert Nelson, Jr., chair-
man of the project, and Mrs. Alexander Chilton, vice chairman. They
organized the volunteers and met frequently with the Secretary,
Mr. Setzler, and other Museum officials concerned with procedures
and scripts.

To begin the program, two of the recently modernized exhibition
halls were selected—the Hall of American Indians and the First

12 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Ladies Hall. The professional staff of the Smithsonian Institution
prepared the scripts used by the docents. All the drudgery of organ-
izing the tours, notifying the various elementary school systems in
the District and those in the adjoining counties of Maryland and
Virginia, and making all tour arrangements with the school teacher
and respective docent, was graciously assumed by Mrs. Nelson and
Mrs. Chilton.

On January 25, 1956, the first trial was held in the American Indian
Hall, and the first official scheduled tours began February 20. The
following Junior Leaguers served as docents in the American Indian
Hall: Mrs. George Goodrich, Mrs. William McClure, Mrs. Robert
McCormick, Miss Mary McNeil, Mrs. John Manfuso, Mrs. John Mash-
burn, Mrs. Robert Nelson, Mrs. Bolling Powell, Mrs. Walter Slowin-
ski, and Mrs. George Wyeth.

During the final stages of completing the First Ladies Hall, a
script was prepared emphasizing in this unique display graphic por-
trayals of interesting episodes in our American history. The program
for fifth- and sixth-grade pupils was inaugurated on March 29, 1956.
The following served as docents in the First Ladies Hall: Mrs. Alex-
ander Chilton, Mrs. William Evers, Mrs. Walter Graves, Mrs. Harold
Hull, Mrs. John W. Kern, III, Miss Mary L. Krayenbuhl, Mrs. Peter
MacDonald, Mrs. Jay B. L. Reeves, and Mrs. John Schoenfeld.

In reviewing the number of tours and children accommodated in
this short period, I am extremely pleased with the response and yet
somewhat chagrined that the Institution has not been able in the past
to offer more of this kind of service. The numerous requests for
it only accentuate the acute need for this type of educational pro-
gram. Moreover, it becomes especially desirable as we continue to
modernize our exhibition halls. During the 3-month period in the
American Indian Hall the Junior League completed 58 tours, escort-
ing over 3,000 third- and fourth-grade pupils. During the 244-
month period in the First Ladies of the White House Hall, 44 tours
guided over 1,500 elementary school classes.

One of the most encouraging features resulting from a final con-
ference before the summer vacation period began was the manifest
enthusiasm on the part of the Junior Leaguers to continue this school
guide service in the aforementioned two halls and to extend the pro-
gram to other new halls as they are completed and opened to the
public.

In many ways the project has been the culmination of several years
of hopes, desires, and plans for assisting school children in under-
standing the Smithsonian’s new and modernized exhibition halls.
I feel confident that the members of the Board of Regents join with
me in expressing gratitude to the members of the Junior League

SECRETARY’S REPORT 13

Docent Service and those members of our professional staff who par-
ticipated in the establishment of one more educational program within
the Smithsonian Institution.

SUMMARY OF THE YEAR’S ACTIVITIES OF THE INSTITUTION

National Museum.—Accessions to the national collections showed
a normal growth, slightly more than 900,000 specimens being added
during the year. The total catalog entries in all departments now
number 43,756,010. Some of the year’s outstanding accessions in-
cluded : In anthropology, collections of ethnological material from the
Sudan, Peru, and New Zealand, fine lots of pottery and ceramic tiles,
a collection of Mexican jadeite, a series of pathological human bones
from Illinois, and a group of early Eskimo skeletons; in zoology, valu-
able collections of mammals from Siam and Africa, a Ross seal from
the Antarctic, a giant sea bass from the Marshall Islands, a collection
of over 230,000 termites, and more than 10,000 invertebrates from the
Antarctic; in botany, the James Smith Memorial Collection of fossil
diatoms from the Philippines and important lots of plants from
Brazil, New Guinea, Australia, Idaho, and Alaska; in geology, an
exhibit of synthetic diamonds, 11 meteorites new to the Museum, sev-
eral thousand miscellaneous but important invertebrate fossils in-
cluding many type specimens, a notable collection of fossil fishes and
reptiles from Kansas, and an example of a very rare Middle Eocene
bowfin from Wyoming; in engineering and industries, an unusual
number of turbine and other power machines; and in history, additions
to the collection of White House state china, more than 30,000 phila-
telic specimens lent by former Postmaster General James A. Farley,
including original, autographed sketches of stamps made by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Members of the staff conducted fieldwork in Peru, Europe, Canada,
Palau Archipelago, Libya, West Indies, Panama, and many parts of
the United States.

The exhibits-modernization program was successfully continued,
and the new Bird Hall was opened to the public.

Bureau of American Ethnology.—The staff members of the Bureau
continued their researches and publication in ethnology and arche-
ology: Dr. Stirling his Panamanian studies, Dr. Roberts his work as
Director of the River Basin Surveys, Dr. Collins his archeological
fieldwork in the Hudson Bay area, and Dr. Drucker his Mexican
studies.

Astrophysical Observatory.—Scientific headquarters of the Observ-
atory were moved to Cambridge, Mass., at the beginning of the year.
Broadened research programs of the agency now include not only
strictly solar research but also meteoritic studies and studies of the

14 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

higher atmosphere. The Observatory is also participating in the
new Satellite Tracking Program of the International Geophysical
Year. The division of radiation and organisms continued its research
on the role of light in regulating growth in higher plants.

National Collection of Fine Arts—The Smithsonian Art Commis-
sion accepted for the Gallery 1 oil painting, 3 miniatures, a German
antique cabinet, a collection of 31 pieces of glassware, 2 ceramic pieces,
and 8 bronze busts. The Gallery held 13 special exhibits during the
year, while the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service circulated
72 exhibitions, 71 in the United States and 1 abroad.

Freer Gallery of Art.—Purchases for the collections of the Freer
Gallery included Chinese bronzes, paintings, and pottery; Japanese
lacquer work, metalwork, and painting; Indian and Syrian metal-
work; Coptic painting; and Persian pottery. The Gallery continued
its program of illustrated lectures in the auditorium by distinguished
scholars in Eastern art.

National Air Museum.—All the Museum’s stored materials have
now been moved to the storage facility at Suitland, Md. During the
year 118 specimens in 45 separate accessions were added to the aero-
nautical collections, including the first Pitcairn autogiro constructed
in America, a Stearman-Hammond airplane of the 1930’s, the Curtiss
Robin monoplane Ole Miss, which established an endurance record in
1935, an original amphibious aircraft of 1909-12, and a Bell P-39
Airacobra, besides many scale models and other aeronautical acces-
sories and equipment.

National Zoological Park.—The Zoo accessioned 1,710 individual
animals during the year, and 2,155 were removed by death, exchange,
or return to depositors. The net count at the close of the year was
2,965. Noteworthy among the additions were a pair of European
wisents, a rare dwarf Bolivian armadillo, an olingo from Colombia,
fine examples of gelada baboons, and a Guianan crested eagle. In all,
252 creatures were born or hatched at the Zoo during the year—77
mammals, 43 birds, and 182 reptiles. Visitors totaled 3,788,229.

Canal Zone Biological Area.—Mr. Zetek, longtime resident man-
ager, retired at the end of May. He is succeeded by Dr. Carl B.
Koford. The year’s visitors to the island totaled 440, of whom about
50 were scientists using the station’s facilities for special researches.

International Exchange Service—aAs the official United States
agency for the exchange of governmental, scientific, and literary
publications between this country and other nations, the International
Exchange Service handled during the year 1,161,855 packages of such
publications, weighing 803,056 pounds, about the same as last year.
Consignments were made to all countries except China, North Korea,

SECRETARY’S REPORT 15

Outer Mongolia, Communist-controlled areas of Viet-Nam and Laos,
and the Haiphong Enclave.

National Gallery of Art—The Gallery received 477 accessions dur-
ing the year, by gift, loan, or deposit. Ten special exhibits were held,
and 23 traveling exhibitions of prints from the Rosenwald Collection
were circulated to other galleries and museums. Exhibitions from the
“Index of American Design” were given 42 bookings in 20 States and
the District of Columbia. Nearly 46,000 persons attended the various
tours conducted by Gallery personnel, and the 42 Sunday-afternoon
lectures in the auditorium attracted 9,470. The Sunday-evening
concerts in the east garden court were continued.

Library.—A total of 78,715 publications were received by the Smith-
sonian library during the year. In all, 237 new exchanges were ar-
ranged. Among the gifts were several private collections of valuable
material, both of books and periodicals. At the close of the year the
holdings of the library and all its branches aggregated 956,157 vol-
umes, including 586,447 in the Smithsonian Deposit in the Library of
Congress but excluding unbound periodicals and reprints and sepa-
rates from serial publications.

Publications.—Seventy-four new publications appeared under the
Smithsonian imprint during the year (see Report on Publications,
p- 197, for full list). Outstanding among these were “The Brome-
liaceae of Brazil,” by Lyman B. Smith; “The Last Cruise of H. M. S.
Loo,” by Mendel L. Peterson; “Chazyan and Related Brachiopods”
(2 vols.) by G. Arthur Cooper; “The Honey-Guides,” by Herbert
Friedmann; “The Diné: Origin Myths of the Navaho Indians,” by
Aileen O’Bryan; and “Chinese Porcelains from the Ardebil Shrine,”
by John Alexander Pope. In all, 424,389 copies of printed matter
were distributed during the year.

Report on the
United States National Museum

Sm: I have the honor to submit the following report on the condi-
tion and operations of the United States National Museum for the
fiscal year ended June 30, 1956:

COLLECTIONS

During the year 905,473 specimens were added to the national col-
lections and distributed among the six departments as follows: An-
thropology, 19,371; zoology, 409,127; botany, 32,616; geology, 48,900 ;
engineering and industries, 4,292; history, 391,167. This increase is
smaller than last year, when the unusual increase resulted from the
accession of several million small fossils. This year’s total is a more
normal annual accretion. Most of the accessions were received as
gifts from individuals or as transfers from Government departments
and agencies. The Annual Report of the Museum, published as a
separate document, contains a detailed list of the year’s accessions, of
which the more important are summarized below. Catalog entries in
all departments now total 43,756,010.

Anthropology—Among the outstanding accessions received in the
division of ethnology is a collection of specimens from the environs
of Nasir on the Sabat River in South Sudan, East Africa, presented
by Rev. A. MacRoy, an American missionary. These come from an
area hitherto unrepresented in the national collections. An interest-
ing object is a much-worn leopard skin, a traditional court accessory,
on which the witness sits while giving evidence during a trial. A
perjurer would be subject to dire consequences if he gave false evi-
dence while sitting on this leopard skin. Rings perforating one cor-
ner indicate the number of occasions the skin has been used by wit-
nesses. Another item, significant of the culture of the Nuer, is a fight-
ing bracelet of brass, generally worn on the right wrist by men and
women alike.

While building a railroad in about 1910, Alexander J. Norris col-
lected objects used in the daily life of the Arawak Indians living in
the colony of Perené in the watershed of the Rio Perené (upper Uca-
yali River), and from the Quechua Indians in the vicinity of Cuzco,
Peru. These ethnological specimens consist of hunting and fishing
weapons, woven ponchos, and various objects of personal adornment,

16

SECRETARY’S REPORT Hz.

presented by Mr. and Mrs. Joseph C. Green. Another acquisition of
note, a stylistically carved wooden treasure box, “waka,” originally
presented to President Calvin Coolidge by the assembled chiefs of the
Arawa, was transferred from the Department of State. The Arawa,
a federation of Maori tribes living on the east coast of New Zealand’s
North Island, claim descent from members of the Arawa, the legend-
ary voyaging canoe that brought the Maori to New Zealand. A
notable collection of ceramic tiles given to the division by E. Stanley
Wires, ranges from early Moorish, Spanish, and Dutch tiles to Amer-
ican types of recent manufacthure. They are the result of Mr. Wires’s
lifetime interest in the history of tile manufacturing. Through the
efforts of Mr. Wires, the tile collection was further enhanced by a pair
of ceramic tile panels with animal designs in relief, sculptured by the
late Frederick G. R. Roth and presented by his widow.

Other donations to the ethnological collections include a total of
170 examples of Rockwood and other late nineteenth century and early
twentieth century pottery assembled by the late Dr. Edwin Kirk and
presented by his widow, Mrs. Page Kirk; 17 examples of stoneware
and pottery made by country potters in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and
West Virginia, given by Clyde N. Fahrney; and numerous glass and
ceramic specimens together with documented papers and account books
presented by Miss Madeleine Wilkinson.

The division of archeology received a collection of 187 polished
jadeite and other stone objects from La Venta, Tabasco, Mexico, as a
permanent loan from the Museo Nacional, Mexico. ‘These include
beads, celts, figurines, ear-spool parts, and other objects representing
the prehistoric Olmec culture of southeastern Mexico. A group of
conch-shell segments elaborately carved with anthropomorphic and
ceremonial art motifs in the style of the late prehistoric Southern
Cult, from the Spiro Mound, near Spiro, Okla., was received as an
indefinite loan from the Lightner Museum of Hobbies, St. Augustine,
Fla. <A large collection of pre-Spanish Peruvian artifacts consisting
of carved wood, metal, textiles, stone, and pottery, collected about 1910
in Peru by Alexander J. Norris, was presented as a gift by his
daughter, Mrs. Joseph C. Green, and her husband. A large collec-
tion of archeological material excavated from prehistoric sites on
Hokkaido Island, Japan, was generously donated by Lt. Col. Howard
MacCord, who has added many unusual objects to the collections.

A series of pathological human bones from Calhoun and Jersey
Counties, Ill., was donated to the division of physical anthropology by
Dr. P. F. Titterington. Many of the examples of pathology are un-
usual and extremely interesting from the standpoint of the history of
disease. All the material relates to a late prehistoric period. A collec-
tion of 85 skulls received from the Wistar Institute of Philadelphia

18 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

includes material no longer obtainable and fills some gaps in the na-
tional collections. Outstanding in this series is a group of early
Eskimo skeletons collected by the W. B. Van Valin-John Wanamaker
Expedition, University of Pennsylvania Museum, 1917-19. These
Eskimo skeletons were found at Point Barrow, Alaska, and represent
the bearers of the well-known “Old Bering Sea Ivory Culture.”

Zoology.—One of the most valuable and largest single accessions,
comprising 600 specimens collected by Robert E. Elbel in Siam, was
received in the division of mammals. Included was an especially good
series of squirrels and carnivores from localities not previously repre-
sented in the collections. Several noteworthy African mammal col-
lections included 250 specimens from Libya collected by Dr. H. W.
Setzer; 61 specimens from the Belgian Congo obtained by Dr. Waldo
L. Schmitt in the course of the Smithsonian-Bredin Expedition; and
smaller collections made in the Gold Coast by Donald Lamm and in
Kenya by John P. Fowler. From Ponapé in the Caroline Islands, a
team headed by Dr. J. T. Marshall, Jr., investigating the ecology of
the local rat populations under the auspices of the Pacific Science
Board, sent in a collection of 103 mammals. Another welcome addition
consists of a skeleton of a large sperm whale and the types of three
baleen whales presented by the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila-
delphia. Worthy of notice also are the approximately 300 small mam-
mals collected by Dr. C. O. Handley, Jr., and John L. Paradiso at
selected sites in the Middle Atlantic States. Among the individual
accessions of outstanding interest is a Ross seal brought back by the
U. S. Navy’s Antarctic expedition. Other interesting additions in-
clude a rare big-eared bat (/dionycteris phyllotis) from Arizona, a
rock wallaby from the introduced colony on the island of Oahu in the
Hawaiian group, the type of a new shrew from North Carolina ob-
tained by Dr. Albert Schwartz, and the type of a new bog lemming
from Kentucky sent in by Dr. R. W. Barbour.

The more important of the year’s ornithological accessions consist of
145 bird skins from the Gold Coast and 187 bird skins from Burma,
both lots collected by Donald W. Lamm. Two deposits were received
by the Institution: 890 skins, 12 skeletons, 2 alcoholic specimens, 5 sets
of eggs, and a nest from Panama collected by Dr. A. Wetmore; 261
skins and 32 skeletons of birds collected in Northern Rhodesia by E.
L. Haydock. A transfer from the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service
increased the Museum’s North American collection by 1,400 bird skins.

Through Dr. Hobart M. Smith, the division of reptiles and amphib-
ians received from the University of Llinois the gift of 25 paratypes of
of Mexican reptiles and amphibians. Other noteworthy gifts include
104 reptiles and amphibians from Germany and Cuba donated by Jerry

SECRETARY'S REPORT 19

D. Hardy, and 478 reptiles and amphibians from Virginia collected
by William L. Witt.

In recent years the division of fishes has received a number of very
valuable private collections. This year the largest accession, 2,550
specimens, the remainder of the collection of the late Dr. William C.
Kendall, was transferred from the University of Maine. Through Dr.
J. M. Carpenter, of the University of Kentucky, the division also re-
ceived 914 South American fishes, forming the collection of the late
Dr. William Ray Allen. Other types of fishes were received from the
California Academy of Sciences; Dr. William A. Gosline, of the Uni-
versity of Hawaii; the Chicago Natural History Museum; the Univer-
sity of Hawaii; and Herbert R. Axelrod, editor of the “Tropical Fish
Hobbyist.” Among 53 Pacific fishes transferred to the Museum by
the Atomic Energy Commission was a giant sea bass (Promicrops
lanceolatus) , the first record for the Marshall Islands. A gift from the
University of California yielded 634 fishes from the eastern Pacific.
From the Smithsonian-Bredin Expedition to the Belgian Congo, 550
fishes collected by Dr. Waldo L. Schmitt were added to the collections.
Worthy of mention also is the fine series of 1,246 Alabama fresh-water
fishes received in exchange from Dr. J. S. Dendy, of the Alabama Poly-
technic Institute.

By transfer from branches of the U. S. Department of Agriculture
the division of insects received three valuable collections: The largest
single accession in the past decade or more, consisting of over 230,000
termites transferred from the Forest Service upon the recommendation
of Dr. T. E. Snyder, one of the world’s leading authorities on these
destructive insects; over 13,000 miscellaneous specimens from the
Cereal and Forage Insects Laboratory, Lafayette, Ind.; and nearly
70,000 specimens from the Entomology Research Branch. Among the
year’s notable gifts were the 4,400 specimens consisting of 4,127 exam-
ples (including immature stages) of the family Psychidae (Lepidop-
tera) and 273 hymenopterous parasites reared from them, donated by
Dr. Frank Morton Jones; the personal collection of Dr. F. W. Poos,
comprising 3,433 miscellaneous North American insects; an important
lot of 1,553 midges (Culicoides) from Hawaii, given the Museum
by Dr. W. W. Wirth; 3,577 reared flies of the family Drosophilidae
from the Department of Zoology, University of Texas; and the second
most important collection to come from Thailand, 3,331 insects col-
lected by Robert E. Elbel with the aid of a grant from the Casey Fund.

Outstanding among the collections received in the division of
marine invertebrates were 1,709 fresh-water crustaceans and other
invertebrates obtained by the Smithsonian-Bredin Expedition to the
Belgian Congo and 267 Australian decapod crustaceans purchased
through the Richard Rathbun Fund from S. Kellner of Sydney.

20 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Other valuable gifts included the personal collection of Associate
Curator Charles E. Cutress, consisting of 1,056 coelenterates and other
invertebrates from the Hawaiian and Marshall Islands, New Zealand,
Oregon, and Florida; 2,326 miscellaneous marine invertebrates from
the University of California, through Dr. Theodore H. Bullock; 75
porcellanid crabs from the Institut Frangais d’Afrique Noire, Dakar,
through Dr. Théodore Monod ; 300 isopods of the genus Limnoria from
Dr. Robert J. Menzies, Lamont Geological Observatory, Palisades,
N. Y., and 96 specimens of the nearly extinct shrimp Barbouria
cubensis (von Martens) from Dr. Miguel L. Jaume, Museo y Biblioteca
de Zoologia de la Habana, Cuba. As an exchange, 37 copepods from
the Indian Ocean were received from the Zoological Survey of India,
Calcutta. ‘Two comprehensive collections received as transfers—one
from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, comprising 1,269 crustaceans
and other invertebrates from survey vessel collections in the Gulf of
Mexico and off the southeastern United States, the other from the
U. S. Navy Hydrographic Office—brought to the national collections
plankton samples and other invertebrates amounting to more than
10,000 specimens from the Antarctic.

The division of mollusks was fortunate in receiving considerable
material from regions poorly represented in its collections. An ex-
change from the Bernice P. Bishop Museum yielded 531 specimens
from the Bonin Islands; 600 marine mollusks from Kuwait at the
head of the Persian Gulf were sent in by Harrison M. Symmes;
and 447 land and marine mollusks from Libya were collected
for the Museum by Dr. Henry W. Setzer. Fine series of North
American shells were received: 4,150 specimens from Arkansas in-
cluding some paratypes from Henry E. Wheeler; 262 miscellaneous
mollusks, including 4 holotypes of the new species of the genus
Conus, donated by Dr. Jeanne S. Schwengel. For the helmintholog-
ical collections Dr. Edwin J. Robinson, Jr., contributed the types of
two new species of trematodes, and Prof. Helen I. Ward sent in the
holotype of a new acanthocephalan. A specimen of the rare deep-
water coral Pocillopora modumanensis Vaughan was donated to the
coral section by the Bernice P. Bishop Museum.

Botany.—Notable gifts to the National Herbarium were 1,298 speci-
mens of Brazilian plants, many from remote areas, contributed by
the Instituto Agronomico do Norte, Belém, Brazil; and 823 grasses
given by the Welsh Plant Breeding Station, University College of
Wales, as voucher material of cytogenetic studies of Zoliwm and
Festuca. A fine collection consisting of 420 slides and 56 photomicro-
graphs of fossil diatoms from the Summulong Shale of the Philippine
Islands was presented by Col. William D. Fleming. This accession
was assembled by the late James Smith, of Pasadena, Calif., and will

SECRETARY’S REPORT 2]

be kept intact as a unit to be known as the James Smith Memorial
Collection. C. V. Morton obtained 1,066 specimens of plants on his
collecting trip to the Sawtooth Wilderness Area, Idaho.

Significant material from the Guayana Highland area, Venezuela,
included 1,341 specimens sent by the New York Botanical Garden in
exchange or with a request for identifications; and 330 specimens
received from the Chicago Natural History Museum as a gift for
names.

A valuable collection of 1,000 Brazilian plants collected by Amaro.
Macedo was purchased by the Museum. More than 900 plants of Fiji
and New Caledonia collected by H. S. McKee were acquired in part
by purchase, in part for identification, and in part in exchange from
the Botanical Gardens, Department of Agriculture, Sydney, Aus-
tralia.

Among the numerous exchanges were 1,285 plants of New Guinea
and Australia received from the Commonwealth Scientific and In-
dustrial Research Organization, Canberra, Australia; and 1,769 speci-
mens from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, includ-
ing a number of historic importance from the United States and Latin
American countries.

Two transfers were received from the Department of the Interior:
578 plants of Alaska collected by Victor H. Cahalane from the Na-
tional Park Service; and 1,197 plants of Micronesia collected by F. R.
Fosberg from the Geological Survey.

Geology.—Specimens of great scientific and historical value, made
by the General Electric Co. and described by them as the first syn-
thetic diamonds, make up one of the most unusual and interesting
items added to the mineral collection in recent years. Among other
fine and rare minerals received as gifts are: From Prof. A. Schoep
a specimen of his new species likasite, a complex copper nitrate from
the Belgian Congo; from Prof. F. Heide crystals of his new iron-
boracite (ericaite) from the South Harz District, Germany; and
several large masses of jadeite from a newly discovered locality in
Guatemala, collected for the Museum by James Dupont.

Among the 564 specimens added to the Roebling collection were
some of outstanding exhibition quality, including an 18-inch pink
tourmaline crystal from Mozambique, a flawless peridot crystal from
Burma weighing 455 carats, and a magnificent group of unusually
large autunite crystals from the Daybreak mine near Spokane, Wash.
From the led-zinc mines of Trepca, Yugoslavia, came a series of
select crystallized specimens of pyrrhotite, sphalerite, and arsenopy-
rite. A magnificent specimen of the rare paradamite from the
Ouelja mine, near Mapimi, Mexico, recently described as a new species
by Dr. George Switzer, was obtained as an exchange.

22 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Among the important specimens credited to the Canfield collection
is a large specimen of brilliant green crystals of the copper silicate
dioptase from French Equatorial Africa, and a large opal mass with
brilliant fire from Virgin Valley, Nev.

Several unusual gems from Burma acquired by purchase from the
Chamberlain fund for the Isaac Lea collection include a violet-colored
spinal (30 carats), yellow danburite (18 carats), and yellow diopside
(5 carats).

Eleven meteorites new to the collection, purchased through the
Roebling fund, are: Cashion, Okla., Achilles, Kans., Bununu, Nigeria,
Giroux, Can., Clover Springs, Ariz., Lombard, Mont., Briggsdale,
Colo., Livingston, Mont., Ovid, Colo., Taiban, N. Mex., and Rifle, Colo.

Important gifts received in the division of invertebrate paleon-
tology and paleobotany include types and figured specimens of Upper
Cambrian brachiopods received from Dr. W. C. Bell, University of
Texas; 4,500 specimens of Tertiary mollusks from Los Angeles
County, Calif., presented by Mrs. Efhe Clark; and 2,000 specimens of
Lower Devonian fossils from Orange County, N. Y., given by Robert
Finks of Brooklyn College. Important gifts of Foraminifera are:
94 type specimens from Venezuela donated by W. H. Blow; 28 type
slides of Paleocene species from New Jersey given by Dr. J. Hofker;
and 315 type slides from the Jurassic, Cretaceous, Paleocene, and
Eocene of Egype presented by Dr. Rushdi Said.

The invertebrate fossil collections were further enhanced through
field trips made possible from Walcott funds. Dr. A. R. Loeblich,
Jr., and Dr. N. F. Sohl of the U. S. Geological Survey collected 32
microsamples from the early Tertiary of New Jersey. Dr. G. A.
Cooper and R. J. Main brought back 12 foraminiferal samples and
2,000 specimens of Cretaceous mollusks from Texas. Purchases made
with Walcott funds added to the collections 896 Tertiary Foraminif-
era and Ostracoda from Czechoslovakia through Dr. V. Pokorny,
and 2,000 type Foraminifera from the Upper Cretaceous of Spain
from Dr. J. R. Bataller.

More than 200 specimens of fossil fishes and reptiles from the Upper
Cretaceous chalk of Kansas were collected for the division of verte-
brate paleontology by Dr. D. H. Dunkle and G. D. Guadagni. Other
notable accessions include a skeleton of the largest of the Permian
pelycosaurs, Cotylorhynchus, received from the University of Okla-
homa; 26 specimens of Mesozoic and Tertiary fishes of Europe and the
Near East from the Carnegie Museum; and specimens of the Devonian
arthrodire Dinichthys, and the shark Cladoselache, from the Cleveland
Museum of Natural History. Particularly valuable to the study col-
lections were: The subholostean fish Ptycholepus and the holostean

SECRETARY'S REPORT 23

Semionotus, from the Upper Triassic in nearby Virginia, presented by
Shelton Applegate of the University of Virginia; the lower jaws and
skeletal portions of the rare Miocene porpoise Phocageneus, found by
Rowland A. Fowler at Fairhaven Cliffs in Maryland; and a skull of
the porpoise ?habdosteus, collected also from Fairhaven Cliffs by Dr.
Remington Kellogg, F. L. Pearce, and G. D. Guadagni. The first rep-
resentation of an interesting fish, a suite of Leptolepis nevadensis, col-
lected by Dr. Thomas B. Nolan from the Lower Cretaceous of Nevada,
was transferred from the U. S. Geological Survey. The exceedingly
rare Middle Eocene bowfin Paramiatus gurleyi, from the famous fossil]
fish quarries in the Green River formation near Fossil, Wyo., was pur-
chased by Walcott funds.

Engineering and Industries—A large collection of hydraulic
machines from the pioneer turbine inventors Uriah Boyden, James B.
Francis, and A. M. Sevain are welcome additions in the section of
heavy machinery. These were presented by the Proprietors of Locks
and Canals on Merrimac River, Lowell, Mass. Other important
power machines received are an Otto and Langen gas engine, gift of
the firm of Kléckner-Humboldt-Deutz, Germany; the first De Laval
steam turbine exhibited in the United States, lent by the De Laval
Steam Turbine Co.; the first steam engine built by M. W. Baldwin
(1829) and a Corliss steam engine, gifts of the Franklin Institute;
and a model of the world’s first hydroelectric central station at Apple-
ton, Wis., lent by the Wisconsin-Michigan Power Co. Further notable
additions are: The steam velocipede built by Sylvester H. Roper about
1869 and the steam tricycle built by George A. Long about 1880, lent by
John H. Bacon; the astronomic transit constructed by Repsold about
1860, from the U. S. Naval Observatory. From the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory examples were received of some of the
important instruments developed by that bureau, such as Abbot’s
pyrheliometer and the vacuum bolometer.

Among the outstanding examples of the graphic arts are a litho-
graph, “Three Figures,” by Georges Rouault, and a stencil print, “Com-
potier,” by Pablo Picasso, presented by Mrs. Robert S. Schwab.
Thirteen original pictorial photographs by Edward Weston were
purchased through the Eickemeyer Fund.

Received in the division of medicine and public health are examples
of recent advances in the field of medicine consisting of vials of
poliomyelitis vaccine produced for the 1954 field trials by Wyeth
Laboratories, Eli Lilly & Co., and Pitman-Moore Co., and hearing-
aid apparatus made by the Sonotone Corp., Otarion, Inc., and Telex,
Inc.

In the fields of woods and textiles, notable specimens received are a
double length of an early nineteenth century damask tablecloth, made

412575—57——_8

24 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

on a draw loom, gift of Mrs. Katherine Estey Cross, deceased, through
her daughter, Mrs. John A. Bartlett, and a group of woods from Flor-
ida, Texas, and Mexico, received from Orville A. Oaks.

History.—Since the Museum has in its exhibition and study groups
the only collection of White House china of any size, a concentrated
effort has been made to expand this collection. Specimens of the state
service designed for use in the newly decorated White House dining-
room at the end of the Truman administration and continued in use
as the state china during the Eisenhower administration were received
as gifts from Lenox, Inc. Received as a gift from the Polk Memorial
Association, Nashville, Tenn., is a dessert plate from the state china
used in the White House during the Polk administration. The largest
single donor of White House china was Col. Theodore Barnes, who
presented a plate and a dessert cup from the official White House china
of the Lincoln administration and two dessert plates from the state
service of the Hayes administration.

Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower presented miscellaneous costume mate-
rials, including the pin she wore as an ornament on her wedding dress
which is exhibited in the Museum. A magnificent garnet-red velvet
dress worn by Rose Elizabeth Cleveland, sister of President Grover
Cleveland and First Lady of the White House from his inauguration
in 1885 until his marriage in 1886, was presented by Miss Constance H.
Wood, niece of Miss Cleveland.

The division of military history received as a bequest of Albert
G. McChesney a fine officer’s sword of the period of the War of 1812
with a finely engraved scabbard and blued and gilded steel blade.

The most important additions to the philatelic collections are
original sketches for stamp designs by the late President Franklin D.
Roosevelt and autographed or initialed by him. These items were
among 30,817 specimens lent by former Postmaster General James A.
Farley. The Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of the Interior,
transferred a complete set of 22 die proofs of the Migratory Bird
Hunting (Duck) stamps believed to be the only complete set of die
proofs outside the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. A worldwide
collection of 71,726 varieties was received from Mrs. Theodore S.
Palmer, in accordance with the will of her late husband, Dr.
Theodore S. Palmer.

Outstanding accessions received in the division of numismatics are:
2 ten-thaler pieces of Brunswick-Luneburg struck in 1660; 2 gold
coins of Albania and Egypt, presented by Paul A. Straub; and a
series of 232 coins lent by the American Numismatic Association as an
addition to their collection of twentieth-century foreign coins.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 25

EXPLORATION AND FIELDWORK

To acquaint the exhibits staff engaged in preparing the displays
which will be shown in the Cultural History Hall (No. 26) with the
relationship of styles of furniture to types of architecture and the use
of materials in the craftsmanship of the Colonial period, C. Malcolm
Watkins, associate curator of ethnology, John E. Anglim, chief
exhibits specialist, and Rolland O. Hower, exhibits specialist, in Sep-
tember 1955 visited a number of museums and historic houses in
Massachusetts. Mr. Watkins devoted the last three days in December
1955 and the first four days in January 1956 to a search for docu-
mentary data on the history of the seventeenth-century “Bookhouse”
installed in the Cultural History Hall (No. 26). He also selected and
packed the Wires collection of tiles at Wellesley Hills for transporta-
tion to the U. S. National Museum. Before returning to Washington,
Mr. Watkins examined the furniture, including Pennsylvania Dutch
material, and paintings which Mrs. Arthur M. Greenwood is prepared
to present for installation in the Cultural History Hall.

Dr. Clifford Evans, associate curator of archeology, studied the
archeological collections of the University of Florida at Gainesville
and collaborated with Dr. John M. Goggin on the analysis of speci-
mens from Trinidad which have an important bearing on Dr. Evans’s
British Guiana excavations.

During November 1955 Dr. T. Dale Stewart, curator of physical
anthropology, studied portions of the Todd Skeletal Collection at
Western Reserve University, Cleveland.

Dr. Marshall T. Newman, associate curator of physical anthro-
pology, conferred at Boston during November 1955 with members of
the staffs of the Blood Grouping Laboratory of the Children’s Hos-
pital, the Climatic Research Laboratory, and the Nutritional Bio-
chemical Laboratories of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
relative to suitable procedures to be followed in conducting physical
and other studies on the Indians at Hacienda Vicos and elsewhere in
the Callejon de Huaylas, Peru. On March 16, 1956, Dr. Newman
departed for Lima, Peru, to inaugurate a research project financed by
a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Following several preliminary survey visits in March 1956, Frank
M. Setzler, head curator of anthropology, began excavations on April
2 at the site of Marlborough, Va., which was established as a port and
county seat for Stafford County by acts of the Virginia As-
sembly dated 1691 and 1705 and which was abandoned sometime in the
eighteenth century. Marlborough was located at Marlboro Point on
the southern tip of Potomac Neck, a peninsula formed by Accokeek
Creek on the west, Potomac Creek on the south, Potomac River on the
east, and Aquia Creek on the north; the site is about 13 miles east of

26 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Fredericksburg. The investigation is being carried on in collabora-
tion with Prof. Oscar H. Darter, department of history, Mary Wash-
ington College, and C. Malcolm Watkins, associate curator of
ethnology, U. S. National Museum, under a grant from the American
Philosophical Society. 'The excavations have revealed the foundation
of a house of large size which seems definitely to have been the one
occupied by John Mercer during the first half of the eighteenth cen-
tury. This determination is based mainly on documentary records
together with cultural objects found, such as wine bottles bearing
seals with Mercer’s initials and the date 1737. A number of smaller
house sites, probably dependencies of the main house, have been
found, and in moving the earth a large amount of cultural material
of the period was discovered. The excavations also revealed a series
of walls, extending for hundreds of feet, which appear to represent
lot lines and may indicate the layout of the original town shown on
two existing surveys dated 1691 and 1781.

At the University of Michigan during the first week of February
1956, Dr. Egbert H. Walker, associate curator of phanerogams, con-
ferred with Dr. W. H. Wagner relative to certain species of ferns
found on Okinawa and the southern Ryukyu Islands, which will be
included in his flora of that region. Subsequently he worked with
Dr. F. G. Meyer and Dr. J. Ohwi at the Missouri Botanical Garden,
St. Louis, in the editing of a manuscript translation of a Flora of
Japan.

Edward C. Kendall, associate curator of crafts and industries,
systematically studied the historical agricultural implements dis-
played in the Centennial of Farm Mechanization at Michigan State
University, East Lansing, in August 1955. Consultations were held
with representatives of agricultural implement manufacturers for the
purpose of procuring historically important implements to illustrate
chronological stages in the mechanization of farming.

Dr. Robert P. Multhauf, acting head curator of engineering and
industries, consulted with Orville R. Hagans, horologist of “Clock
Manor,” Denver, regarding the repair of clocks in the national collec-
tions. At San Francisco during August 1955 he studied the exhibits
in the Maritime Museum and conferred with the director, Karl
Kortum, regarding the contemplated extensive display of land trans-
portation. Continuing his search for an old Pelton turbine for the
Power Hall, Dr. Multhauf conferred with Richard Goyne, owner of
the Miners Foundry, Nevada City, Calif., where these turbines were
reportedly first manufactured. A wooden-wheel type which may
represent one of the oldest Pelton turbines still in existence was located.
During the Jast week of October 1955 Dr. Multhauf visited several
sites in New England in an effort to locate old water turbines for dis-
play in the reconstructed Power Hall. Nine old sites where water

SECRETARY'S REPORT 27

turbines were formerly operated were visited. The collection of
measuring instruments at Old Sturbridge Village was studied. Brief
visits were made also to the Patent Museum at Plymouth, N. H., the
Shelburne Museum at Shelburne, Vt., in which are displayed large
carriage and tool collections, and the small museum maintained by the
Proprietors of the Locks and Canals of Merrimack River, Lowell,
Mass.

Data and ideas that contributed materially to the planning of the
new health hall were obtained by George Griffenhagen, curator of
medicine and public health, during a European trip August 11 to
September 23, 1955. Pharmaceutical and other medical collections
were reviewed in London, particularly the medical museums in the
Wellcome Building, the British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert
Museum. The recently installed apothecary shop restoration at
Leeds and the pharmaceutical antiquities in the Castle Museum and
the Yorkshire Museum were examined. At Paris, Dr. Maurice
Bouvet, president of the World Union of Societies of Pharmaceutical
History, devoted a day to the showing of materials in his personal
collection and in the Faculty of Pharmacy. At Basel Mr. Griffen-
hagen was shown the Castiglione collection of pharmaceutical majolica
belonging to Hoffmann La Roche, and subsequently he viewed the
pharmaceutical antiquities in the Schweizer Pharmazie Historische
Museum and the Historisches Museum. At Waldenbuch, Germany,
the Dorr Pharmaceutical Museum collection was the primary point of
interest. After visiting the Deutsches Museum at Munich, Mr. Griffen-
hagen proceeded to Garmisch-Partenkirchen to examine an original
Roentgen X-ray tube as well as the private collection of pharmaceutical
antiques of Franz Winkler. Particular attention was paid to the
pharmaceutical antiques and apothecary shop restorations in the
Germanisches National Museum at Nuremberg and the Deutsches
Apotheke Museum at Bamberg. Officials of the German Health
Museum, Cologne, were consulted in regard to arrangements for the
procurement of a transparent woman for the Hall of Health. The
Rijksmuseum and the Medical-Pharmaceutical Museum in Amsterdam
and the Rijksmuseum voor de Geschiedenis der Natuurwetenschappen
in Leiden were visited. Following his return to London, Mr. Griffen-
hagen reviewed the special exhibits displayed at the meeting of the
Federation Internationale Pharmaceutique.

Precise specifications for exhibits required in the planning for the
Hall of Health were requested from Dr. Bruno Gebhard, director,
Cleveland Health Museum, by George Griffenhagen and Benjamin
Lawless, exhibits specialist, during October 1955. Old prints which
will be reproduced in medical history panels were studied in the Rare
Book Division of the Armed Forces Medical Library. Mr. Griffen-

28 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

hagen continued on to Chicago for consultations with the staff of the
American Medical Association and with Dr. Max Thorek, founder of
the Museum and Hall of Fame of the International College of Sur-
geons. Madison, Wis., was included in this trip for consultations
with Dr. George Urdang and Alex Berman of the American Institute
of the History of Pharmacy in regard to several projects related to
the planning of exhibits.

For the purpose of advancing the planning for the Hall of Health,
Messrs. Griffenhagen and Lawless, during the period February 5-10,
1956, traveled to Boston to study the health exhibits in the Science
Museum, the Ether Dome and the Museum of the Massachusetts Gen-
eral Hospital, and the Museum of the Massachusetts College of Phar-
macy. At New York visits were made to the New York Historical
Society for materials to be incorporated in the Food and Drug Admin-
istration exhibit, to the Hall of Man in the American Museum of
Natural History, to the Hispanic Society of America Museum for data
relating to Spanish majolica, to the Wood Library-Museum of Anes-
thesiology to examine anesthesia equipment and to inspect the medical-
instrument collection of Dr. Bruno Kisch. Data relating to Italian
majolica were sought at the Metropolitan Museum. The secretary of
the American College of Cardiology, Dr. Philip Reichert, gave per-
mission for the loan of examples of stethoscope and manometer for
display in the Gallery of Medical History. Data relating to health
exhibits were obtained from the Lankenau Hospital Health Museum,
Philadelphia. The giant heart exhibit at the Franklin Institute was
studied, and visits were made also to the Pennsylvania Hospital and
the Philadelphia College of Physicians to inspect the historical
collections.

At New York, during October 1955, Frank A. Taylor, Assistant
Director, and Dr. Multhauf studied the Atomic Energy Commission
exhibit which had been shown at Geneva. In addition to a series of
plexiglass models of atomic-energy powerplants and devices for the
handling and chemical analysis of radioactive materials, exhibits re-
lating to the uses of atomic energy in medicine, agriculture, and other
fundamental activities occupied about half of the floor space.

Dr. Multhauf and Mr. Kendall during November 1955 proceeded to
the Pennsylvania State University and to the Priestley Museum at
Northumberland, Pa., to locate and examine laboratory equipment used
by Joseph Priestley and to arrange for the return to the National
Museum of Priestley materials that had been lent to that museum.

Planning of the projected exhibits for the Museum of History and
Technology was advanced by the comparative studies made by Dr.
Multhauf, during the three weeks’ tour of European museums, March
18 to May 6, 1956. He was advised that the Museo Nationale della

SECRETARY'S REPORT 29

Scienza e della Tecnica, Milan, Deutsches Museum, Munich, Technische
Museum, Vienna, and Science Museum, London, are undertaking en-
largement of existing facilities and that similar plans had been made
for the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris. This ac-
tivity conveys some indication of the present lively interest in the
history of technology in Europe. The museums in Munich and Milan
are housed in buildings heavily damaged by war, but since repaired.
The exhibits techniques at Munich were very effective and represent
a marked improvement over the prewar museum. Many novel tech-
niques were noted which can be adopted advantageously. The follow-
ing museums feature physical science and the history of science: Palais
de la Découverte, Paris; Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence;
Liebig Museum, Giessen; Scientific Collections, Landesmuseum,
Kassel; Museum of History of Science, Leiden; Teyler’s Museum,
Haarlem; Whipple Museum, Cambridge; History of Science Museum,
Oxford; and Berzelius Museum, Stockholm. The Palais de la
Découverte is a unique example of a museum that aims to instruct
in the principles of science from the simplest to its most abstruse
aspects through pushbutton and demonstration exhibits. The above-
listed museums possess unusual materials representing the science of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Of the three marine muse-
ums visited, the Scheepvaarts Museum, Amsterdam, exihibits many
unique navigational instruments, books, and maps. The Musée de
Marine, Paris, has been renovated recently, but seems to have sacrificed
maritime history to the exigencies of exhibits technique. In the
Greenwich Naval Museum, England, the history of the British Navy
is effectively and logically shown in spacious rooms.

Print storage methods and exhibition furniture were inspected by
Jacob Kainen, curator of graphic arts, in California institutions
during March 1956. Onthesame trip his research on the life and work
of John Baptist Jackson was advanced by examination of chiaroscuro
color prints in the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts in San
Francisco. The collection of eighteenth-century color prints in the
M. H. de Young Memorial Museum and late nineteenth- and twentieth-
century color prints in the San Francisco Museum of Art, as well as
reference works in the library of the Art Room of the San Francisco
Public Library, were consulted. Jackson prints and other pertinent
material were inspected in the Los Angeles County Museum, as well
as the collections of fine and decorative arts. Early books printed in
color were examined in the Huntington Library and Art Gallery in
San Marino.

Dr. George S. Switzer, associate curator of mineralogy and petrol-
ogy, inspected the John B. Jago mineral collection in San Francisco,
Calif., during July 1955 and conferred with the owner regarding his

30 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

plans for its future disposition. In November 1955 he made a selection
of minerals at Easthampton, Mass., for the Roebling collection and
also conferred with the staff of the department of mineralogy of
Harvard University.

In the interest of enhancing the usefulness of the national collection
of meteorites, E. P. Henderson, associate curator of mineralogy and
petrology, and F. E. Holden, physical science aide, were engaged from
September 6 to October 8, 1955, in inspecting the collections of the
Institute of Meteorites at the University of New Mexico, the museum
at Meteor Crater, Ariz., the Meteorite Museum at Sedona, Ariz., the
Museum at Fort Hayes, Kans., and Texas Christian University at
Fort Worth, Tex. Private collections owned by A. R. Allen, Trinidad,
Colo., H. O. Stockwell, Hutchinson, Kans., and Oscar Monnig, Fort
Worth, Tex., were also studied. Data and photographs of meteorites
for research and reference purposes not otherwise available were ob-
tained by these visits. Five meteorites were presented for the national
collections by H. O. Stockwell, two unrepresented iron meteorites by
Oscar Monnig, and one large iron meteorite by H. H. Nininger.

Prospecting in the field for suitable fish and amphibian fossils for
inclusion in the planned Hall of Lower Vertebrates was conducted by
Dr. David H. Dunkle, associate curator of vertebrate paleontology,
and G. D. Guadagni, preparator, during the summer of 1955. While
en route to Kansas, arrangements were made at the Carnegie Museum,
Pittsburgh, for the transfer on an exchange basis of specimens of
European Mesozoic holostean fishes and of late Cretaceous and Eocene
teleosts. In northwestern Ohio a worthwhile collection of disasso-
ciated fish bones was obtained at the level of contact between the
middle Devonian Praut limestone and the base of the black upper
Devonian Ohio shales formation. Through the cooperation of George
F. Sternberg, curator of the Museum at Fort Hays State College,
arrangements had been made for a camping site on the R. W. Haver-
field ranch in southwestern Gove County. From the upper Cretaceous
Niobrara chalk formation in badlands locally known as Hell’s Bar
and later in other exposures on one of the Ben Christie ranches such
typical fishes as C?molichthys, Portheus, Syllaemus, Enchodus, Pro-
tosphyraena, Gillicus, and Kansanius were excavated. One of the
most unusual recoveries were entire schools of the small acanthop-
terygian fish Kansanius, found preserved on the insides of giant shells
of the clam /noceranus.

In continuation of the search for exhibition specimens, Dr. Dunkle,
accompanied by Franklin L. Pearce, in charge of the divisional pre-
paratory staff, proceeded on October 27, 1955, to Norman, Okla.,
where advice was received from Dr. Carl Branson, of the Oklahoma
Geological Survey and School of Geology, and Dr. Stephen Borhegyi,

SECRETARY'S REPORT 31

director of the Oklahoma University Museum, regarding the location
of exposures of the Permian Hennessey formation that had previously
yielded skeletons of the large pelycosaur Cotylorhynchus. Although
five specimens of this unique reptile were located, only one incomplete
young individual merited the work involved in excavation. As a
result arrangements were made with the University Museum to obtain
a skeleton on an exchange basis. Dr. Dunkle’s party then traveled to
Richard’s Spur, Okla., where 11 bags of Permian bone-bearing matrix
were removed from solution fissures in Ordovician limestone. Arriv-
ing in Austin, Tex., on November 10, 1955, they were given an oppor-
tunity by Dr. John A. Wilson to examine the vertebrate fossil
collections at the University of Texas. Preliminary conversations
were held regarding some basis for exchange of materials. On Novem-
ber 15 and 16, 1955, a brief reconnaissance of the upper Cretaceous
beds of the Big Bend area, Texas, was made under the guidance of
David Jones, assistant superintendent of the Big Bend National Park,
with a view to evaluating the possibilities for procurement of dino-
saurs which will ultimately be needed for display. An exchange of
upper Devonian marine fossils between this Institution and the Cleve-
land Museum of Natural History was completed April 16-20, 1956,
by Dr. Dunkle. Skeletal materials representing a very large shark,
Cladoselache, and the arthrodire Dinichthys were selected and deliv-
ered to the Museum.

Inasmuch as the Museum lacked a suitable representation of upper
Devonian fishes, Dr. Dunkle conducted fieldwork in the fresh-water
sediments exposed along the shores of Escuminac Bay at Maguasha,
Province of Quebec, Canada. These sediments yield well-preserved
specimens of lungfishes, fringed-finned fishes, antiarch, and, less com-
monly, acanthodians, arthrodires, and palaeoniscoids, all of which are
important in any synoptic display in the exhibition hall. Prior to
commencing fieldwork, cooperative help had been obtained from the
National Museum of Canada, Ottawa, and the Royal Ontario Museum,
Toronto. While en route to Canada, Dr. Dunkle visited the Dartmouth
College Museum to make preliminary arrangements for an exchange
of upper Silurian ostracoderms. In Canada, consultations were held
with Dr. I. W. Jones, director, Quebec Geological Survey, and with
Abbe Laverdirere, chairman, Department of Geology, Laval Univer-
sity, Quebec City. On the return trip early Mississippian palaeonis-
coid fishes were sought at Albert Mines, as well as at the well-known
Devonian occurrences at Cambellton, both localities in New Bruns-
wick. This trip extended from May 21 to June 30, 1956.

- The Walcott bequest financed the trip to a locality near Burnet,
Tex., where Dr. David Nicol, associate curator of invertebrate paleon-
tology, and Robert J. Main, Jr., aide in that division, obtained fossil

32 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

mollusks from exposures of the Glenrose formation. At Lipan, Tex.,
samples of the Pennsylvanian Dickerson shale were collected. This
trip extended from July 28 to August 13, 1955.

Income from the same bequest provided funds for the paleontolog-
ical fieldwork of Dr. G. A. Cooper, curator of invertebrate paleontol-
ogy and paleobotany. At Fort Worth, Tex., he took charge of the
Smithsonian truck and accompanied by Mr. Main proceeded to Ard-
more, Okla., where they spent three days collecting Pennsylvanian
invertebrate fossils. From Ardmore they traveled to Muskogee and
Pryor for material from beds of Mississippian age. At Neosho, Mo.,
they collected Mississippian productid brachiopods, Pennsylvanian
fossils at Bartlesville, Okla., and subsequently Permian fossils in
Cowley County, Kans. Other materials were collected in Kansas
and Nebraska, and a large collection of Mississippian fossils was
made near Harrison, Ark. This field party returned to Washington
September 17, 1955. A profitable discussion of problems involved in
his Permian studies on the Glass Mountain fauna was held with Dr.
Carl Dunbar, Peabody Museum, Yale University, by Dr. Cooper in
February 1956. An arrangement was made to secure by exchange
some examples of Greenland Permian invertebrates.

Dr. A. R. Loeblich, Jr., associate curator of invertebrate paleontol-
ogy, devoted four days, April 10-18, 1956, to the collection of Paleocene
and Cretaceous Foraminifera in New Jersey in strata that are of
disputed age. The material obtained was not previously represented
in the national collections.

Mrs. Margaret Brown Klapthor, associate curator of civil history,
was invited to lecture at the historic-housekeeping course sponsored by
the National Trust and the New York State Historical Association at
Cooperstown, N. Y., the last week in September 1955. During Octo-
ber 1955, while attending the meeting of the National Trust at Nash-
ville, Tenn., Mrs. Klapthor acquired for the national collections a
dessert plate of the Polk White House china, Mrs. Polk’s lace fan, and
a pair of spectacles owned by President Polk.

During late August and early September 1955, Mendel L. Peterson,
acting head curator of history, inspected all existing specimens of
early artillery now preserved at Albany, N. Y., the Saratoga battle-
field, Fort William Henry, The Citadel on the ramparts, Fort Ticon-
deroga, and the Plains of Abraham battlefield in Quebec, Canada,
for the purpose of advancing the completion of his report on the
marking and decoration of these military objects. Transportation
furnished by Life Magazine enabled Mr. Peterson to proceed to Ber-
muda to investigate a collection of objects of probable early seven--
teenth-century origin recovered from a sunken ship presumably of
French registry which had been wrecked there. The ordinary imple-

SECRETARY’S REPORT 33

ments of shipboard use were French, while the gold bar, cakes of gold,
gold buttons, and silver coins were Spanish.

From June 21 to November 24, 1955, Frederick M. Bayer, associate
curator of marine invertebrates, participated in a biological survey
of the coral reef and other marine habitats found in the Palau Islands
Archipelago, sponsored jointly by the Office of Naval Research, the
Pacific Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences, the George
Vanderbilt Foundation of Stanford University, and the Trust Ter-
ritory of the Pacific Islands, and directed by Dr. R. R. Harry of
Stanford University. An ecological resurvey was made of Iwayama
Bay, Koror Island, to supplement the survey made 20 years previously
by members of the Japanese Palao Tropical Biological Station. Cir-
cumscribed problems of more specific interest, such as epizootic asso-
ciates of gorgonian corals, parasitic mollusks, crustaceans associated
with coelenterates, sea anemones and their biological associates, and
the relationship of hole-dwelling gobies with burrowing shrimps,
were selected for thorough investigation. The team cooperated in
obtaining information on the injurious, poisonous, and noxious ani-
mals of the reef complex. In September Dr. Harry and Mr. Bayer
visited Japan to consult with former members in regard to the re-
search of the Palau station and to trace the location of biological
collections obtained there before War II. They returned to Koror on
October 7 and terminated fieldwork there on November 15.

Dr. Harald A. Rehder, curator of mollusks, was given a detail
September 19-29, 1955, to pack up and arrange for transportation of
a collection of mollusks at the New York State Museum that had been
transferred to the Museum on an exchange basis.

Dr. David H. Johnson, acting curator of mammals, and John L.
Paradiso, aide, were engaged from September 12 to 15, 1955, in mov-
ing and loading whale skeletons at the Academy of Natural Sciences
of Philadelphia for transfer to the Museum.

Under an Office of Naval Research contract, Dr. Henry W. Setzer,
associate curator of mammals, left Washington on September 16, 1955,
for Tripoli, Libya, to conduct the field study requested by Naval
Medical Research Unit No. 3. Fieldwork was carried on from 18
different camps ranging from Tripoli to Derma and to Sebha Oasis
in the interior. Ectoparasites and mammals were collected.

As part of a long-term project on the zoogeography of the southern
Appalachian Highlands, Dr. Charles O. Handley, Jr., associate cura-
tor of mammals, devoted the period from September 12 to 26, 1955,
to collecting mammals near Mountain Lake, Giles County, Va. Taxo-
nomic problems involving southern African and neotropical mam-
mals necessitated an examination of pertinent comparative specimens
by Dr. Handley at the Chicago Natural History Museum, January

34 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

16-20, 1956. During April 1956 Dr. Handley, with Mr. Paradiso as
assistant, made a collection of small mammals in the generally
neglected salt-marsh areas of the Middle Atlantic States. Particular
effort was made to secure material at Back Bay in southeastern Vir-
ginia, Assateague Island off Delmarva Peninsula, and Oceanville in
southern New Jersey.

A grant from the American Philosophical Society enabled Dr. J. F.
Gates Clarke, curator of insects, to obtain larvae and rear moths of
the family Oecophoridae and to determine the host specificity of these
moths and their relationship to plants of the family Umbelliferae.
Specimens were collected and host observations were made at 71 sta-
tions mainly in Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, as
well as at scattered localities in Montana, North Dakota, Wisconsin,
Minnesota, and Michigan.

Dr. Ernest A. Lachner, associate curator of fishes, was awarded a
fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for the pur-
pose of advancing his research studies on tropical marine and North
American fresh-water fishes. Examination of type specimens and
other pertinent material will be made at various European museums.
Dr. Lachner left Washington for London on March 8, 1956.

Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Bredin, of Greenville, Del., presented funds
to the Smithsonian Institution to finance a collecting expedition.
‘These funds were used to finance a Caribbean field study. The Smith-
sonian party comprised Dr. Waldo L. Schmitt, leader, Dr. A. C. Smith,
Dr. J. F. Gates Clarke, and Dr. Fenner A. Chace, Jr. The expedition
left Trinidad on March 13, 1956, for visits to Grenada, several of the
Grenadines, and Martinique. Other stops included anchorages at
Dominica, Guadeloupe, Barbuda, Redonda, Nevis, St. Christopher,
Virgin Gorda, and Tortola, and terminated at St. Croix. A number
of interesting observations of shore fauna, including shrimp com-
mensal with anemones, and windrows of red-crab megalops on the
beach were made. Several thousand crustaceans were collected by
Drs. Schmitt and Chace, as well as crinoids, starfish, sea-urchins, sea-
hares, and cephalopods. On arrival at Trinidad Dr. Smith, curator
of phanerogams, proceeded directly to the field station of the New
York Zoological Society at Simla, Arima Valley, where he spent five
days collecting plants on the crest and slopes of the northern range
and preparing the material. Botanical collections were made on 11
islands, and more than 4,000 specimens were prepared for herbarium
study. Dr. Clarke, curator of insects, traveled from Washington to
Dominica by airplane and collected insects there in the interval be-
tween March 8 and 28 and then joined the party on the schooner at
Roseau. Some 20,000 insects were obtained. V. E. B. Nicholson, cap-
tain of the Freelance, the schooner used by the expedition, was ex-

SECRETARY’S REPORT 35

tremely helpful to members of this party and materially assisted in
the collection of marine animals. Drs. Clarke and Smith departed
for Washington from St. Croix, Virgin Islands, by air on April 19
and 20, respectively. Drs. Schmitt and Chace sailed from St. Croix
on the Alcoa Runner on April 23.

Between September 2 and 26, 1955, W. L. Brown, chief zoological
exhibits preparator, visited Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks
to procure photographs and other background data for authentic
habitat settings for the grizzly-bear and elk groups. Alpine fir, limber
pine, various grasses, flowers, soils, and rocks were secured for the
bear group. At Gardiner, Mont., sage bushes and grasses were se-
lected and shipped for inclusion in the elk unit.

On December 2, Dr. Alexander Wetmore, research associate and
former Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, reached Panama
for a further season of fieldwork concerned with the distribution of
the birdlife of the Isthmus. Work during the first month was devoted
to studies on the Rio Chagres, from a base at the Juan Mina field sta-
tion of the Gorgas Memorial Laboratory for Tropical Medicine, and
other investigations in and near the Canal Zone, including a few days
on Taboga and nearby islands. At the beginning of January, through
the interest of Dr. Alejandro Méndez P., director of the Museo Na-
cional of Panama, and of His Excellency Alejandro Remén C., Min-
ister of Government and Justice, Col. Bolivar Vallarino, Comandante
Jefe of the Guardia Nacional, kindly gave the necessary permission
and instructions for a month’s stay on Coiba Island. This, the largest
island on the Pacific coast of Central America, has been the location
of the penal colony of the Republic of Panamé since 1919. With the
friendly cooperation of Col. J. W. Oberdorf, commanding officer,
Albrook Air Base, transportation to Coiba and return on completion
of the work were arranged in an Air Force crashboat. On arrival
at the Colonia Penal on January 6, Dr. Wetmore and his two assist-
ants were assigned quarters by Capt. J. A. Souza, in command, and
were given all needed assistance in their work, which continued until
February 6. The island is covered with high gallery forest, with
mangrove swamps at the mouths of the numerous rivers. Clearings
for pasture and cultivation have been cut back of the convict work
camps, which are located along the Bahia de Damas and on the eastern
side north to Punta Aguja. The interior of the island, which rises to
an elevation of 1,400 feet, remains in its primitive condition, without
trails except in limited areas. Birds are common and of good variety,
though many of the familiar forest species of the mainland do not
occur in spite of conditions favorable to them. The heavy rainfall is
reflected in darker coloration in various of the smaller kinds, several
of which are new to science, some being remarkably distinct from

36 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

their mainland representatives. Following return to the mainland,
work continued until the end of February, with San Félix in eastern
Chiriqui as a base. Collections made here over a considerable area
between the seacoast and the inland mountains offer many valuable
data in plotting distribution. Most of the original forest has been
cut to provide pastureland, so the information secured is of special
importance since soon all forest areas will be gone. After some furth-
er observations at Barro Colorado Island and on the savannas near
Pacora, work for the season terminated on March 10.

EXHIBITION

Modernization of selected exhibition halls was continued in 1956
by a Congressional allotment of $411,500. Construction by outside
contractors began in the Power Hall in July 1955. Contracts were
awarded for the second American Indian Hall in April 1956 and the
Health Hall in May 1956; construction was commenced in these halls
in May and June 1956, respectively. During March 1956, the new
Bird Hall and the east side of the North American Mammal Hall
were completed and opened for public inspection.

The new Bird Hall, after months of planning by Curator Herbert
Friedmann, was officially opened to the public on March 22, 1956, at
an evening reception sponsored jointly by the Smithsonian Institution
and the Audubon Society of the District of Columbia. John E. Graf,
Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, reviewed the pro-
gram for modernization of exhibits, and Irston R. Barnes, president
of the District of Columbia Audubon Society, commented on the inter-
est shown by ornithologists in the methods employed for presentation
of topical exhibits. Guy Emerson, honorary president of the National
Association of Audubon Societies, complimented the Institution and
Dr. Friedmann on the successful completion of this hall and cut the
ribbon, thereby officially opening the hall.

In the hall of North American Mammals, habitat groups for the
puma, wolf, pronghorn antelope, and white-tailed deer were opened to
the public. Four previously completed groups were again shown to
visitors after being shut off by construction work for more than a year.

During the current fiscal year, 37 new exhibit units, miniature
dioramas, and life-size lay figures are being developed in the second
Indian hall. These units will portray the manner of living of Indian
tribes that formerly occupied the forested eastern third of the United
States; the nomadic hunting tribes of the Great Plains; the salmon-
fishing and totempole-building Indians of the Northwest Pacific coast ;
and the Arctic Eskimo of Greenland and Alaska. The over-all plans
for this hall and the case layouts were prepared by Associate Curator
John C. Ewers in collaboration with Exhibits Specialist John E.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 37

Anglim and his staff. The installation of the exhibits portraying
colonial life in eastern North America is proceeding satisfactorily in
Hall 26. Six period rooms have been installed. Of these the Reuben
Bliss parlor (1754) is the oldest. Among others are a late Georgian
colonial parlor from Sussex, Va., an early nineteenth-century school-
room, and a farmhouse bedroom of about 1800.

Plans were completed in the division of mineralogy and petrology
for the layout of the Mineral Hall. Exhibits to illustrate the origin,
properties, and mode of occurrence of minerals will be prepared, in
addition to displays of the major minerals of the world. Outstanding
examples of uncut crystals of the more important gem minerals, as
well as series of cut and polished gems, will be utilized to make an
informative presentation of this phase of mineralogy.

The hall for display of fossil plants and invertebrates will provide
the visitor with some concepton of what fossils are, how they are
preserved, and their role as geological time indicators. Reconstructed
assemblages of fossil animals and plants from some of the geologic
periods will be utilized to portray the ecological associations that made
possible their mode of life.

Selection and preparation of specimens of lower vertebrates for
display in Hall 3 are being actively continued in the laboratory of
vertebrate paleontology. Associate Curator Dr. David H. Dunkle
was successful in his search for upper Cretaceous marine fishes in the
Niobrara chalk of western Kansas, and for upper Devonian fishes in
the fresh-water sediments of the Province of Quebec, Canada. Other
lower vertebrates were acquired on an exchange basis to complete the
developmental series in the systematic exhibits.

A display case containing manmade diamonds sorted in compart-
ments in accordance with size was presented on May 3, 1956, by Dr.
C. G. Suits, vice president of General Electric Co., to Dr. Leonard
Carmichael, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, for inclusion
in the gem exhibit in the Natural History Building. At the presenta-
tion ceremony Dr. Suits introduced the technical team responsible for
the development of the process that made manufacture feasible.

An exhibit illustrating the history of iron and steel production in
the United States was opened on January 11, 1956, in the Arts and
Industries Building by Secretary Carmichael and John C. Long, of
the Bethlehem Steel Co. This exhibit traces in 10 units the develop-
ment of the industry from the discovery of iron ore to the high-alloy
steels of today. Outstanding features of the exhibit are a group of
early artifacts from the excavations at Jamestown, Va.; a section of
the massive Hudson River chain swung into place near West Point,
N. Y., on April 16, 1778, to prevent the British from sailing to the
upper river; and rare examples of American iron and steel work from
the nineteenth century.

38 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Modernization of the Power Hall was delayed several months by a
shortage of steel, but it is now nearing completion. Models of types
of power machinery no longer available for acquisition have been
constructed and a number of machines hitherto unrepresented in the
national collections have been acquired.

Four of the older makes of automobiles have been refurbished
during the past fiscal year. The 1903 Cadillac, the 1903 Oldsmobile,
and the 1913 Ford were reconditioned through the courtesy of the
Cadillac, Oldsmobile, and Ford companies. The 1901 Autocar was
reconditioned by the Autocar Division of the White Motor Co. The
return of these cars to the exhibition floor markedly improved this
portion of the section of land transportation.

The gallery exhibit of the section of scientific instruments now
consists of 12 units devoted to various fields, beginning with weights
and measures and ending with astrophysics. Each case is designed
to tell the story of the mechanical development of some instrument.
The section devoted to typewriters, phonographs, and calculating
machines was greatly improved by repainting and lettering, as was
the section of manufactures by the installation of special lighting
fixtures. Loom products of the early nineteenth century weaver
Peter Stauffer, the small hand sewing machine, and the safety factor
of after-dark pedestrian garments were featured in new display units
in the section of textiles. |

Of the 35 new exhibit units illustrating photomechanical printing,
in the chapel of the Smithsonian Building, 26 were completed during
the past year. Selected examples of photogravure, rotogravure, re-
lief halftone and the halftone screen, collotype, photolithography,
and offset lithography are included in the display. The special
monthly exhibits by contemporary printmakers and photographers
were continued in addition to short-term displays of materials drawn
from the collections.

Individual exhibit units for the Hall of Health have for the most
part beeen designeed, the contents have been selected, and descriptive
text for many of the labels has been written. Construction work on
this hall has commenced. A series of 30 oil paintings depicting the
history of pharmacy lent by Parke, Davis & Co. was formally opened
for public view on September 30, 1955, at a ceremony attended by
Secretary Carmichael, George A. Bender, Robert A. Thom, the artist,
and Dr. Robert P. Fischelis, secretary of the American Pharmaceuti-
cal Association.

Eleven new exhibits were installed in the gallery of Medical His-
tory during the year. An informative display unit labeled “Vita-
mins for Health, Growth and Life,” prepared for the exhibit series
of the division of medicine and public health by Merck & Co., was

SECRETARY’S REPORT 39

accepted from Dr. W. H. McLean by Secretary Carmichael on Feb-
ruary 1, 1956. The 10 principal vitamins are shown inside revolving
transparent globes. Outstanding historical facts on vitamin develop-
ment are illustrated. Display panels entitled “Dr. Wiley’s Crusade,”
“Fifty Years of Progress in Food and Drug Protection,” and “How
Food and Drug Administration Protects You Today” were formally
presented for public view on May 4, 1956, at a ceremony attended by
Bradshaw Mintner, the Assistant Secretary of the Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare, Dr. George P. Larrick, Commis-
sioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Mrs. Harvey W. Wiley,
Mrs. Grace Drexler Nichols, executive director of the General Fed-
eration of Women’s Clubs which supported Dr. Wiley’s crusade, and
Secretary Carmichael. These three panels commemorate the fiftieth
anniversary of the enactment of the Federal Food and Drug legis-
lation.

Substantial progress was made during the year on the installation
of the uniform and insignia display on the West Hall gallery. Glass
screens were placed over the fluorescent lights to protect the mate-
rials from fading, printed labels were prepared for many of the
specimens, and various items of personal adornment were installed.

The United States section of the National Postage Stamp Collection
was completely remounted and placed in the floor frames for public
viewing during the past fiscal year. Special displays of postal mate-
rials were made available to the Fifth International Philatelic Ex-
hibition, held in the new Coliseum in New York, April 28—May 6,
1956, and at the American Stamp Dealer’s Association shows in New
York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

VISITORS

During the fiscal year 1956 there were 3,520,106 visitors to the
Museum buildings, an average daily attendance of 10,028. This is
an increase of 207,236 over the total in the previous fiscal year. In-
cluded in this total are 385,187 school children, who arrived in 10,457
separate groups. Among the visitors this year were special groups
such as the 4-H Club and the Safety Patrol. The month of April
1956 drew the largest crowd with 572,368 visitors. May 1956 was
the second largest with 517,447 and June 1956 was third with 421,107.
Attendance records for the buildings show the following numbers of
visitors: Smithsonian Building, 716,048; Arts and Industries Build-
ing, 1,796,480; and Natural History Building, 1,007,578.

BUILDINGS AND EQUIPMENT

A contract between the Government and the architectural firm of
McKim, Mead & White for the design of the Museum of History and

412575—57—4

40 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Technology building was signed on March 16, 1956. A program of
the requirements for the building based on many years of study by the
Smithsonian staff was presented to the architects, and the work of de-
signing a building that will effectively serve the Museum and the
public is progressing well. Schedules of work anticipate that working
drawings will be sufficiently advanced to permit bids to be asked for
the construction of the building in the spring of 1957. Legislation
appropriating $33,712,000 for the construction of the building passed
both the House and the Senate in the second session of the 84th Con-
gress. This legislation (Public Law 573) was signed by the President
on June 13, 1956. The total amount appropriated for this building is
$36,000,000.

The Secretary designated Frank A. Taylor, Assistant Director of
the United States National Museum, staff liaison with the architects.
The Planning Office was established to develop plans and requirements
for the building and its exhibits. John C. Ewers, associate curator in
the division of ethnology, was promoted to planning officer, and J. H.
Morrissey, architect of the Public Buildings Service, was assigned to
the Smithsonian by the General Services Administration to assist in
the planning.

CHANGES IN ORGANIZATION AND STAFF

Frank A. Taylor, previously head curator of the department of en-
gineering and industries, was promoted to Assistant Director of the
Museum on August 7, 1955.

Charles E. Cutress, Jr., a coelenterate specialist, was appointed asso-
ciate curator in the division of marine invertebrates, effective January
3, 1956.

The department of history lost through death on February 20, 1956,
the valuable services of Stuart M. Mosher, associate curator of numis-
matics.

John C. Ewers, associate curator of the division of ethnology, was
transferred to the office of the assistant director to serve as planning
officer for the Museum of History and Technology, effective February
26, 1956.

G. Carroll Lindsay was appointed assistant curator, division of
ethnology, effective February 20, 1956.

During January and February 1956, a reorganization of the exhibits
staff was effected with the promotion of John E. Anglim to chief ex-
hibits specialist, R. O. Hower and Benjamin Lawless to exhibits spe-
cialists, and William L. Brown to chief zoological exhibits specialist.

Dr. William F. Foshag, head curator of the department of geology
since August 1948, and a member of the staff of that department from
June 1919, died May 21, 1956, of a heart attack at his home in West-

SECRETARY’S REPORT Al

moreland Hills, Md. During the 37 years since graduation from the
University of California with a degree in chemistry, Dr. Foshag ad-
vanced knowledge of the minerals of Mexico particularly and of the
world. Borax minerals claimed his interest for several years. While
assigned for work in Mexico during World War II, he witnessed the
early stages in the origin of the Paricutin Volcano and followed its
growth until activity subsided.

Four members of the honorary scientific staff were lost through death
during the fiscal year. Dr. Theodore S. Palmer, a member of the
staff of the Bureau of Biological Survey, U. S. Department of Agri-
culture, for 44 years and an associate in zoology of the National
Museum since August 1, 1933, died at his home in Washington, D. C.,
on July 23, 1955, at the age of 87. Dr. Frank L. Hess, custodian of
rare metals and rare earths in the division of mineralogy and petrology
since December 11, 1917, died August 29, 1955, in Washington, D. C.,
at the age of 83. Prior to 1925 Dr. Hess had been employed by the
U. S. Geological Survey, and from that time until his retirement in
1944, by the Bureau of Mines. William B. Marshall, assistant curator
in the division of mollusks until his retirement in 1934 and associate
in zoology since May 1, 1934, died in Washington, D. C., on Decem-
ber 18, 1955, at the age of 91. Gerrit S. Miller, Jr., curator of the
division of mammals for 42 years and research associate of the Smith-
sonian Institution since January 1, 1941, died in Washington on Feb-
ruary 24, 1956, at the age of 84.

Respectfully submitted.

Remineton Ketioce, Director.

Dr. Lzonarp CarMIcHAEL,

Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.

Report on the Bureau of American
Ethnology

S1r: I have the honor to submit the following report on the field
researches, office work, and other operations of the Bureau of Ameri-
can Ethnology during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1956, conducted in
accordance with the Act of Congress of April 10, 1928, as amended
August 22, 1949, which directs the Bureau “to continue independently
or in cooperation anthropological researches among the American
Indians and the natives of lands under the jurisdiction or protection
of the United States and the excavation and preservation of archeologic
remains.”

SYSTEMATIC RESEARCHES

Dr. M. W. Stirling, Director of the Bureau, remained in Washington
during the major portion of the fiscal year. In addition to regular
administrative duties, he continued studies on the archeological collec-
tions made in Panama during 1952 and 1953. In May and June he
raade two brief inspection trips to Russell Cave in Jackson County,
Alabama, where Carl Miller conducted archeological excavations
under the auspices of the Bureau and financed by the National Geo-
graphic Society. The services of Mr. Miller were lent to the Bureau
by the River Basin Surveys for six weeks, the duration of this work.
The excavations, which reached a depth of 14 feet in the cave floor,
gave evidence of a fairly continuous occupation which extended from
approximately A. D. 1650 to the early Archaic. Samples from the
14-foot level yielded a carbon-14 date of 8160 B. P. (before the present)
7800)

The beginning of the fiscal year found Dr. Frank H. H. Roberts,
Jr., Associate Director of the Bureau and Director of the River Basin
Surveys, on an inspection trip in the Missouri Basin. He visited
survey and excavation parties working in the Oahe Reservoir basin
in North Dakota and South Dakota and the Fort Randall Reservoir
area, also in South Dakota. After his return to Washington he
devoted practically full time to the management of the River Basin
Surveys program and in reviewing and revising a number of manu-
script reports on the results of investigations in various areas. In
October Dr. Roberts went to Clarksville, Mo., to attend the annual fall
meeting of the Missouri Archeological Society. Hespoke at one of the
sessions on the subject “The Inter-Agency Archeological Salvage

42

SECRETARY’S REPORT 43

Program.” From Clarksville he proceeded to the field headquarters
at Lincoln, Nebr., where he reviewed the results obtained by the field
parties, working in the Missouri Basin during the summer and early
fall months. Following his return to Washington he participated
in the annual meeting of the Committee for the Recovery of Archeo-
logical Remains. During the winter and early spring months Dr.
Roberts worked on the manuscript of an article summarizing the activ-
ities and the results of the archeological salvage program for the
10 years that it has been operating. In May he went to the Lincoln
office to assist in the preparation of plans for the summer’s fieldwork
in the Missouri Basin. He was in the Washington office at the end
of the fiscal year.

During the first two months of the fiscal year Dr. Henry B. Collins,
anthropologist, with three assistants conducted archeological field-
work on Southampton and Walrus Islands in Hudson Bay. The
work was sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and the National
Museum of Canada and was supported in part by a grant from the
American Philosophical Society. The party, consisting of Dr. Col-
lins, Dr. J. N. Emerson, University of Toronto, William E. Taylor,
Jr., National Museum of Canada, and James V. Wright, anthropology
student at the University of Toronto, left Montreal by R. C. A. F. air-
craft on June 8, 1955, and arrived at Coral Harbour, Southampton
Island, the following day. On June 13 they went by Eskimo dog
team over the sea ice to Native Point, an abandoned Eskimo village
site 40 miles down the coast, where they camped for the summer.
Native Point (Tunermiut) was the principal settlement of the Sadler-
miut, the aboriginal Eskimo tribe of Southampton Island, the last of
whom died there in an epidemic in the winter of 1902-3. The site
consists of the ruins of 75 semisubterranean stone and sod houses in
addition to a dozen old “quarmats” or autumn houses built by the
Aivilik Eskimos who have camped there in recent years. Hundreds
of stone graves, cairns, and meat caches lie along the beach near the
site and on the old shorelines in every direction for miles around.
Excavation of house ruins, middens, and graves at the main Sadler-
miut site and two smaller sites nearby supplemented the work of the
previous year and provided an adequate picture of the material cul-
ture and way of life of the Sadlermiut Eskimos. The Sadlermiut are
commonly thought to have been descended from the Thule Eskimos
who migrated from Alaska to Canada and Greenland some seven or
eight hundred years ago. However, from the work on Southampton
and Walrus Islands it seems more likely that the Sadlermiut had
merely been influenced in some ways by the Thule culture and that they
were actually the descendants of the prehistoric Dorset Eskimos, who
were the other, and principal, object of study by the expedition.

44 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

The main Dorset site at which excavations were made lies a mile to
the east of the Sadlermiut site. It is situated on the gently sloping
surface of a 70-foot high headland which had once fronted the sea
but which now lies half a mile back from the present beach. The site
consists of shallow midden deposits, covered by a low, sparse growth
of vegetation, extending for an area of well over 20 acres, one of the
largest Dorset sites known. The site was designated T 1, from
Tunermiut, the Eskimo name for Native Point. A second, later
Dorset site was found near the Sadlermiut site and called T2. A
third Dorset site, T 3, slightly later than T 1, was found on the old
beach line immediately below it, at an elevation of 40 feet above sea
level. Samples of charred bone excavated at the T 1 site in 1954 were
submitted to the University of Pennsylvania Carbon-14 Laboratory
and found to be 2060230 years old. The thousands of stone, ivory,
and bone artifacts found at T 1 and T 3, though conforming in general
to the basic Dorset culture pattern, were in many respects specifically
different from those found at other Dorset sites in Canada and Green-
land. Flint implements, which were far more abundant than any
other artifacts, were small and delicately chipped, like Dorset im-
plements generally, but most of them differed in form from previously
known Dorset types, and some of them were unlike anything known
from America. The majority of the blades would be described as
microlithic, and some of them in shape and technique were similar to
microlithic types from pre-Eskimo sites in Alaska and Mesolithic
sites in the Old World. The cultural material from T 1 and T 3 seems
to represent an older, simpler stage leading up to the classic Dorset
culture; it should probably be referred to as formative or proto-
Dorset. AJ] faunal remains from the excavations were preserved. The
thousands of bird bones and occasional fish bones and mollusks were
brought back to the Smithsonian for identification. The mammal
bones were counted and as many as possible identified in the field.
As a result of the bone count some striking differences were observed
in the food economy of the Sadlermiut and Dorset Eskimos.

Five days in July were devoted to excavations at an abandoned
village site on Walrus Island. The houses, which had been made of
massive blocks of granite, proved to be Dorset rather than Sadlermiut
as expected, and provided the first adequate information on the house
types of the Dorset Eskimos. The artifacts from the houses were
typical or classic Dorset, different from and later than those from the
proto-Dorset site T 1 at Native Point. Plants, fossils, and insects,
including ectoparasites on birds and lemmings, were also collected
during the summer.

Two preliminary reports on the Southampton and Walrus Island
work were prepared by Dr. Collins, one for the Annual Report of the

SECRETARY'S REPORT 45

National Museum of Canada and the other for Anthropological Papers
of the University of Alaska. “Archaeological Research in the Ameri-
can Arctic,” a general article describing the current status of Arctic
archeology, was published in Arctic Research, Special Publication
No. 2 of the Arctic Institute of North America. Dr. Collins continued
to serve as a member of the Board of Governors of the Arctic Institute
of North America and of its committee on research. As chairman of
the Directing Committee of Arctic Bibliography, he continued to
supervise the preparation of this work, a comprehensive annotated
bibilography which lists and summarizes the contents of publications
in all fields of science relating to the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of
the world. Volume 6 of the Bibliography, 1,208 pages, was issued
by the Government Printing Office in April 1956, and material for
volume 7, of approximately the same size, was turned over to the
printer in June. Funds for the preparation of an eighth volume were
obtained from the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force,
and the Defense Research Board of Canada. As a member of the
Permanent Council and the Organizing Committee of the Interna-
tional Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Dr.
Collins participated in the work of planning for the fifth session of
the Congress to be held in Philadelphia, September 1-9, 1956. At the
close of the fiscal year Dr. Collins was in Europe, making a survey of
Mesolithic materials in museums for their possible bearing on the
Eskimo problem.

At the beginning of the fiscal year Dr. Philip Drucker was in
Mexico finishing up his fieldwork at La Venta, studying the material
collected there and comparing it with the collections in the Museo
Nacional at Mexico City. It was through Dr. Drucker’s intercession
that the U. S. National Museum received a collection of 187 polished
jadeite and other stone objects from La Venta as a loan from the
Museo Nacional of Mexico. Upon his return to Washington in Sep-
tember he completed the writing of his share of the final report on the
La Venta excavations, and also completed and submitted for publica-
tion his manuscript on the Native Brotherhood Societies of Alaska
and British Columbia. On December 9, 1955, Dr. Drucker resigned
from the Bureau.

RIVER BASIN SURVEYS
(Prepared by Frank H. H. Roserts, Jr., Director, from data submitted by staff members)

Throughout the year River Basin Surveys continued its program
for salvage archeology in areas to be flooded or otherwise destroyed
by the construction of large dams. As in previous years, the work
was carried on in cooperation with the National Park Service and
the Bureau of Reclamation of the Department of the Interior, the
Corps of Engineers of the Department of the Army, and a number of

46 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

State and local institutions. An increase in funds for the fiscal year
made possible more extensive investigations than in the preceding
year. During 1955-56 the program of the River Basin Surveys was
financed by a transfer of $92,360 from the National Park Service
and a grant of $12,000 from the Idaho Power Co. The funds from
the National Park Service were for use in the Missouri Basin. A
carryover of $3,663 from the previous year made the total available
for operations in the Missouri Basin $96,028. The grant from the
Idaho Power Co. was to provide for the excavation of sites along
the Snake River in Oregon-Idaho which will be flooded by the con-
struction of that company’s Brownlee and Hells Canyon dams. ‘The
latter funds were the first for work outside the Missouri Basin made
available to the River Basin Surveys in several years.

Investigations in the field during the year consisted of surveys and
excavations. Most of the efforts were concentrated in the digging
of sites. Because of a slight delay in receiving the new Federal funds,
it was the middle of July before parties were sent out from the field
headquarters at Lincoln, Nebr. On July 15 a survey party began in-
vestigations in the Tiber Reservoir. On July 18 a second party start-
ed digging at a fortified village site near the mouth of the Cheyenne
River in the Oahe Reservoir area, and on July 20 a third party started
operations in the vicinity of the Oahe Dam near Pierre, S. Dak. In
May a historic-sites party began excavations at the location of an early
trading post in the area of the outlet channel below the Oahe Dam.
Early in June a second party returned to the Cheyenne site and re-
sumed excavations at that locality. Later a third party proceeded to
a village site near Whitlocks Crossing in the Oahe Reservoir basin
and started investigations where no previous work had been done.
On June 2 a survey party began operations in the Big Bend Reservoir
area near Fort Thompson, S. Dak., and on June 12 an excavating party
began digging a site in the Lovewell Reservoir area in northern
Kansas. Late in June a party proceeded to Robinette, Oreg., where it
established camp and initiated excavations in one of the Snake River
sites. All these parties were continuing their investigations at the
close of the fiscal year. During the year no paleontological studies
were made in any of the areas by the River Basin Surveys. However,
some fossil collecting was done by State institutions.

As of June 30, 1956, reservoir areas where archeological surveys
and excavations had been made since the Salvage Program got under
way in 1946 totaled 244 in 27 States; also four canal areas and one lock
project had been investigated. The survey parties have located and
reported 4,365 archeological sites, and of that number 862 have been
recommended for limited testing or excavation. The term “excava-
tion” in this connection implies digging approximately 10 percent of

SECRETARY’S REPORT 47

a site. Preliminary appraisal reports have been issued for all the
reservoirs surveyed, and in cases where additional reconnaissance has
resulted in the finding of other sites supplemental reports have been
prepared. During the last fiscal year four such reports were written
and were distributed in a single mimeographed pamphlet. Through-
out the years since the initiation of the program 181 reports have been
distributed. The discrepancy between that figure and the total num-
ber of reservoirs visited is due to the fact that in several instances
the information obtained from a whole series of proposed reservoir
projects occurring in a basin or subbasin has been included in a single
report.

By the end of the fiscal year 329 sites in 46 reservoir basins scattered
over 17 different States had either been tested or partially dug. Only
a single site was excavated in some of the reservoir areas, while in
others a whole series was studied. Thus far at least one example of
each type of site recorded in the preliminary surveys has been ex-
amined. The results of certain phases of the excavations have ap-
peared in various scientific journals and in the bulletins of the Bureau
of American Ethnology and the Miscellaneous Collections of the
Smithsonian Institution. During the year River Basin Surveys Paper
No. 8, which is to be Bulletin 166 of the Bureau of American Ethnol-
ogy, was sent to the printer, and at the close of the year galley proofs
of the publication were being read by the author. Two detailed tech-
nical reports on the results of earlier work were completed during the
year and are ready for publication.

The reservoir projects that have been surveyed for archeological
remains as of June 30, 1956, were distributed as follows: Alabama,
1; California, 20; Colorado, 24; Georgia, 5; Idaho, 11; Illinois, 2;
Kansas, 10; Kentucky, 2; Louisiana, 2; Minnesota, 1; Mississippi, 1;
Montana, 15; Nebraska, 28; New Mexico, 1; North Dakota, 13; Ohio,
2; Oklahoma, 7; Oregon, 27; Pennsylvania, 2; South Dakota, 10;
Tennessee, 4; Texas, 19; Virginia, 2; Washington, 11; West Virginia,
2; and Wyoming, 22.

Excavations have been made or were under way in reservoir basins
in: California, 5; Colorado, 1; Georgia, 4; Kansas, 4; Montana, 1;
Nebraska, 1; New Mexico, 1; North Dakota, 4; Oklahoma, 2; Oregon,
4; South Carolina, 1; South Dakota, 4; Texas, 7; Virginia, 1; Wash-
ington, 4; West Virginia, 1; and Wyoming, 2. The foregoing figures
include only the work of the River Basin Surveys or that in which
there was direct cooperation with local institutions. Projects that were
carried on by local institutions under agreements with the National
Park Service are not included because complete information about
them is not available.

48 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

During the year the River Basin Surveys continued to receive help-
ful cooperation from the National Park Service, the Bureau of Rec-
lamation, the Corps of Engineers, the Geological Survey, and various
State and local institutions. Transportation and guides were fur-
nished in a number of instances, and mechanical equipment made
available by the construction agency speeded the work at a number
of locations. Temporary headquarters as well as living accommoda-
tions were made available at several projects. Detailed maps of the
reservoirs under investigation were supplied by the agency concerned
and helpful information was provided whenever it was needed. The
National Park Service continued to function as the liaison between
the various agencies both in Washington and in the field and through
its regional offices obtained information about the locations for dams
and reservoirs as well as data concerning construction priorities. The
National Park Service was also chiefly responsible for the preparation
of estimates and justifications and in procuring funds for carrying
on the program. Had it not been for the enthusiastic assistance of the
personnel in all the cooperating agencies, it would not have been
possible for the River Basin Surveys to have accomplished so much
for the year.

General direction and supervision of the program were continued
by the main office in Washington. The field headquarters and labora-
tory at Lincoln, Nebr., was in direct charge of the work in the Missouri
Basin. All the materials collected in the Missouri Basin were proc-
essed at the Lincoln laboratory and subsequently two large lots of
specimens were transferred to the U. S. National Museum. Through
the cooperation of the Washington State Museum at Seattle, the Snake
River party was provided with a base of operations. The general
direction of the activities in that area, however, was from the Wash-
ington office.

Washington office—The main headquarters of the River Basin
Surveys at the Bureau of American Ethnology continued throughout
the year under the direction of Dr. Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr. Carl
F. Miller, archeologist, was based on that office and assisted the direc-
tor in general administrative duties from time to time. William M.
Bass was added to the staff on June 18 as a temporary physical
anthropologist.

Mr. Miller reported to the Lincoln office shortly after the beginning
of the fiscal year and worked in the Missouri Basin until late in
September, when he returned to the Washington office. His activities
during the summer are covered in the Missouri Basin portion of this
report. After his return to Washington he prepared a series of brief
reports on the results of his fieldwork and then turned his attention
to his unfinished report on his previous investigations at the John H.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 49

Kerr (Buggs Island) Reservoir in Virginia. In April Mr. Miller was
transferred to the regular staff of the Bureau of American Ethnology
for the purpose of carrying on investigations in a cave in Jackson
County, Ala., where the deposits contained a long sequence of Indian
cultural history. He returned from Alabama in June and resumed his
duties as a member of the River Basin Surveys staff. He proceeded
to Lincoln, Nebr., and on June 21 left for South Dakota where he
began excavations at a site in the Oahe Reservoir area. During the
months in the Washington office Mr. Miller spoke before a number
of Boy Scout troops and acted as scientific consultant to a number of
high-school students who were participating in a science contest in
Alexandria, Va. During the year Mr. Miller’s manuscript “Revalua-
tion of the Eastern Siouan Problem, with Particular Emphasis on
the Virginia Branches—the Occaneechi, the Saponi, and the Tutelo,”
which was a byproduct of his study of the data pertaining to the
John H. Kerr Reservoir, was sent to the printer and will appear as
Anthropological Paper No. 52 in Bulletin 164 of the Bureau of
American Ethnology.

After joining the River Basin Surveys Mr. Bass began a study of
the human skeletal material that had been collected in the Missouri
Basin and transferred to the U. S. National Museum. His work was
well under way at the end of the year.

Columbia Basin.—After a lapse of several years the River Basin
Surveys resumed investigations in the Columbia Basin late in the
fiscal year. On June 11 Dr. Warren W. Caldwell joined the staff
as archeologist. He left Seattle, Wash., on June 22 and proceeded
with a party to Robinette, Oreg., where camp was established and
excavations were started in a cave not far from the town of Robinette.
The latter is built on a series of Indian sites, and tests were to be made
also at various places in the town. The party was actively engaged
in its investigations at the close of the year.

A report, “Excavations in the McNary Reservoir Basin near Uma-
tilla, Oregon,” by Dr. Douglas Osborne, was sent to the printer toward
the end of the fiscal year. It will appear as River Basin Surveys
Paper No. 8, Bulletin 166 of the Bureau of American Ethnology. The
report covers investigations made during a previous year when the
River Basin Surveys was operating a full-scale program along the
Columbia River.

Missouri Basin—The Missouri Basin project continued to operate
throughout fiscal 1956 from the field headquarters and laboratory at
1517 “O” Street, Lincoln, Nebr. Except for periods of one week in
August and two weeks in September, when he was detailed to the
Department of Justice to assist in an Indian Lands Claim case, G.
Hubert Smith served as archeologist-in-charge from July 1 to Janu-

50 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

ary 10. On the latter date Dr. Robert L. Stephenson, chief, returned
from academic leave and resumed direction of the project. Activities
during the year included all four phases of the Salvage Program: (1)
survey; (2) excavation; (3) analysis; and (4) reporting. Phases 2
and 3 received the greatest attention however.

At the beginning of the fiscal year the Missouri Basin project had
a permanent staff of eight, six assigned to the Lincoln office and two
to the Washington office. Since the chief was in leave status there
actually were only seven on active duty. Dr. Waldo R. Wedel, arche-
ologist, and George Metcalf, field assistant, were detailed to the
Missouri Basin project from the U. S. National Museum during July
and August. In July, August, September, and October there were
20 temporary student and local nonstudent employees working in
the field. Their services were gradually terminated as excavations
were brought to a close, and by November 5 only the permanent staff
remained. During the winter and early spring months a clerk-
stenographer, a photographer, and a part-time records custodian were
employed. These permanent additions to the staff continued on duty
throughout the remainder of the year. In addition, a temporary part-
time draftsman and a temporary part-time photographer assisted in
the laboratory on various occasions. Wedel and Metcalf were again
detailed to the Missouri Basin project on June 5 and were working
for it at the close of the fiscal year. One temporary field assistant
entered on duty May 28 and another on June 11. Both were with
field parties at the end of the year. A temporary physical anthro-
pologist was appointed on June 18 and was assigned to the Wash-
ington office to prepare reports on the skeletal materials from various
Missouri Basin sites. The archeologist assigned to the Washington
office returned to the Missouri Basin on June 20 and was on duty there
at the end of the fiscal year. Also, 29 temporary student and local
nonstudent laborers were employed in the field. Thus at the close of
the year there were 11 permanent employees, 2 employees detailed to
the Surveys, 2 temporary field assistants, 1 temporary physical anthro-
pologist, and 29 temporary laborers on the staff of the Missouri Basin
project.

During the year eight River Basin Surveys field parties operated
in the Missouri Basin, three in the period July—October and five in the
period May-June. One party in the July-October period and one in
the May-June period were occupied in survey and site-testing activ-
ities. One party in the May-June period was engaged in the excava-
tion of a historic site. The other five were excavating in prehistoric
and protohistoric Indian village sites. Other fieldwork in the Mis-
souri Basin during the year included six field parties from State insti-
tutions working under agreements with the National Park Service

SECRETARY’S REPORT 51

and in cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution. Three of these
parties were in the field in the July—October period and three in the
May-June period.

In the Tiber Reservoir area a small field party directed by Carl F.
Miller conducted excavations along the Marias River in north-central
Montana from July 19 to August 16. Various sites located by previ-
ous Smithsonian Institution parties in the area were revisited and
excavations were conducted at site 24TL26. This site proved to be
of Woodland affiliation with some possible earlier and later sporadic
occupation. Other sites visited by previous parties and recommended
for further study have been destroyed by periodic flooding in the area,
and on the completion of the 1955 season no further work was recom-
mended for the reservoir.

In the Pactola Reservoir basin, the Car] F. Miller party conducted
investigations on Rapid Creek in Pennington County, S. Dak., August
19-24. <A brief survey had been made there in 1948 by a Smithsonian
Institution field party, but heavy vegetation prevented adequate in-
vestigation at that time. Miller’s party failed to find any archeo-
logical materials and no further work was recommended for the area.

In the Merritt Reservoir basin, the Carl F. Miller party conducted
investigations on the Snake River and Boardman’s Creek in Cherry
County, Nebr., from August 26 to September 2. Sites recorded by
a previous Smithsonian Institution party were revisited, sampled,
and analyzed. Two of these had largely been covered by windblown
sand, one was test excavated, and two yielded Woodland and later
materials. Several blowouts were examined where chipped-stone arti-
facts were recovered. No further work was recommended for this
area until such time as construction activities might bring to light
new material.

In the Glendo Reservoir area, on the North Platte River in Platte
County, Wyo., the Carl F. Miller party continued its field season
from September 5 to 13. Investigations there consisted of a reexam-
ination of sites located by an earlier Smithsonian Institution field
party and recording of two new sites. One site, 48PL15, remains as
the principal locality for further examination in the Glendo Reservoir
area, and work will be started there early in the new fiscal year.

In the Oahe Reservoir area, the Carl F. Miller party concluded its
field season at the Buffalo Pasture site (838ST6) in Stanley County,
S. Dak., a short distance above the dam construction area. With the
aid of a bulldozer a trench 11 feet wide, 367 feet long, and about 314
feet deep was cut across a portion of the site in order to expose the
stratigraphy from the present surface to sterile deposits below any
cultural remains. There had been extensive digging at the Buffalo
Pasture site during a previous season when the remains of several

52 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

earth lodges were uncovered and the encircling moat and remnants
of the palisade were studied, but it was not until the big trench was
cut that the site was determined to represent a single occupation. The
trench bisected the depressions of four circular lodges and exposed
some 20 refuse-filled cache pits which were cleaned out by hand. An
excellent series of specimens, including a large pottery vessel, was
recovered while the operations were under way.

The second field party in the Oahe Reservoir area in the 1955 field
season was a Smithsonian Institution group directed by Richard P.
Wheeler. This party conducted excavations from July 20 to Novem-
ber 5 at the Leavitt site (39ST215) and at the Breeden site (39ST16),
formerly known as the Mathison site. The Leavitt site proved in
part to represent an early historic Indian occupation related directly
to the occupation at the Philip Ranch site, excavated in 1951 and
reported in Bulletin 158 of the Bureau of American Ethnology, and
in part to an older late prehistoric period. Thesite produced materials
that assist greatly in the interpretation of both phases in the Oahe area.
Especially important was the recovery of 15 human burials. One of
them was particularly interesting because the skeleton was that of a
large male with a lead musket ball embedded in the dorsal surface of
the right pelvic bone. The individual had been shot in the back,
possibly while running away from an assailant. There was nothing
to indicate immediate death, but the man had not lived long because
the bone surrounding the ball had not started to heal. Iron and brass
bracelets, as well as glass beads, were found in several of the graves.
At the Breeden site there was evidence for at least three occupations.
The earliest was older than the first one at the Leavitt site and pro-
duced four deeply buried rectangular house remains indicative of
the Monroe Focus which is thought to date at approximately
A. D. 1200-1300. The later occupations have not been sufficiently
identified to correlate definitely with other known cultures but they
did have circular house structures. One has been attributed tentatively
to the La Roche Focus, which is estimated by some to be A. D. 1600-
1700, and the other to the historic Teton Dakota of about 1825 to 1875.

The third Smithsonian Institution party in the Oahe area in the
1955 season was directed by Dr. Waldo R. Wedel, assisted by George
Metcalf. Working from July 18 to August 31, that party continued
investigations at the Cheyenne River site (839ST1) which were begun
by Dr. Wedel in 1951 for the River Basin Surveys. The site, a multi-
component one, is located near the juncture of the Cheyenne River
with the Missouri. Excavation of a large rectangular pit house, be-
gun in 1951 and identified with the earliest of three occupations, was
completed in 1955, and a 70-foot section of the stockade line forming
part of the defensive works for the last (third) occupation was un-

SECRETARY’S REPORT 53

covered. Much of the fill removed from the rectangular house pit
consisted of sherds, bone, and other refuse material attributable to
an intermediate late prehistoric occupation for which no houses have
yet been opened on thesite. The 1955 work apparently confirms earlier
inferences that the site represents three separate occupations, the
earliest probably postdating circa A. D. 1300, the latest antedating
1800 and in all likelihood attributable to the Arikara. At the close
of the season Dr. Wedel recommended further investigations during
the 1956 season in order to ascertain the nature of the dwellings left
by the second occupation which it has been suggested may belong to
the Bennett Focus. The site also promises important data bearing
on the interpretation of village plans, the cultural sequences, and the
way of life of the prehistoric Indians of that area.

The fourth party in the Oahe area in the 1955 season was sponsored
by the University of South Dakota and the South Dakota Archeo-
logical Commission working under a cooperative agreement with the
National Park Service. Dr. Wesley R. Hurt, of the University of
South Dakota, was the director, and the party continued excavation
of the Swan Creek site (39WW7) which was begun the previous year,
ending a 7-week season on August 1. Human burials, a moat, a pali-
sade, and houses were excavated, greatly increasing the information
on these features for the region. This party also conducted limited
test excavations at sites 839WW300, 89WW301, 39WW302, and 39-
WW303.

In the North Dakota portion of the Oahe Reservoir area the State
Historical Society of North Dakota, working under a cooperative
agreement with the National Park Service, comprised the fifth field
party in that reservoir. The party, directed by Alan R. Woolworth,
conducted excavations at the Paul Brave (or Fort Yates) site (32S14)
from early July until late August. Three earth lodges of rectangular
pattern were excavated. Limited testing was also accomplished in
sites 832S12 and 32SI38. Surface collections were made at a series of
other sites in the vicinity, and aerial survey provided photographic
records of 10 other sites in the North Dakota portion of the reservoir.

The 1956 field season in the Oahe Reservoir area began early, and
by the end of the fiscal year six parties were in the field. G. Hubert
Smith led a Smithsonian Institution party to the vicinity of the dam-
construction area on May 21 and was still in the field at the end of
the fiscal year. Smith’s party spent some time examining old historic
land records in the General Land Office at the State Capitol in Pierre,
as well as records in the South Dakota Historical Society, in an effort
to determine the location of various frontier trading posts. They then
covered the area carefully on foot and finally found what appear to be
the remains of Fort Pierre II which was in use around 1859-63. It

54 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

also seems probable now that Fort Pierre II and Fort Galpin
(1857-59) are identical in location. Excavations in this locality in
June revealed the outline of the stockade, the location of several struc-
tures, and produced interesting artifactual materials. The fort was
much larger than most trading posts as the enclosure was approxi-
mately 200 feet square. It was destroyed by fire. Other historic sites
scheduled for investigation by this party include Forts La Framboise
and Primeau (both dating in the 1860’s) and, if time permits, the
sites of Fort Sully and Fort Bennett.

On June 5 Dr. Waldo R. Wedel returned to the Missouri River Basin
and took a Smithsonian Institution field party to the Cheyenne River
site (39ST1) where the final season of excavation was started. By the
end of the fiscal year the party had opened several test areas, cache
pits, and house features, recovering a good sample of artifacts. Upon
completion of work at this site the Wedel party plans to finish excava-
tions which were begun by another River Basin Surveys party in 1952
at the Black Widow site (39ST3).

A Smithsonian Institution party directed by Carl F. Miller began
digging at the Hosterman site (89PO7) near Whitlock’s Crossing, S.
Dak., the last week in June. Having only started by the end of the
fiscal year this party had nothing to report.

A University of South Dakota-South Dakota Archeological Com-
mission party, working under a cooperative agreement with the Na-
tional Park Service and directed by Roscoe Wilmeth of the University
of South Dakota, began excavations in mid-June at the Swan Creek
site (39WW7). This party also planned to make test excavations at
two nearby sites (39WW302 and 839WW2308) after completing the
work at the Swan Creek site which was begun two seasons ago. They
were in the field at the end of the fiscal year.

A University of Wisconsin field party, working under a cooperative
agreement with the National Park Service and directed by Dr. David
A. Baerreis of that University, began work early in June at the Eklo
site (39WW3) near Mobridge, S. Dak. The party expected to con-
duct test excavations at two other nearby sites (89CA6 and 39CAQ)
after finishing the season’s work at the Eklo site. They were in the
field at the end of the fiscal year.

In the North Dakota section of the Oahe Reservoir a State Histori-
cal Society of North Dakota field party directed by Alan R. Wool-
worth, working under a cooperative agreement with the National Park
Service, began investigations in mid-June. They excavated at the
Demery site (89CO1) in Carson County, S. Dak., and at the Fireheart
site (82SI2) in Sioux County, N. Dak. They also were to test an
additional site (82S1208) in the vicinity. All three sites are near the
North Dakota—South Dakota border. The party was in the field at the
end of the fiscal year.

Secretary’s Report, 1956 PLATE 1

1. River Basin Surveys: Floor pattern of hacia earth lodge at the Cheyenne Village
site. Rows of holes mart position of wall Larger holes were cache pits. Entrance
platform at far end. Workman is kneeling i fire pit

: Bes
Roe ane

Ze River Basin Surveys: Long curved line of post holes shows location of palisade at the
Cheyenne Village. Men working on smail cache pits and other post holes inside the
stockade. Field camp in background.

‘govyins juosoid "BULIOYO AILNIIOU B SEM [aSSOA
dy} MOTEG JooJ Q SPM JOAZT UONYdNDDGQ “PaIe IMOAJASaY JOqI], ay} ul

A19}10g *S UO] JOO} | SI YOWS o[BIS pue yiyiou So] vOIpUr MOLIV “ULE CT
91S duivs v 12 TET uOosIq e jo SUIBUOI SuIIaAONU) :sAoAING UISeq TOATYT WC o4eC_) e)eal Ieou SUS JIIAVOT 9} 18 [er q uevtIpuy SSAA q JoATy *T

PLATE 2

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wn
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yey
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SECRETARY'S REPORT 55

With the added results of the current year’s work, it is now possible
to identify at least nine archeological complexes in the Oahe portion
of the Missouri Basin, covering the years about A. D. 850 to 1859.
Some indications have been found of occupations belonging to an
earlier period, but they are not sufficiently known as yet to be included
in the definitely identified list.

In the Fort Randall Reservoir two field parties operated in the 1955
field season. The Nebraska State Historical Society, under a cooper-
ative agreement with the National Park Service, had a party directed
by Marvin F. Kivett excavating at the Crow Creek site (89B¥F11).
Work was started on this site in the 1954 season and the second sea-
son’s digging there was completed late in August of 1955. This com-
plex site contains the remains of two and possibly three occupations
ranging in time over 3800 or more years. The season’s work provided
new data on village plans, house types, fortifications, and relationships
of this area to other areas in South Dakota and Nebraska.

The second party in this area was that of the University of Kansas
led by Dr. Carlyle S. Smith of that institution and working under a
cooperative agreement with the National Park Service. They exca-
vated site 89B F204 over a 7-week period ending the last of July. They
also conducted some test excavations in site 39BF201, which appeared
to be culturally identical to the former site. Both relate directly to
the Spain site (89L.M301) and the Talking Crow site (89BF3), which
were excavated in previous years by parties under Dr. Smith.

In the Big Bend Reservoir area a Smithsonian Institution party
directed by Harold A. Huscher began an intensive survey and site-
testing operation in this newly activated reservoir on the Missouri
River in South Dakota on June 2. The party planned to search the
entire reservoir area for archeological potentialities. It was scheduled
to visit all known sites, locate all possible new sites, and make explora-
tory tests in all of them in order to determine what additional excava-
tion must be done before inundation. By the end of the fiscal year it
had visited and tested 20 sites and had located several others from pre-
vious records.

In the Lovewell Reservoir area a Smithsonian Institution party
directed by Robert W. Neuman began the excavation, on June 12,
of three sites on White Rock Creek in Jewell County, Kans. They
started at site 14JW1 and worked there until the end of the fiscal
year. The other two sites are 14JW2 and 14JW201. These sites
should help materially in establishing the significance and cultural

412575576

56 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

content of the White Rock Focus and its relation to the western ex-
tension of the Oneota Aspect.

A total of 15 parties were in the field during fiscal 1956, 7 in the
1955 season, and 8 in the 1956 season, investigating archeological
remains in 8 reservoirs. ‘They conducted excavations at 24 sites,
tested over 40 sites, and examined the surfaces of nearly 100 sites.
Fach field party consisted of a crew chief and from 6 to 10 crewmen.
Bulldozers and other heavy equipment, supplied through the courtesy
of the Lytle-Green Construction Company and the Corps of Engi-
neers, were used at some sites in order to expedite investigations. At
all reservoir projects the complete cooperation of the Corps of Engi-
neers and the Bureau of Reclamation personnel was always willingly
given.

On May 14 three members of this staff jomed Dr. Dwight R. Cran-
dell of the U. S. Geological Survey, Denver office, on an archeological-
geological field trip to the areas of the Oahe, Big Bend, and Fort
Randall Reservoirs in South Dakota. The party was in the field for
seven days, examining Pleistocene and early Recent geological de-
posits and fossil soils. The principal purpose of the trip was to
instruct members of the River Basin Surveys staff how to recognize
possible localities where archeological deposits of Early Man mate-
rial or other pre-pottery cultural remains might be found. The
results of the trip, while negative from the standpoint of actually
finding such sites, provided this office with a great deal of informa-
tion as to where and how to search for such material in the future
and what might be expected in specific localities. The three members
of this staff who accompanied Dr. Crandell were Richard P. Wheeler,
G. Hubert Smith, and Lee G. Madison. Dr. Crandell’s participation
in the project was arranged through the cooperation of Dr. Wilmot
H. Bradley, Chief, Geologic Division of the Geological Survey.

While fieldwork during the fiscal year was devoted to phases 1 and
2 (survey and excavation) of the salvage program, laboratory and
office activities were devoted to phases 3 and 4 (analysis and report-
ing). During the time the archeologists were not in the field they
were engaged in analyses of their materials and in laboratory and
library research. They also prepared manuscripts of technical scien-
tific reports and wrote articles and papers of a more popular nature.
The laboratory and office staff devoted its time to processing specimen
materials for study, photographing specimens and preparing speci-
men records, and typing and filing records and manuscript materials.
The accomplishments of the laboratory and office staff are listed in
the following tables.

SECRETARY’S REPORT Vi

TABLE 1.—Artifact materials processed

Number Catalog | Number of
Reservoir of sites numbers | specimens
assigned | processed

(GHIBST (6 (G\cae eine RR Pa pS cd Sl ge ley Aa are Bao BTN 16 431 585
Nlrerrit ts ayes Seek hy Sie ter Vee lek Pate et iy 1 Mi 220
OS ao eS sae eee eS See eee ee 14 5, 183 36, 376
ANN OYE) collie le a Da ER ub 3 a ES eR a teed See 3 172 374
Non=Rieservoire Gas owd P e e eee 2 58 70
THE SISTED 125 aS ea OR OT ee RE te 4 179 527

AKC tie A A BB oh gh 5 ee Se 40 6, 030 Soalb2

As of June 30, 1956, the Missouri Basin project had cataloged
570,238 specimens from 1,517 numbered sites and 47 collections not
assigned site numbers.

Two shipments of archeological materials were sent to the United
States National Museum for permanent transfer. One was by
Missouri Basin project vehicle and consisted largely of fragile items
such as human skeletal remains, pottery vessels and vessel sections,
bone, shell, and wooden artifacts. The second was by truck freight
and consisted of stone specimens and other more durable materials.

TABLE 2.—Record materials processed

CH EXT CODIESPOLeTCCOLGS 22 SE ae 8 ee St eee a ae ae ere cere ee Ss 1, 286
ENOCOSEAPHICENCLAC Ves sri Ces ees se ee 615
PHOLOsr ap hice pLiNts) 11 MOC ae ae es ee 2, 784
Photosraphicaprints mounted: and filed] === 202s ee ee ee 1, 004
Platenayours made LOL ManUSCELPUS= sos ee nes en eee eee eee 42
AMTaANSpATenciess Mounted Ine Classe] 22s 2 eae ee Deel ee eee eee 81
Driwinesacracines* And: Maps sss 2) L oerk Sah et he ee ee 14
ER OthenyaayeSS@IS: TEStOred=s:3 22 Bs sed od a SEEN gee 3
Bottenvivessel-sections restored..= 2 #2 ee 32

On May 3, 4, and 5 the annual meetings of the Society for American
Archaeology were held in Lincoln, Nebr. As a programmed part
of the meetings, Thursday evening, May 3, was devoted to an “open
house” at the Missouri Basin project laboratory at 1517 “O” Street.
The office and laboratory were prepared with suitable displays of
photographic and specimen materials in order to best exhibit the work
of the Missouri Basin project. The “open house” was scheduled for
8:00 to 10:00 p. m. but lasted until well past midnight. Approxi-
mately 120 people visited the office and laboratory at that time.

Most of the activities of the Lincoln office during the first three
weeks in March were devoted to a general remodeling of the office
space at 1517 “O” Street. The entire first floor was cleaned and
painted. The floors were sanded and coated with floor preservative.

58 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

The west half of the first floor was partitioned into seven office cubicles.
A map room was made and the filing and secretarial facilities were im-
proved. All the work was done by members of the staff.

Dr. Robert L. Stephenson, chief of the Missouri Basin project, re-
turned to Lincoln on January 10 after 16 months academic leave and
resumed his duties at the headquarters and laboratory. During the
remainder of the fiscal year most of his activities were directed toward
the preparation of plans for the summer’s field program. In addition,
he started work on a summary report of the Missouri Basin Salvage
Program for the calendar years 1952-1955. He presented a paper,
“Topography of a Late Archeological Site,” at the 66th Annual Meet-
ing of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences held in Lincoln on April
20-21. An abstract of the paper was published in the Proceedings of
the Nebraska Academy of Sciences. He also took an active part in
the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology held in
Lincoln May 3-5 and presented a paper entitled “Pottery from the
Accokeek Site, Maryland.” At the close of the fiscal year he was pre-
paring to take a field party to the Sully site (39SL4) in the Oahe area
north of Pierre, S. Dak.

Harold A. Huscher, field assistant, who worked several previous
seasons for the River Basin Surveys, rejoined the staff on May 28, and
on June 2 left Lincoln in charge of a survey party which proceeded to
Pierre, S. Dak., and began a reconnaissance of the proposed Big Bend
Reservoir area on the Missouri River. The work of the Huscher party
was continuing on June 30.

Robert W. Neuman, temporary field assistant, joined the staff on
June 11. He left Lincoln on June 12 as the leader of a party which
proceeded to the Lovewell Reservoir on White Rock Creek, Jewell
County, Kans. By the end of the fiscal year he had excavated for two
weeks in site 14JW1 and one week in site 14JW201. The work of
Mr. Neuman and his party was handicapped by severe rains but was
continuing at the close of the year.

G. Hubert Smith, archeologist, as previously stated was in charge
of the Lincoln office during most of the period from July 1 to January
10. His work for the Department of Justice pertained to preparing
an ethnohistorical report on the Omaha tribe and appearing as a wit-
ness at a hearing held in Washington late in September when his
report was introduced as evidence. During the fall and winter months
Mr. Smith completed the manuscript of a detailed archeological report
on excavations at the site of Fort Berthold II (32ML2) in the Garri-
son Reservoir area in North Dakota. In addition Mr. Smith worked
on a manuscript pertaining to excavations at Fort Berthold I and the
adjacent Like-a-Fishhook Village. The latter paper is being prepared
in collaboration with Alan R. Woolworth of the North Dakota His-
torical Society and James H. Howard who was formerly associated

SECRETARY’S REPORT 59

with that organization and is now at the Kansas City Museum. Mr.
Smith participated in the annual Plains Archeological Conference,
the meetings of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences and of the Society
for American Archaeology which were held at Lincoln. At the An-
thropological Section of the Academy of Sciences, he presented a
paper on the ethnographic contributions of Paul Wilhelm, Duke of
Wuerttemberg, who first visited the Upper Missouri region in 1820.
Early in May Mr. Smith went to Pierre, S. Dak., and spent a week
with the geological party that was studying deposits in the Oahe
Reservoir area. Following that activity he remained at Pierre and
began his regular summer’s program, as mentioned in previous pages.
Mr. Smith’s party was continuing its excavations just below the Oahe
Dam at the end of the year.

Upon completing the 1955 season’s work Dr. Waldo R. Wedel re-
turned to Lincoln, and before his departure for Washington from
the Missouri Basin project headquarters, proceeded to Turin, Iowa,
to examine a reported find of human skeletons. He was accompanied
by Lawrence L. Tomsyck of the Lincoln office, and when they arrived
at the location of the burials they joined representatives from a num-
ber of institutions in studying the finds. Absence of diagnostic arti-
facts with the skeletons precluded any valid estimate of age or cul-
tural affiliations, but nothing was noted that would confirm assertions
which had been freely made that the bones were those of Paleo-Indians
and had a Pleistocene dating. Upon his return to Washington Dr.
Wedel resumed his regular duties at the U. S. National Museum. He
was again detailed to the River Basin Surveys for the 1956 season
and reported at the Lincoln headquarters on June 4. His subsequent
activities were described in the preceding discussion of field parties in
the Oahe area.

Richard P. Wheeler, archeologist, was in charge of a field party
working in the Oahe Reservoir area from July 25 through October 29.
During the remainder of the fiscal year he devoted his time to analyz-
ing the materials obtained in the field and in working on a number
of technical reports and short articles. One article, “Recent Archeo-
logical Salvage Operations in the Missouri Basin,” was published in
the Missouri River Basin Progress Report, October-December, 1955,
and another, “ ‘Quill Flatteners’ or Pottery Modeling Tools,” was
published in the Plains Anthropologist, April 1956. Wheeler pre-
sented a paper on his work in the Oahe Dam area at the Plains Con-
ference in November and participated in a number of discussions
during the conference. He was elected chairman of the 14th Plains
Conference which will be held in Lincoln in November 1956. At the
end of the fiscal year Mr. Wheeler was at the Lincoln headquarters
working on reports.

60 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Cooperating institutions Several State and local institutions con-
tinued to cooperate in the Inter-Agency Salvage Program throughout
the year, although the shortage of funds for working agreements in
projects outside the Missouri Basin considerably reduced the activities.
Several State groups carried on independently but their investigations
were correlated with the general program. The New York State
Museum at Albany kept close check on projects in that State. The
Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan studied
the possible effect of proposed enlargements of the South Canal on
St. Marys River on archeological manifestations in that district. The
University of Minnesota made preliminary investigations relative to
sites that may be involved in the flood-control program for the
Mankato area. The Florida State Museum checked several proposed
canal routes in the northern part of Florida. The Ohio State Histor-
ical and Archeological Society continued salvage work in several
localities, and the Historical Society of Indiana included examination
of proposed reservoir areas in its general program for surveys in that
State. The University of California Archeological Survey did some
further work on projects for which it previously had agreements with
the National Park Service, and the Archeological Survey Association
of Southern California continued its volunteer efforts in the vicinity
of San Diego. In the Columbia Basin the University of Oregon did
additional digging at sites on the Oregon side of the Columbia River
at the Dalles Reservoir, while the University of Washington continued
its investigations on the Washington side.

The only work done under an agreement with the National Park
Service, except for that previously described for the Missouri Basin,
was that of the University of Missouri in the Table Rock Reservoir
on the White River in southern Missouri. <A special appropriation
for that project for the fiscal year made possible an extensive series
of investigations under the direction of Dr. Carl H. Chapman. Sites
in the Table Rock area are exceptionally numerous and represent a
variety of cultures. Considerable progress was made by Dr. Chapman
and his parties during the year.

ARCHIVES

The Bureau Archives continued during the year under the custody
of Mrs. Margaret C. Blaker. From June 4 to 6 Mrs. Blaker attended
the Special Libraries Association Convention in Pittsburgh, Pa.,
where copyright problems and the preservation, microfilming, catalog-
ing, and arranging of photographic and manuscript collections were

discussed.
MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS

The manuscript collections continue to be utilized by students.
Visitors consulted about 264 manuscripts, and reproductions of 70

SECRETARY’S REPORT 61

manuscripts were mailed out. In addition, 89 mail inquiries con-
cerning manuscripts were received and more than 200 manuscripts
were consulted by the archivist in preparing replies.

While examining these manuscripts, 93 of them were analyzed and
more fully described in anticipation of publishing a manuscript
catalog. Several descriptive lists of manuscripts relating to specific
subjects or tribes were prepared for distribution.

Additions to the collections included a manuscript translation of
the Book of Genesis into Choctaw by Rev. Cyrus Byington, dated
1862. This translation was received from Miss Marcia Walton of
New York City. Accompanying the gift were a number of photo-
graphs and news clippings relating to the Reverend Byington’s work;
some of these are for permanent deposit, while others have been lent
for copying only.

Just at the year’s end, Dr. Philip Drucker’s field notebooks and
unpublished manuscripts for the period 1937-55 were accessioned and
sorted. They cover ethnological and archeological work in Alaska,
the Northwest coast, California, Meso-America, and Micronesia. They
occupy about 20 manuscript boxes.

PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTIONS

A sustained interest in pictorial data relating to the American
Indian has been shown by authors, publishers, students, and others
who have continued to draw heavily on the Bureau’s photographic
collections. There were 294 inquiries and purchase orders for photo-
graphs, and 978 prints were distributed. In response to public inquiry,
the archivist prepared numerous lists that described photographs
available for specific subjects or tribes.

Public interest has also been demonstrated by the contribution of
additional Indian photographs to the Bureau’s collections.

Frank B. Shuler of Hamilton, Ohio, lent a group of 29 photographs
of Kiowa, Comanche, Caddo, Wichita, and Sioux Indians. These
photographs were made about 1900. Copy negatives of 17 of these
were made for Bureau files.

Through the courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Hugh N. Davis, Jr., of
Miami, Fla., the Bureau received 295 photographic prints of Seminole,
Cheyenne, and Alaskan Indians photographed during the years 1905-
52 by Deaconess Harriet M. Bedell, a missionary now residing in
Everglades City, Fla. Mr. and Mrs. Davis contributed their services
in making enlarged 8-x-10’’ prints from snapshot negatives lent
to them by Deaconess Bedell; the cost of the materials used was borne
by the Bureau.

Later in the year a collection of 450 snapshot negatives of Seminole
Indians, made principally by Stanley Hanson in the period 1927-31,
was lent to the Bureau by Robert Mitchell of Orlando, Fla., through

62 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Gene Stirling of Venice, Fla. Copy negatives of some 280 of these
were made. Enlargements of the remainder are being printed, the
work being about half completed at year’s end.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Tilustrative work for the Bureau of American Ethnology and the
River Basin Surveys consumed the major portion of the illustrator’s
time for the year. This included a great variety of work on charts,
graphs, maps, diagrams, photograph retouching, and other illustra-
tions for the Bureau and River Basin Surveys publications.

There were also charts, graphs, mechanical renderings, and illustra-
tions on a variety of other subjects prepared for other Smithsonian
departments.

EDITORIAL WORK AND PUBLICATIONS

There were issued 1 Annual Report and 1 Bulletin, as follows:

Seventy-second Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1954-1955.
ii + 24 pp. 1956.

Bulletin 163. The Diné: Origin myths of the Navaho Indians, by Aileen O’Bryan.
viii + 188 pp., 1 pl., 23 figs. 1956.

The following publications were in press at the close of the fiscal
year:

Bulletin 161. Seminole music, by Frances Densmore.
Bulletin 162. Guaymi grammar, by Ephraim S. Alphonse.
Bulletin 164. Anthropological Papers Nos. 49-56.

No. 49. The Ormond Beach Mound, east central Florida, by Jesse D.
Jennings, Gordon R. Willey, and Marshall T. Newman.

No. 50. Hair pipes in Plains Indian adornment, a study in Indian and
White ingenuity, by John C. Ewers.

No. 51. Observations on some nineteenth-century pottery vessels from the
Upper Missouri, by Waldo R. Wedel.

No. 52. Revaluation of the Eastern Siouan problem, with particular em-
phasis on the Virginia branches—the Occaneechi, the Saponi, and the
Tutelo, by Carl F. Miller.

No. 53. Archeological reconnaissance of Tabasco and Campeche, by Mat-
thew W. Stirling.

No. 54. Valladolid Maya enumeration, by John P. Harrington.

No. 55. Letters to Jack Wilson, the Paiute Prophet, written between 1908
and 1911, edited by Grace M. Dangberg.

No. 56. Factionalism at Taos Pueblo, New Mexico, by William N. Fenton.

Bulletin 165. Musie of Acoma, Isleta, Cochiti, and Zuni Pueblos, by Frances
Densmore.

Bulletin 166. River Basin Surveys Papers, No. 8. Excavations in the McNary
Reservoir Basin near Umatilla, Oregon, by Douglas Osborne.

Bulletin 167. Archeological investigations at the mouth of the Amazon, by Betty
J. Meggers and Clifford Evans.

Miscellaneous publications. List of publications of the Bureau of American
Ethnology, with index to authors and titles. Revised to June 30, 1956.

SECRETARY'S REPORT 63

Publications distributed totaled 17,018 as compared with 24,533 for

the fiscal year 1955.
COLLECTIONS
Acc. No.

208851. 4 specimens of birch bark bearing pictographs incised and etched by the
Passamaquoddy Indians of Maine and the Abnaki of New Brunswick.

209009. 35 vials and 39 envelopes of insects from Southampton and Walrus
Islands, 300 plants, mollusks, fossils, lemmings, and 38 mammals,
collected by Henry B. Collins.

FROM RIVER BASIN SURVEYS

207595. Archeological material consisting of pottery, stone, bone, glass, and
metal objects collected by reconnaissance parties of the Missouri
Basin Project in and about 16 reservoir areas in Nebraska, and human
skeletal material from 4 sites.

207596. Archeological specimens from North Dakota.

208180. 149 fresh-water mollusks from Nebraska and Wyoming, collected by
Carl F. Miller.

209283. Archeological specimens consisting of pottery, stone, bone, glass, and
metal objects collected by parties of the Missouri Basin Project, in
and about two sites in area of Fort Randall Reservoir, Charles Mix
County, S. Dak., and human skeletal material from 39CHT.

209694. Archeological material consisting of rim and body sherds from Clay
County, Kans.

209962. Archeological material consisting of pottery, stone, bone, and shell ob-
jects collected by reconnaissance parties of the Missouri Basin Project,
from two mound sites in South Dakota, 1947-48, human skeletal
material.

209963. Shell beads collected by reconnaissance parties of the Missouri Basin
Project from site in Stanley County, S. Dak., human skeletal
material.

210409. Archeological and human skeletal material from site in Fort Randall
Reservoir, S. Dak.

MISCELLANEOUS

Dr. John R. Swanton, Dr. Frances Densmore, Dr. Antonio J.
Waring, Jr., and Ralph S. Solecki continued as collaborators of the
Bureau of American Ethnology. Dr. John P. Harrington is continu-
ing his researches with the Bureau as research associate. Dr. William
C. Sturtevant, ethnologist, joined the staff of the Bureau on March
29, 1956.

Information was furnished during the past year by staff members in
reply to numerous inquiries concerning the American Indians—past
and present—of both continents. Many new descriptive lists and in-
formation leaflets were prepared in answer to requests for information
on the Bureau’s photographic and manuscript collections and other
subjects. There continued to be a constant demand for information,
published material, and photographs from teachers, particularly of

64 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

primary and secondary grades, from Scout organizations, and from
the general public. Material for use in writing term papers was in
frequent demand by high-school students who show an increasing
interest in this popular subject. On several occasions publishers con-
sulted various staff members regarding ethnological and archeological
problems, and the archivist regarding unpublished manuscripts and the
photograph collections. Specimens sent to the Bureau were identified
and data on them furnished for their owners.

Respectfully submitted.

M. W. Sriziine, Director.
Dr. Lronarp CARMICHAEL,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.

Report on the Astrophysical Observatory

Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on the oper-
ations of the Astrophysical Observatory for the fiscal year ended
June 30, 1956:

The Astrophysical Observatory includes two research divisions:
the Division of Astrophysical Research, for the study of solar and
other sources of energy impinging on the earth, and the Division of
Radiation and Organisms, for investigations dealing with radiation
as it bears directly or indirectly upon biological problems. Three
shops—for metalwork, woodwork, and optical electronic work—are
maintained in Washington to prepare special equipment for both
divisions, and a field station for solar observation is located at Table
Mountain, Calif.

DIVISION OF ASTROPHYSICAL RESEARCH

At the beginning of the fiscal year, the scientific headquarters of
the Division of Astrophysical Research were moved from Washing-
ton to Cambridge, Mass. In this new location, a close liaison with
Harvard University is expected to add to the research effectiveness
in astrophysics for the Smithsonian Institution. With this transfer
and the development of a working association with Harvard College
Observatory, a reevaluation of the basic scientific policies and goals
of the Astrophysical Observatory was undertaken. Because of the
present-day rapid progress in the physical sciences, the understand-
ing of the fundamental astrophysical processes of the sun, earth,
planets, and interplanetary medium has grown at an ever-increasing
rate. In addition, our mushrooming technology has become more
and more sensitive to phenomena of the solar system which were once
considered as of only academic interest. The Astrophysical Observa-
tory’s long tradition of active research in solar and terrestrial phe-
nomena and their interrelationships has laid a firm foundation upon
which will be based new research objectives including, besides solar
radiation, other phenomena of the solar system which also affect the
earth and its atmosphere. Energy sources other than the sun have
a profound effect on our atmosphere, on geophysical phenomena, and
on practical technological aspects of radio communication, the guid-
ance of missiles, and other practical considerations. Among the
sources of energy are corpuscular radiation from the sun, meteors,

65

66 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

cosmic rays, interplanetary gas, and radiation from without the solar
system.

This broadened research program of the Astrophysical Observa-
tory now embraces not only research in solar activity and its effects
upon the earth, but also meteoritic studies and studies of the higher
atmosphere. New methods of research, as they develop, will be in-
cluded in the program. For example, radioactivity and nuclear
processes will be utilized in the study of meteorites. Theoretical
research and magnetohydrodynamics will increase our understanding
of how solar variations and activity occur and how the energy from
these activities affect the earth’s magnetic field, produce air night
glow, the aurora borealis, and other phenomena of a geophysical
character.

The new Satellite Program of the International Geophysical Year,
sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and the National
Science Foundation, and in which the Astrophysical Observatory
has a very important part, promises a new and startling tool of re-
markable power in the study of solar-system and geophysical phe-
nomena. Such technological tools as may be developed will be in-
corporated in the working potential of the Astrophysical Observa-
tory. A restudy of plans and methods was an important first step.

Work on solar radiation—As reported last year, the quality of the
skies at the Montezuma station in Chile deteriorated to an intolerable
degree because of smoke introduced by smelting operations at nearby
copper mines. Consequently, the station was closed September 22,
1955. The scientific and new transportation equipment was moved
to Table Mountain in southern California. By the middle of winter
the three observers at that station, F. A. Greeley, A. G. Froiland, and
Stanley Aldrich, extended the observational program to include simul-
taneous observations of the sun from two similar arrays of radiation-
measuring equipment. In this fashion it will now be possible to check
the influence of instrumental variations upon the measurements of
solar radiation and atmospheric opacity.

However, the Table Mountain skies are also beginning to show
progressive deterioration from the smog from the Los Angeles urban
area. So far this has not been too disadvantageous, but probably the
transparency loss will eventually necessitate the acquisition of a new
observing station for solar radiation. Serious searches for a site
with clear skies have been conducted in recent years, but the time is
approaching when a conclusive investigation must be made of the
usable high-altitude locations that offer the necessary atmospheric
qualifications for precise solar measurements. It is possible that the
use of satellite vehicles for carrying instruments to measure solar radi-
ation will eventually obviate the need for ground stations by elim-

SECRETARY'S REPORT 67

inating the errors arising from atmospheric opacity. On the other
hand, the measurements of atmospheric opacity in the observing pro-
gram of the Astrophysical Observatory have become of increasing in-
terest to meteorologists and geophysicists in recent years. Records
from Table Mountain show clearly the increased opacity of the atmos-
phere arising from the Alaskan volcano in 1953. However, they show
no effect of increased opacity arising from the explosions of nuclear
or thermal nuclear bombs.

Meteoritic studies—Meteoritic studies have been a part of the
Smithsonian Institution’s scientific research program for the past 80
years. The Institution’s meteorite collection, which has been de-
veloped through these decades of exploration and study, is one of the
most outstanding in the world. In cooperation with meteorite spe-
cialists in the department of geology of the United States National
Museum, E. P. Henderson and the late Dr. W. F. Foshag, a freshly
oriented plan of meteoritic research has been explored. This new
program has been placed under the supervision of Dr. John S. Rine-
hart for the purpose of ascertaining the answers to numerous questions
concerning astrophysical dynamics. As a result, the following aspects
of the problem are now in course of consideration: Past and current
research pertaining to the nature and distribution of meteorite debris
and micrometeorites; the nature of meteorite craters; exterior and
terminal ballistics and other phenomena that relate to meteoritic im-
pact against the earth; and the extraterrestrial life of meteorites. All
these studies are directed toward answering astrophysical rather than
specific geologic questions.

Under the sponsorship of the United States Air Force, the Astro-
physical Observatory has initiated a program whose objective is to
develop a better understanding of the processes that cause ablation as
meteorites hurtle through the atmosphere. Effort thus far has been
confined (1) to renewed search of museum collections for specimens
that exhibit ablation, and (2) to a metallurgical examination of me-
teorites that show heat alteration effects caused by their passage
through the atmosphere.

In June 1956, Dr. J. S. Rinehart, Nicholas Matalas, R. O’Neil, and
R. Olson journeyed to the meteorite crater near Winslow, Ariz., in
order to investigate, by systematic sampling, miniscule spherules,
globules, and pieces of meteoritic matter in the soil around the crater.
The search will extend over an area of more than 100 square miles.
Magnetic means are being used to extract meteoritic material from
soil samples. Initial effort is being directed toward the development
of sampling techniques and the identification of material. The results
of the first survey will be used as the basis for further and more ex-
tensive exploration of the Arizona crater and other terrestrial me-

68 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

teorite craters. A long-term objective of the program is to arrive
at a better estimate of the rate of accretion of meteoritic material
by the earth.

Design and construction of a fluorescent X-ray micronanalyzer have
likewise been initiated and are now well under way. When completed
this instrument can be used to determine within a microscopic (5-
micron) area the concentration and distribution of the various chemi-
cal elements within a meteorite, without destruction of the sample.
The method will be applied first to the determination of nickel-iron
percentages in meteorites that have Widmanstaetten figures. A
knowledge of the distribution of nickel will be of considerable cos-
mological significance as related to the origin of meteorites.

Satellite Tracking Program—tThe United States National Com-
mittee of the International Geophysical Year under the National
Academy of Sciences and through the National Science Foundation
has assigned to the Smithsonian Institution the responsibility, and
also a grant of funds, for initiating and executing an optical research
program involving the tracking of the planned artificial earth’s satel-
lite. Dr. J. Allen Hynek has joined the project as associate director
in charge of the Optical Observing Program and will join the perma-
nent Smithsonian staff in July 1956.

The Satellite Tracking Program consists of two distinct parts: the
visual search and tracking program, of low-order accuracy, and the
photographic tracking program, of extremely high precision. The
two have a common denominator in the needs for a communication
system and a central computing bureau to provide ephemerides and
for the later analysis of scientific results attained from the tracking
of the satellites.

The precision optical program will be carried out by means of
special Schmidt cameras of aperture 20 inches, mirrors of aperture
30 inches, and focal length of 20 inches, for which a newly developed
optical system is being designed by Dr. James G. Baker. A unique
drive system for these cameras is being designed by Joseph Nunn
and associates to make possible the photography of a 15-inch sphere
at a distance of a thousand miles and a 8-foot sphere at the moon’s
distance during hours of deep twilight or darkness when the satellite
is illuminated by the sun. A tracking accuracy of some 2 seconds of
arc normal to the path of the satellite on the sky and some 6 to 10
seconds along the direction of motion with a time precision of one-
thousandth of a second is anticipated in the operation of these cameras.

A number of observing stations, possibly 12, each of which will
include one of these cameras and a precise crystal-clock system, will
be established at intervals around the globe. Observations of artificial
earth satellites from such a system of stations, combined with an

SECRETARY’S REPORT 69

accurate computing system, should make possible the calculation of
the position of the satellite at any moment and the relative position
of the stations in respect to each other and to the center of the earth
with a precision of some 30 feet. Not only is such precision tracking
essential to the general scientific value of the Artificial Satellite Pro-
gram, but it will lead specifically to precise determination of the
atmospheric density and pressure as a function of height to an altitude
of some 300 to 500 miles above the earth’s surface. It will provide
a precise interconnection among the geodetic networks of the conti-
nents and islands, the inclination of these networks with respect to
the true geoid, the shape of the earth, certain gravimetric data con-
cerning the distribution of mass in the earth, and other geophysical
information of great significance.

The visual tracking program will have two aspects: (1) Acquisition
of a satellite in case the electronic tracking equipment contained in
the satellite should fail, as well as possible tracking near the end of
a satellite’s lifetime as it plummets through the lower atmosphere; and
(2) a broad contribution to general interest in scientific research by
young potential scientists as well as the general public. The visual
observations will be carried out by a large number of nonprofessional
observers under the general direction of Dr. Armand N. Spitz. It is
expected that between one and two thousand observers, usually amateur
astronomers, will be activated in this program, but many times that
number will follow the program in considerable detail and gain scien-
tific understanding and interest because of it.

The organization of the visual observation part of the program
is well under way, and the first of a series of bulletins has been pre-
pared and issued to more than 20,000 potential observers.

The participation of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
in the Artificial Satellite Program follows two traditions that we
cherish in the Smithsonian Institution. We are participating as
pioneers in the progress of science, comparable to Dr. Langley’s origi-
nal research in the flight of heavier-than-air craft. We are also
promoting international interest in the Satellite Tracking Program
which is in keeping with the worldwide pattern of contributions to
knowledge by the Smithsonian Institution.

DIVISION OF RADIATION AND ORGANISMS
(Prepared by R. B. Witurow, Chief of the Division)

The major activities of this division have been concerned with
fundamental physiological and biochemical research on the role of
light in regulating growth in higher plants. Seed germination, seed-
ling growth, flowering, and the development of what is commonly
referred to as a “normal plant” are controlled by light. Pigments

70 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

within the organism absorb the light and convert it into chemical bond
energy and thus initiate a chain of events that produce the observed
growth effects. In most instances, relatively little light is necessary.
This is in contrast to the photosynthesis of sugars where very high
intensities are required for optimal results. There is a similar group
of light-controlled reactions in animals which regulate many phases
of reproductive behavior. Plans have been prepared for extending
the findings and technics developed in the laboratories to this phase of
animal physiology.

The regulatory plant photochemical reactions may be divided into
two general groups: (1) Those controlled chiefly by red and far-red
light; and (2) those controlled principally by blue light. The
respective pigment systems channel the energy into different biochemi-
cal pathways and therefore induce entirely different physiological
responses.

Photomorphogenesis—Included in the photochemical reactions
initiated by red light are formative growth processes in seedlings, such
as the ability to form normal] leaves and the disappearance of the stem
hook that often is present on germination. Any one of these responses,
among many others, can be used as quantitative bioassays of the photo-
reactions. In these laboratories we have developed a technic based on
the rate of angular opening of the excised stem hook or arch that
appears in seedlings of beans and other dicotyledonous plants that
have been grown in complete darkness. If the hook portion of the
stem is cut from the seedling and exposed to red light, and then
returned to darkness, the hook will open in the following 20 hours to
an angle that is proportional to the logarithm of the incident red-light
energy. Last year it was determined that the most effective region of
the spectrum for producing this response was in the red at 660 mp.
If, after an exposure to red light, the hook is treated with far-red
energy from 700 to 750 mp, much of the effectiveness of the initial red
treatment is inhibited or “reversed.” Dr. W. Klein, Dr. R. B.
Withrow, and V. Elstad have completed the action spectrum of this
far-red reversal phenomenom and have found that the maximum
reversal occurs at 710 and 730 mp, with a weak maximum at 640 mp. The
reversal action has been determined at 27 points in the spectrum from
365 to 800 mp in the following incident energy series: 25, 10, 7.5, and
5.0 millijoules (mj). The percentage reversal is directly propor-
tional to the far-red incident energy, up to values of 10 mj which pro-
duces about 85 percent reversal. This linear response is in contrast
to logarithmic function of the red-light induction reaction.

Phototropism.—Another expression of photoregulatory processes
in plants is bending toward a light source, or phototropism. Previ-
ously, Dr. E. S. Johnston of this laboratory had found the action

SECRETARY'S REPORT -7]

spectrum of this response in oat plants to have two maxima in the blue.
However, because of poor resolution of the reaction in this region,
subsequent disagreement has arisen and it has not yet been clearly
established what pigment absorbs the incident energy and initiates
the response. There are several blue-absorbing pigments, including
the carotenoids and flavins, with absorption characteristics that might
qualify them as candidates for the role of the photoactivated pigment.
For example, beta-carotene has absorption maxima in the blue at
435 and 470 mp and riboflavin at 445 and 475 mp. Both pigments are
commonly found in plants.

However, the flavins and the carotenoids have very clear-cut spectral
differences in the near ultraviolet. Riboflavin has a strong absorp-
tion maximum at 370 mp, but the carotenoids do not absorb in this
region. Therefore, the effectiveness of various ultraviolet wave-
lengths in promoting phototropic curvature might be used as an
indicator as to which of these two pigment types is involved. When
the pigment system responsible is identified, it will be possible to
resolve the initial steps of the chemical reactions leading to curvature.

In order to establish the effectiveness spectrum, a large-grating
monochromator, for irradiation in the near ultraviolet and visible,
has been built in the Observatory shops. Calibration of the equip-
ment has been completed and Walter Shropshire has standardized
bioassay technics, using curvatures of the oat and barley coleoptiles
to measure the effectiveness spectrum. Although positive phototropic
curvatures have been obtained in the near ultraviolet in preliminary
studies, a complete monochromatic analysis of the action spectrum in
the entire visible and near ultraviolet appears necessary before the
photoactivated pigment system can be clearly identified.

Photochemical synthesis of plant pigments—Dr. J. Wolff and L.
Price have found that the complete chlorophyll molecule is not formed
immediately on irradiation of leaves of plants grown in the dark, as
heretofore postulated. Instead, protochlorophyll, the green pigment
present in very low concentrations in leaves of dark-grown seedlings,
is rapidly converted by light to chlorophyllide a. This pigment is
subsequently linked to the long chain alcohol, phytol, by the action of
the enzyme chlorophyllase in a strictly nonphotochemical thermal re-
action. Chlorophyllide a and chlorophyll a have identical absorption
spectra in the visible, but differ in chemical properties. Protochloro-
phyll has a different absorption spectrum from chlorophyllide a, yet
the two pigments have similar chemical properties. These facts indi-
cate that what has been commonly termed “protochlorophyll” is actu-
ally protochlorophyllide.

Modification of X-ray damage by visible radiant energy.—The
damaging effects of X-rays and other forms of ionizing radiation to liv-

412575576

2 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

ing cells are due chiefly to the breaking of the chromosomes and inter-
ference with normal cell division. Young rapidly dividing cells are
most susceptible to X-ray damage and evidence three types of aberra-
tions—chromatid break, isochromatid break, and chromatid exchange.
In the past year, Dr. C. C. Moh and Dr. R. B. Withrow continued the
study of the effect of infrared, far-red, and red radiant energy on the
modification of chromosomal damage induced by X-rays, using root
tips of the horse bean, Victa faba, as the chief experimental material.

It has been found that infrared, from 820 to 13850 mp, causes no
significant increase in X-ray damage to the chromosomes. However,
far-red at 710 to 820 mp did significantly increase the frequency of
chromosomal aberrations induced by X-rays. The three types of chro-
mosomal aberrations were not effected equally, however. Chromatid
exchanges increased 100 percent; chromatid breaks, 34 percent; iso-
chromatid breaks were increased very little, if at all. These results
were substantiated with the pollen of the 7’radescantia flower where
the chromosomes of the microspores showed similar results.

When wavelengths from 680 to 820 mp (involving red and far-red
radiant energy) were used, the ability of far-red to increase the X-ray
damage was not secured. Thus, apparently, when red and far-red
are combined in proper proportions, the two regions nullify each other.
This could explain the negative results obtained by several workers
who irradiated the biological material with filters that did not sharply
absorb all the red.

Red radiant energy (wavelengths from 630 to 680 mp), when used
alone prior to X-irradiation, increased the yield of chromatid ex-
changes significantly, but chromatid and isochromatid breaks were con-
sistently decreased by 10 to 20 percent. This action of red radiant
energy on X-ray-induced chromosomal breaks is not yet clear. It is
suggested that the red radiant energy might accelerate the rejoining
process after the breakage occurs.

PUBLICATIONS

During the current year the following publication concerned with
the work of the Division of Astrophysical Research was issued by the
Smithsonian Institution:

Leading operations of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, 1895 to 1955,
by C. G. Abbot. Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 131, No. 1, Sept. 22, 1955. (Publ.
4229.)

The following publications by Dr. F. L. Whipple appeared in var-
ious other scientific journals:

On meteors. Proc. Astron. Soc. Pacific., vol. 67, pp. 367-886, 1955.

Photographic a-Capricornid meteors (with F. W. Wright and L. G. Jacchia).
Astron. Journ., vol. 61, p. 61, 1956.

SECRETARY'S REPORT 73

A research program based on the optical tracking of artificial earth satellites

(with J. A. Hynek). Proc. Inst. Radio Eng., vol. 44, pp. 760-764, 1956.

On meteors and rainfall (with G. S. Hawkins). Journ. Meteorol., vol. 13, No. 3,

pp. 236-240, June 1956.

A new series, Smithsonian Contributions to Astrophysics, has been
initiated to provide a proper outlet for the research contributions of
the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and to provide an addi-
tional avenue of publication for a limited number of contributions by
other investigators with interests in common with those of our ob-
servatory. These contributions will contain research papers specifi-
cally in astrophysics, with particular attention to problems of the sun,
the earth, and the solar system.

The first number of the Smithsonian Contributions to Astrophysics,
in galley proof at the end of June, is entitled “New Horizons in
Astronomy.” It is a collection of scientific papers by leaders in the
various fields of astronomy who present their concepts of the research
problems that should prove most important to the advancement of
astronomy during the next decade or two. These papers are published
with partial support by the National Science Foundation. An ad hoc
committee of the National Science Foundation, on the “Needs of
Astronomy,” has devoted its attention to methods of increasing the
potential of astronomy. One of the methods is the publication of the
“New Horizons” series of papers. There is hope that the Smithsonian
Contributions to Astrophysics will serve to further our understanding
and appreciation of this part of the universe in which we are privileged
to live.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

During the course of the year, the Director attended and contributed
to the following international congresses: The International Feder-
ation of Astronautics at Copenhagen, Denmark, in August 1955; a
symposium on radio astronomy at the Jodrell Bank Experimental
Station, University of Manchester, England, in August 1955; and the
Congress of the International Astronomical Union held at Dublin,
Ireland, in early September 1955. He was appointed President of
the Subcommission on Meteoritics of the [AU commission No. 22.

In national science and defense, the Director contributed by serving
in the following capacities: Chairman of an ad hoc committee on
“Needs of Astronomy” on the Panel on Astronomy of the National
Science Foundation; chairman of a working group to set up a stand-
ard atmosphere for national and international use; as chairman of the
Panel on Rocketry of the International Geophysical Year, U. S.
Council of the National Academy of Sciences; member of the Tech-
nical Panel on the Earth Satellite Program of the International
Geophysical Year; member of the working group on the Tracking

74 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

of Artificial Earth Satellites under the above panel; associate editor
of the Astronomical Journal; and member of the Panel of the Atmos-
phere of the Scientific Advisory Board to the Air Force.
Respectfully submitted.
F. L. Wuteete, Director.
Dr. Lrtonarp CARMICHAEL,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.

Report on the National Collection of
Fine Arts

Str: Ihave the honor to submit the following report on the activities
of the National Collection of Fine Arts for the fiscal year ended June

30, 1956.
SMITHSONIAN ART COMMISSION

The 33d annual meeting of the Smithsonian Art Commission was
held in the Regents Room of the Smithsonian Building on Tuesday,
December 5, 1955. Members present were: Paul Manship, chairman;
Robert Woods Bliss, vice chairman; John E. Graf, acting secretary;
John Nicholas Brown, Gilmore D. Clarke, David E. Finley, Lloyd
Goodrich, Walker Hancock, Charles H. Sawyer, Stow Wengenroth,
Archibald G. Wenley, Lawrence Grant White, Andrew Wyeth, and
Mahonri Young. Thomas M. Beggs, Director, and Paul V. Gardner,
curator of ceramics, National Collection of Fine Arts, were also
present.

Dr. Finley, chairman, reported that the executive committee had
met on November 18, 1955. Those present were: Mr. Clarke, Mr.
Wenley, Mr. Manship, Dr. Carmichael, ex officio, and Mr. Beggs.
Various means of acquiring works by living artists were discussed.
Existing membership of the Commission was considered, and it was
suggested that at its annual meeting the present imbalance between
its three categories of membership (artists, experts, and men from
civic life) be corrected by strengthening representation of public in-
terest. Acting as a nominating committee, at the request of Mr.
Manship, the executive committee suggested a list of officers and mem-
bers for new terms. Following this report, the Commission voted to
recommend to the Smithsonian Board of Regents the reelection of
Lloyd Goodrich, Walker Hancock, Lawrence Grant White, and
Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr., for the usual 4-year period.

The following officers were elected for the ensuing year: Paul
Manship, chairman; Robert Woods Bliss, vice chairman ; and Leonard
Carmichael, secretary.

The following were elected members of the executive committee for
the ensuing year: David E. Finley, chairman; Robert Woods Bliss.
Gilmore D. Clarke, and George Hewitt Myers. Paul Manship, as
chairman of the Commission, and Leonard Carmichael, as secretary
of the Commission, are ex-officio members of the executive committee.

75

76 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Mr. Beggs pointed out that gifts of valuable art objects will not be
received until exhibition space of the National Collection of Fine Arts
is noticeably increased. He stated that since the National Gallery
of Art now collects and superbly exhibits the art of the past, the
proper function of the National Collection of Fine Arts should be the
acquisition of meritorious examples of painting, sculpture, and design
by living artists. The Ranger Fund of the National Academy of
Design establishes a precedent for placing such works of art in other
institutions until re-called for use in the National Collection of Fine
Arts. Until a new Smithsonian Gallery of Art is built, therefore,
accessions by gift, as well as by purchase, might be lent if donations
were made with that understanding. The advantage of purchase
prize competitions was discussed, and possible circulation of selected
items from these by the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service
was mentioned. The urgent need for space in a new building to house
all these services was cited.

Mr. Goodrich recalled that at the last annual meeting discussion
concerning the Smithsonian Gallery of Art had not been completely
resolved and presented a resolution which was unanimously accepted
as follows:

Whereas the Congress of the United States approved a Joint Resolution on
May 17, 1938, titled Public Resolution No. 95, 75th Congress, providing that a
suitable tract of public land in the District of Columbia between Fourth and
Fourteenth Streets and Constitution and Independence Avenues should be as-
signed as a site for the Smithsonian Gallery of Art, that appropriate designs
for a building for the Gallery should be secured, the sum of $40,000 being appro-
priated for this purpose, and that the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution
should be authorized to solicit and receive funds from private sources to meet
the cost of construction of such a building, to purchase works of art, conduct
exhibitions, and carry on other related activities; and whereas a competition
for designs for such a building was held by the Smithsonian Gallery of Art Com-
mission ; therefore be it

Resolved, that the Smithsonian Art Commission strongly favors the early
eonstruction of such a building; that the Commission believes that if this is to
be accomplished, funds must be appropriated by the Congress in addition to
donations from private sources; and that the Commission requests that the
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution transmit this resolution to the Regents
of the Institution and to other interested persons.

Mr. Brown proposed the following motion which was carried
unanimously :

It is moved that the executive committee be requested to take under advise-
ment the program for the new building and, in consultation with the Secretary

of the Smithsonian Institution, define the purposes and the scope of the much
desired new building.

The Commission recommended acceptance of the following objects:

Oil, Brooding Silence, by John F. Carlson, N. A. (1875-1945). Henry Ward
Ranger Bequest.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 77

Three miniatures, A Gentlewoman, Lady with Blue Hair Ribbon, and Lady
with Pearls in Hair, by Hattie E. Burdette (?-1955). Gift of George F. Linkins.

A German antique cabinet and a collection of 31 pieces of glass, mostly Ger-
man and Bohemian from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Bequest of
Henry Osthoff.

Two award-winning pieces from the Fifth International Exhibition of Ceramic
Art, 1955; sgraffito bowl, by Roger D. Corsaw, winner of the Frank A. Jelleff
award; and a green bowl, by Cynthia Wilder Mott, winner of the Popular
Ceramics Magazine award. Gift of the Kiln Club.

Three bronze busts, offered by the sculptors to the Smithsonian In-
stitution—Dr. Charles Greeley Abbot, by Alicia Neathery; Dr. Albert
Schweitzer, by Leo Cherne; and Daniel Carter Beard, by Nickolai
V. Dimitriefi—were recommended for addition to the Smithsonian
collection, the latter two for transfer to the division of medicine and
public health and the division of civil history, respectively.

THE CATHERINE WALDEN MYER FUND

Five miniatures, watercolor on ivory, were acquired from the fund
established through the bequest of the late Catherine Walden Myer,
as follows:

101. Richard Yates (1732-1808), attributed to John Ramage (1748-1802).

102. Mrs. Richard Yates (nee Catherine Brass) (1735-?), attributed to John
Ramage.

103. Lawrence Reid Yates (brother of Richard) (?-1796), by Walter Robert-
son, after Gilbert Stuart.

104. Mrs. Elizabeth Pollock Hartigan, attributed to Walter Robertson.

Nos. 101 through 104 were acquired from Capt. Edward E. Lull, U. S. N. R.,
Norfolk, Va.

105. Mrs. Benjamin Silliman (Harriet Trumbull) (?-1850), attributed to
Henry Colton Shumway (1807-1884) ; from Spencer R. McCulloch, Kirkwood, Mo.

WITHDRAWAL BY OWNERS

Twenty-two bronzes, 20 by Frederic Remington, lent in 1947,
Paleolithic Woman, by Sally James Farnham, lent in 1947, and
Destiny of the Red Man, by Adolph A. Weinman, lent in 1950, were
withdrawn by the R. W. Norton Art Foundation, Shreveport, La.,
and taken to the Remington Art Memorial, Ogdensburg, N. Y., on
December 8, 1955.

Five family portraits, Lady Standing by Tombstone (Henrietta
Gordon), signed Martin, and Lucy Walters and the Duke of Mon-
mouth, said to be by Sir Peter Lely, lent by the Bruce Corporation
(Ltd.) of Kildary, Scotland, and Wilmington, Del., through Sir
Charles Ross in 1926; Hon. Grizel Ross, said to be by William Hogarth,
lent by Lady Ross in 1949, and Charles II, and Earl] of Lauderdale,
by undetermined artists, lent by her in 1951, were withdrawn by Lady
Ross for shipment to Balnagown Castle, Ross-shire, Scotland, on
February 28, 1956.

78 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Four hundred and sixty-seven Chinese jade ornaments, 111 Chinese
snuff bottles, 45 Chinese mirrors, 1 plate, and 3 bowls, lent by Dr.
Edwin Kirk in 1943 and 1944, were withdrawn by Mrs. Kirk on

March 29, 1956.
ART WORKS LENT

The following art works, oil paintings on canvas unless otherwise
noted, were lent for varying periods:

To the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Washington,
ID BX OSE
Suly.d, 1 90ne See. Friendly Neighbors, by Alfred Howland.
Head of a Woman, by Jean Gustave Jacquet.
Head of a Woman, by Hisman Semonowski.
Queen Henrietta Maria, Wife of Charles I, in
the manner of Anthony Van Dyck.
May 24, 29562 £2 = Sess Francis James Child, by Leila Usher. (Plaster
bas-relief. )
American Hagle, by undetermined sculptor.
(Plaster cast.)
Madonna with Halo of Stars, by undetermined
artist.
November, by Dwight W. Tryon.
To David Reasoner, as executor of the estate of Abbott H. Thayer, and Charles
M. Plunket, Washington, D. C.:
AU OUSE Oe GoD See Two Hooded Warblers, by Abbott H. Thayer.
11 cardboard folders containing sketches made
by Abbott H. Thayer during his study of Pro-
tective Coloration in the Animal Kingdom.
To the Naval Historical Foundation, Washington, D. C.:
ATIOTSG Hae OD) = ee Portrait of Stephen Decatur, by Gilbert Stuart.
(Returned May 1, 1956.)
To the Department of Defense, Washington, D. C.:
ATCUST 20,100 sees The Rapids, by W. Elmer Schofield.
Tohickon, by Daniel Garber.
To the Museum of the City of New York, New York, N. Y., for a special exhibi-
tion “Four Centuries of Italian Influence in New York”:
September 15, 1955__-___- The Street Shrine, by Jerome Myers. (Re-
turned January 20, 1956.)
To The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa., for its Centennial
Exhibition:
September 27, 1955_______ Cliffs of the Upper Colorado River, Wyoming
Territory, by Thomas Moran. (Returned
November 16, 1955.)
To the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Washington, D. C.:
October’ 4, 19552—- 22 The Grand Canal, Venice, by Gabrini.
Figure Group, by O. Lear.
Dr. George Washington Carver, by Betsy Graves
Reyneau.
Rockwell Studio, by Macowin Tuttle.

SECRETARY'S REPORT 79

To the Department of Justice, Washington, D. C.:
November 21, 1955_______ Mrs. Tarbell as a Girl, by Edmund C. Tarbell.
(Permission granted by owner, Mrs. Josephine
Tarbell Ferrell.)

November 22, 1955_--___-_- Gen. Albert J. Myer, by G. P. A. Healy. (Re-
turned January 24, 1956.)
January 24, 1956________. Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, by Julian Scott.

Hon. Charles Evans Hughes, by Harry L. Raul.
(Plaster bas-relief, bronzed.)
To the International Business Machines Corporation, New York, N. Y., for
casting in bronze:
November 28, 1955_______ Joseph Henry, by Herbert Adams. (Plaster
bust.) (Returned February 15, 1956.)
To the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service, Washington, D. C., to be
included in an exhibition “Pennsylvania Painters”:

December 6, 1955_---~_--. Cliffs of the Upper Colorado River, Wyoming
Territory, by Thomas Moran.
December 20, 1955_______. Mary Abigail Willing Coale, by Thomas Sully.

To the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Va., to be included in a special
exhibition “Portraits of Virginia-born Presidents” :
Janmaryols, 1956.22. 232 President John Tyler, by G. P. A. Healy. (Re-
turned February 15, 1956.)
To the Federal Power Commission, Washington, D. C.:
Rebruary 2a, 1956e222"—: John Burroughs, by Walter Beck.
September, by William A. Coffin.
After a Storm, Amagansett, by Arthur T. Hill.
To the Alexandria Association, Alexandria, Va., for an exhibition “Our Town,
1749-1865” :
PAD lle Oe Ob Gio aa eee Miniature, John Gadsby, by Benjamin Trott.
Miniature, Member of the Washington Family,
attributed to James Peale.
Miniature, John Parke Custis, by Charles Willson
Peale.
Miniature, Martha “Patty” Custis, by Charles
Willson Peale. (Permission to lend the Cus-
tis miniatures was granted by the owners.)
(Returned May 29, 1956.)
To the Department of State, Washington, D. C.:

Maree lOnG se sass aoe Triptych, by Kano Tsunenobu.
Scroll, Tiger and Cub, by Mr. Whang Jang Har.
une) 20st OOH a eee Hindu Merchants, by Edwin Lord Weeks.
To the Interstate Commerce Commission, Washington, D. C.:
Asai yesGe Dia US ts he Male Wood Duck in a Forest Pool, by Abbott H.
Thayer.
June 26, L9>Ge sees Male Wood Duck, by Abbott H. Thayer.

LOANS RETURNED

Oil, Abraham Lincoln, by George H. Story, lent March 15, 1955, te
the Department of Justice, was returned November 22, 1955.

80 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Oil, Andrew Jackson, by Ralph E. Earl, lent September 20, 1949, to
the Department of State, was returned November 30, 1955.

Oil, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, by Capt. Sir Oswald Birley, lent
June 29, 1955, to the Bureau of the Budget, was returned November
30, 1955.

Two oils, Charles G. Abbot, by Samantha L. Huntley, and Charles
D. Walcott, by Hattie Burdette, lent April 17, 1953, to the National
Academy of Sciences, were returned November 30, 1955.

Oil, Samuel P. Langley, by Robert G. Hardie, lent May 1, 1950, to
the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory of the National Advisory Com-
mittee for Aeronautics, Langley Field, Va., was returned December
2, 1955.

Oil, Man in White (Dr. Henry S. Drinker), by Cecilia Beaux, lent
December 7, 1954, to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Phila-
delphia, Pa., was returned December 15, 1955.

Oil, Early Spring, by Alexander T. Van Laer, lent November 10,
1953, to the Department of State, was returned January 16, 1956.

Oil, Summer, by Charles H. Davis, lent September 17, 1954, to The
White House, was returned April 4, 1956.

Oil, Stephen Decatur, by Gilbert Stuart, lent August 11, 1955, to
the Naval Historical Foundation, was returned May 1, 1956.

SMITHSONIAN LENDING COLLECTION

Oil, Grand Canyon, by Carl Oscar Borg (1879-1947), a gift of
Mrs. Martin O. Elmberg, was accepted December 6, 1955.

Two hundred and seventeen unframed oils, by Frank W. Stokes
(1858-1955), to be known as the Arthur Curtis James and Robert
Curtis Ogden Memorial Collection, were added. One hundred and
thirty-five were received July 19, 1954; 76 on April 5, 1955; and 6 on
May 18, 1955.

The following paintings were lent for varying periods:

To the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Washington,
DACrs

Afadhy tsps (Slats eee Se ee Hippolyte Dreyfus, by Alice Pike Barney.
La Concord, by Edwin Scott.
Place de la Concord, No. 2, by Edwin Scott.
Porte St. Martin, No. 1, by Edwin Scott.
Rue de Village, by Edwin Scott.
Rue des Pyramides, by Edwin Scott.
Rue San Jacques, by Edwin Scott.
Self Portrait, by Edwin Scott.

Mayi24 1195642222 Marine, by Edwin Scott.
The Seine at Paris, by Hdwin Scott.

SECRETARY'S REPORT Sl

To the Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.:

Ase AR oppo I fs eae ae A. P. B. in Painting Robe, by Alice Pike Barney.
Porte St. Denis, by Edwin Scott.
Somnolence, by Edwin Scott.
Study of Seated Woman, by Alice Pike Barney.
Mme. I. D. C., by Alice Pike Barney.
KE. P. (Evalina Palmer), by Alice Pike Barney.
Italian Woman and Child, by Alice Pike Barney.
Italian Woman at Foot of Steps, by Edwin Scott.
La Madeleine, No. 1, by Edwin Scott.
Notre Dame in Winter, by Edwin Scott.
Old Dwelling, Paris, by Edwin Scott.
St. Germain des Pres, No. 1, by Edwin Scott.
(The last nine were returned July 27, 1955.)
To the Bio-Sciences Information Exchange, Washington, D. C.:
olye26 61905252 2 Minnete and Minet, by Alice Pike Barney.
The Visitor (Mrs. Richard P. McCuilough), by
Alice Pike Barney.
Endymion, by Alice Pike Barney.
The Dimple, by Alice Pike Barney.
Little Girl, by Alice Pike Barney.
Hail Fellow, Well Met, by Alice Pike Barney.
November 2, 1955______- An Oriental, by Alice Pike Barney.
Fantasy, by Alice Pike Barney
Gladys, by Alice Pike Barney.
Hippolyte Thom, by Alice Pike Barney.
Laura in Hat, Profile, by Alice Pike Barney.
Natalie in Greens, by Alice Pike Barney.
Peggy, by Alice Pike Barney.
Romance, by Alice Pike Barney.
To the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Washington, D. C.:
October 4,°1955__—-_ Musketeer on Guard, by A. Arrunategin.
St. Germain des Pres, No. 1, by Edwin Scott.
The Bali Temple Festival, by Maurice Sterne.
To the Department of Justice, Washington, D. C.:
November 21, 1955______ Mountain and Valley, by James Henry Moser.
Notre Dame in Winter, by Edwin Scott.
La Madeleine, No. 1, by Edwin Scott.
Church of St. Germain des Pres, by Edwin Scott.
Church and Lake, by Henry Bacon.
To the Federal Power Commission, Washington, D.C.:

February 23, 1956____-- An Evening Effect, Greenland, by Frank W. Stokes.
To the Interstate Commerce Commission, Washington, D. C.:
June 20; 1956222 === The Placid Potomac, by William H. Holmes

Greenland, by Frank W. Stokes.

ALICE PIKE BARNEY MEMORIAL FUND

Additions to the principal during the year amounting to $1,824.37
have increased the total invested sums in this fund to $36,428.22.

82 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

THE HENRY WARD RANGER FUND

No. 176, On Strike, by Robert A. Hitch (1920- ), purchased
by the National Academy of Design March 24, 1954, was assigned by
the Academy to the Hudson River Museum at Yonkers, Yonkers,
N. Y., on December 3, 1955.

According to a provision in the Ranger bequest that paintings pur-
chased by the Council of the National Academy of Design from the
fund provided by the Henry Ward Ranger Bequest, and assigned to
American art institutions, may be claimed during the 5-year period
beginning 10 years after the death of the artist represented, four
paintings were re-called for action of the Smithsonian Art Commission
at its meeting December 6, 1955.

No. 28, Brooding Silence, by John F. Carlson, N. A., listed earlier in this report,
was accepted by the Smithsonian Art Commission to become a permanent
accession.

No. 36, Midsummer, by William S. Robinson, N. A. (1861-1945), assigned in
1956 to the George Washington University, Washington, D. C.

No. 100, Rhododendron, by H. Dudley Murphy, N. A. (1867-1945), assigned
in 1932 to the University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Okla.

No. 107, The Blue Jar, by Cullen Yates, N. A. (1866-1945), assigned in 1954
to the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences, Norfolk, Va.

The last three paintings were returned to the institutions to which
they had been assigned by the National Academy of Design, as
indicated.

SMITHSONIAN TRAVELING EXHIBITION SERVICE

Seventy-two exhibitions were circulated during the past season, 71
in the United States and 1 abroad, as follows:

UNITED STATES

Paintings and Drawings

Title Source

American Indian Painting__._________ Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Okla.

American Natural Painters________ —. Galerie St. Etienne and private collec-
tions.

A Century and A Half of Painting Government of Argentina; Argentine

in Argentina. Embassy; private collections.

Asi See: Myself. 22... == = ae Ge Junior Arts and Activities; Galerie
St. Etienne.

Austrian Drawings and Prints_______ Albertina, Vienna; Austrian Embassy.

Paintings by Austrian Children______ Superintendent of Schools in Vienna;
Austrian Embassy.

California eainting =< 2 eee Municipal Art Center, Long Beach, Calif.

Paintings by George Catlin__________. Smithsonian Institution, Department of

Anthropology.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 83

Children’s Paintings from Forty-five
Countries IV.
Children’s Paintings from Forty-five | Embassy of Denmark; Friendship Among
Countries V. Children and Youth Organization.
Children’s Paintings from Forty-five
Countries VI.

Children’s Paintings from Japan.__._. United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization.
Dthiopian,Paintingss=— 22.24 - = George Washington University; Dr.

Bruce Howe; Embassy of Ethiopia.
Watercolors and Drawings by Ga- Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore; Rosen-

varni. wald Collection, National Gallery of
Art.

Germans Dra winge2te sleet Ae German Government; German Museums
and private collections; German Em-
bassy.

Goya Drawings and Prints_____-____ Prado and Galdiano Museums, Madrid;

Spanish Hmbassy; Rosenwald Collec-
tion, National Gallery of Art.

Kialy = Rediscovered 2-22) 22 ss Munson-Williams-Proector Institute, Uti-
ca; dealers; museums; artists.

18th Century American Paintings Maxim Karolik; Museum of Fine Arts,

from the Karolik Collection. Boston.
Kokoschka’s “Magic Flute”__-_______ Minneapolis Institute of Arts; artist.
Pennsylvania Painters] = =s- Pennsylvania State University, State
College; museums; private collections.
BlaniePortnal tae: 2 sie. ae bre University of Colorado Museum, Boulder.
Work by Rudy Pozzatti (graphic Print Club of Cleveland; Cleveland
work also). Museum of Art; dealers; private
collections.

Watercolors and Prints by Redouté._. Luxembourg State Museum; private col-
lections; Legation of Luxembourg.

Sarrenb Watercolors. 2 2- 2e Ss Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Sealpelsiands 3] oe Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Contemporary Swedish Paintings_._._-_ National Museum, Stockholm; Swedish
Embassy.

Swedish Children’s Paintings________ National Museum, Stockholm; Swedish
Embassy.

Painters of Venezuela_______________ Ministry of Education at Caracas; Pan
American Union.

Watercolor Roddy --2-s**5- 4. ote Toledo Museum of Art; dealers; artists.

Graphic Arts

American Color Prints__.__.__-._--- Library of Congress.

Recent British Lithographs____-____ British Council; British Hmbassy.

Children’s Picture Books II_________ Washington Post Children’s Book Fair.

International Children’s Books__-__-_ Washington Post Children’s Book Fair;
Embassies.

Contemporary Japanese Prints______ Art Institute of Chicago; Japanese Asso-

ciation of Creative Printmakers.

84 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Japanese Woodcuts:=2—" 2 +e United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization.
Southern California Serigraphs__---_ Los Angeles Museum of Art; artists.
Woodeuts by Antonio Frasconi____-- The Print Club of Cleveland; The Cleve-
land Museum of Art; Weyhe Gallery;
artist.
Architecture

Contemporary Finnish Architecture__ Finnish-American Society; Association of
Finnish Architects; Finnish Embassy.

New luibrariesl222. 22-2. 2s American Institute of Architects.

The Re-Union of Architecture and American Institute of Architects.
Engineering.

Building in the Netherlands___-_-~- Bond of Netherlands Architects and

Bouwcentrum; Netherlands Embassy.
San Francisco Bay Region Archi- California Redwood Association; North-

tecture. ern California Chapter American In-
stitute of Architects.
Design
American Orattsmeny Wee aaa University of Illinois, Urbana; artists.
American Jewelry & Related Ob- Huntington Galleries, Huntington, W.
jects I. Va.; artists, Hickok Company.

Brazilian Landscape Architecture— Brazilian Embassy; artist.
New Designs by Roberto Burle
Marx.

Contemporary European Tapestry___. Contemporary Arts Association, Houston,
Tex.; artists; private collections; mu-
seums.

DutcheArtstandsiC cats See Department of Education, Arts and
Sciences in The Hague; Netherlands
Embassy.

European Glass Design__-__________ Georg Jensen, Inc.; designers.

Fifty Years of Danish Silver________ Georg Jensen, Inc.; Danish Embassy.

Hinnish’.Cratis 2: on 2 eee ae Waertsila-Arabia and other Finnish
Manufacturers; Finnish-American So-
ciety, Helsinki; Finnish Embassy ; art-
ists, Tapio Wirkkala and Rut Bryk.

Italian-Artsrand Cratis2=22)) 2.2] 2— Compagnia Nazionale Artigiana, Rome;
Bonniers; Altamira; Italian Embassy.

New Eneland: Cratts= 22-2 eee Worcester Art Museum ; Junior League of
Worcester, Inc.; The Craft Center,
Worcester, Mass.

Tapestries by Hannah Ryggen_______ Norwegian Government ; Embassy of Nor-
way; Norwegian Museums; private
collections.

Ceramics

Norwegian Ceramics___.._.._.______ Norwegian Embassy.

SECRETARY'S REPORT 85

Oriental Art

Chinese Gold and Silver from the Dr. Carl Kempe; Embassy of Sweden.
Kempe Collection.

Chinese Ivories from the Collection Sir Victor Sassoon.
of Sir Victor. Sassoon.

Folk Art

INSTT LW TE Pe i eo Sake Index of American Design, National Gal-
lery of Art.

Eskimo Art I Eskimo Art, Inc.; Canadian Handicrafts

Eskimo Art III fig vee ye hadae wat Guild.

Norwegian Decorative Painting______ Norwegian Artists Guild; Embassy of
Norway.

Popular Art in the United States_.__._Index of American Design, National
Gallery of Art.

Scrimshaw HExhibition-_._____.______~ Col. Leslie Buswell.

Photography

Ansel Adams Photographs 1933-19538__ Artist; George Eastman House, Roch-
ester.

Architectural Photography__-------- American Institute of Architects; Archi-
tectural Photographers Association;
George Eastman House.

Birds in Color, by Eliot Porter___--- Artist; American Museum of Natural
History.
Birds of Argentina, by Salvador Artist; Williams Foundation; American
Magno. Museum of Natural History.
This is the American Earth_-__----~-- Ansel Adams; Nancy Newhall; National

Park Service; California Academy of
Sciences ; Sierra Club.

WMENEGLATIe Vall ts ee ee ae ee Soprintendenza ai Monumenti Medievali e
Moderni, Venice; Dr. Michelangelo
Muraro; Italian Embassy.

Japan, by Werner Bischof__________- Magnum Photos, Ine.
Ethnology
Art and Magic of Arnhem Land__-_-_-_~_ Smithsonian Institution, Department of
Anthropology.
Carl Bodmer Paints the Indian Karl Viktor, Prinz zu Wied; German
Frontier. Embassy.

ABROAD, BY THE UNITED STATES INFORMATION AGENCY
Plastics in America
These displays were scheduled as an integral part of the programs

of 182 museums and galleries, located in 89 States, the District of
Columbia, Hawaii, Canada, and Cuba.

86 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Twenty-seven exhibitions are in preparation, 26 for circulation in
the United States and 1 abroad, as follows:

FOR CIRCULATION IN THE UNITED STATES

American Printmakers. German Art Books. .
A Half Century of Architectural Edu- Contemporary German Prints.
cation. Japan II by (second edition), Werner
Contemporary American Glass. Bischof.
American Jewelry and Related Objects Japanese Woodcuts II (second edition).
II (second edition). Landseape Architecture Today.
Argentine Children as Illustrators. A. J. Miller Watercolors.
Recent Work by Harry Bertoia. Perceptions.
Contemporary Brazilian Prints. Prints by Henri-Georges Adam and
Canadian Abstract Paintings. John Paul Jones.
Prints by Chodowiecki. Sixty Swedish Books.
Contemporary Danish Architecture. Swedish Rock Carvings.
Dutch Art, 1946-1956. Venetian Villas If (second edition).
Harly Prints and Drawings of Cali- The World of Edward Weston.
fornia. Fritz Winter and Hans Uhlmann.

German Architecture Today.

FOR CIRCULATION ABROAD BY THE UNITED STATES INFORMATION AGENCY

John Marin.

INFORMATION SERVICE AND STAFF ACTIVITIES

In addition to the many requests for information received by mail
and telephone, inquiries made in person at the office numbered 2,257.
Examination was made of 598 works of art submitted for identification.

An article, “The Golden Brush of Kristian Krekovic,” by Thomas
M. Beggs, was published in the December 1955 issue of the American
Artist and reprinted (revised and translated) in Cultura Peruana,
January 1956.

Special catalogs were published for the following six exhibitions:
Italian Arts and Crafts; German Drawings; Hannah Ryggen; Con-
temporary Finnish Architecture; Venetian Villas; and Finnish
Crafts—Tapio Wirkkala and Rut Bryk. The last five contained
acknowledgments written by Mrs. Annemarie H. Pope, chief of the
Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service.

In recognition of the significant contribution Mrs. Pope had made
to the re-establishment of cultural relations between the United States
and Germany, she was decorated with the Order of Merit of the Fed-
eral Republic of Germany by German Ambassador Heinz L. Krekeler
on April 28, 1956.

Mr. Beggs discussed the problem of a college museum for classical
antiquities at Howard University on December 13, 1955. He was
also a speaker at the biennial art banquet of the National League of
American Pen Women on April 8, 1956, at the Sheraton-Park Hotel.
He served as a judge for four exhibitions in the Washington area.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 87

Paul Vickers Gardner, curator of ceramics, attended the Wedgwood
International Seminar in Philadelphia on April 12 and 13, 1956, and
was moderator of a panel “The Editors Discuss Design,” at the con-
vention of the American Ceramic Society held in New York City
April 28 through 25, 1956.

Rowland Lyon, exhibits preparator, served on the juries of five
local exhibitions and one at La Plata, Md. He exhibited sculpture,
prints, and designs at the Silver Spring Art Gallery, Woodward and
Lothrop, the Artists Guild of Washington, and the Society of Wash-
ington Printmakers.

The canvases of 14 paintings were cleaned and varnished, and 33
frames were renovated. Under special contract, Glenn J. Martin
cleaned and restored 10 paintings. Nine paintings by George Catlin
were retouched and revarnished for the United States National Mu-
seum, and one was relined, cleaned, restretched, and retouched.

Mrs. Pope gave a talk, illustrated with slides showing various phases
of the work involved in preparing exhibitions for travel, to the Cul-
tural Attaches Luncheon at the Dupont Plaza Hotel on October 17,
1955, and attended meetings of the Southeastern Museums Directors’
Council at Chattanooga, Tenn., and Southeastern Museum Officials in
Nashville, October 10-15, 1955, and also the annual convention of the
American Association of Museums in Cincinnati, Ohio, May 26—June
1, 1956.

SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS

Thirteen special exhibitions were held during the year:

July 19 through August 28, 1955.—‘Paintings of Peru, Past and Present,’’ by
Kristian Krekovic, held under the sponsorship of His Excellency, the Ambassador
of Peru, Sr. Don Fernando Berckemeyer, consisting of 61 paintings. A cata-
log was printed with private funds.

September 1 through 24, 1955.—The Fifth Exhibition of Ceramic Art, spon-
sored by the Kiln Club of Washington, D. C., consisting of 177 pieces (71 by local
ceramic artists, 69 by invited American artists, and 37 by. artists of various
nations through their respective embassies or legations in Washington). Dem-
onstrations on the potter’s wheel were given daily. A catalog was privately
printed.

October 24, 1955, through January 8, 1956.—An exhibition of “Ceramics of the
World,” in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the
United Nations was shown in the lobby of the Natural History Building. It
included 71 objects from 43 nations and was assembled from articles in the
Division of Ethnology dating from about 1800 to the present.

November 26 through December 18, 1955.—An exhibition of 50 watercolors
of “Plant Portraits,” by Ida Hrybesky Pemberton (1890-1951), inaugurating the
tour scheduled by the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service. A catalog
was privately printed.

January 15 through February 2, 1956.—An exhibition of the Society of Wash-
ington Printmakers, consisting of 137 prints. A catalog was privately printed.

January 15 through February 2, 1956.—A Smithsonian Institution Traveling

412575—5 77

88 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Exhibition of 44 watercolors and prints, by Pierre Joseph Redouté (1759-1840),
held under the sponsorship of His Excellency, the Ambassador of Luxembourg,
Hugues Le Gallais. A catalog was privately printed.

February 19 through March 8, 1956.—The Twelfth Annual Exhibition of the
Artists Guild of Washington, consisting of 51 paintings. A catalog was privately
printed.

February 19 through March 8, 1956—The Fifth Biennial Exhibition of the
Washington Sculptors Group, consisting of 34 pieces of sculpture.

March 25 through April 15, 1956.—The Biennial Art Exhibition of the National
League of American Pen Women consisting of 198 paintings, sculpture, prints,
ceramics, textiles, jewelry, and other craftwork. A catalog was privately printed.

April 29 through May 17, 1956.—A Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exbibi-
tion of Finnish Crafts by Tapio Wirkkala and Rut Bryk, held under the sponsor-
ship of His Excellency, the Ambassador of Finland, and Madame Nykopp, con-
sisting of 130 pieces of sculpture, wood carvings, brass, glass, and silver designs
by Mr. Wirkkala and works in ceramic by Rut Bryk.

April 29 through May 17, 1956—A Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibi-
tion of 28 watercolors by Henry Wood Hiliott (1846-1930). These works consti-
tute the first pictorial record ever made of the seal herds that populated the
Pribilof Islands in the 1870's.

June $ through 24, 1956.—The Fifty-ninth Annual Exhibition of the Washington
Water Color Club consisting of 149 watercolors, etchings, and drawings. <A cata-
log was privately published.

June 2 through 24, 1956.—The Twenty-third Annual Hxhibition of The Minia-
ture Painters, Sculptors, and Gravers Society of Washington, D. C., consisting
of 176 examples. A catalog was privately printed.

Respectfully submitted.
Tuomas M. Braas, Director.
Dr. Lronarp CARMICHAEL,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.

Report on the Freer Gallery of Art

Str: I have the honor to submit the thirty-sixth annual report on
the Freer Gallery of Art, for the year ended June 30, 1956.

THE COLLECTIONS

Twenty-five objects were added to the collection by purchase as

follows:
BRONZE

55.14. Chinese, Sui dynasty (A. D. 589-618). Mirror decorated with casting
in relief showing the 12 cyclical animals and other symbolic motifs;
inscription of 40 characters. Diameter: 0.212. (Illustrated.)

55.16. Chinese, Northern Wei dynasty (A. D. 386-535). Gilt-bronze figure of the
Buddha standing on a lotus pedestal on a 4-legged platform ; removable
mandorla with flames, lotuses, and animal mask in relief. 0.639 x 0.259.

LACQUER

55.24. Japanese, Tokugawa period (18th century). Writing box (suzuribako),
decorated in high and low relief, in gold, silver, red, green, and black
with mother-of-pearl and glass inlays showing the thunder god, a demon,
a maiden, and a standard bearer on the cover; inside is a portrait bust
of Daruma, an inkstone, and a water holder. Signed, Kajikawa.
0.206 x 0.163 x 0.243.

56.3. Japanese, Tokugawa period (18th century). Incense box and tray of
eryptomeria wood with decoration in lacquer showing monkeys looking
ata painting. Attributed to Ritsud (1663-1747). 0.092 x 0.190 x 0.238.

56.4. Japanese, Kamakura or Early Ashikaga period (14th century). Box for
a priest’s robe (kesa) ; basketwork and black lacquer decorated in gold;
a landscape scene on cover; kesa, band, and shoulder cord included.

0.128 x 0.389 x 0.562.
METALWORK

55.27. Indian, Mughal period (17th century). Knife made for the emperor
Jahangir; partially meteoric iron and decorated with cut design and
gold inlay ; inscription dated in correspondence with A. D. 1621. Length:
0.261.

55.23. Japanese, Tokugawa period (19th century). Gold ornament in the form
of a wild goose sleeping on a separate base modeled as a bed of reeds.
0.032 x 0.084 x 0.038.

55.10. Syrian, Ayyubid period (18th century). Basin of brass richly inlaid with
silver, part of which has fallen out; decoration includes inscriptions in
naskhi and kific scripts, Christian subjects, polo players, musicians,
standing figures in arcades, animals, arabesques, etc. Made for the
sultan Ayyub who reigned A. D. 1239-49. 0.225 x 0.500.

89

90 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

55.22. Syrian, Ayyubid period (13th century). Ewer of brass with silver inlay,
some of which has fallen out; decorated with arabesques in lattice
framework; naskhi inscriptions give the artists as Qasim b. ‘Ali and
date corresponding to A. D. 1232. 0.367 x 0.213.

PAINTING

55.18. Chinese, Ch‘ing dynasty (1644-1912). Landscape in ink and color on
paper; by Wu Li; dated in correspondence with A. D. 1767. 0.669 x 0.321.

55.17. Chinese, Ming dynasty (1868-1644). Scroll painting in ink and full color
on satin showing 24 Buddhistic figures; 20 inscriptions and 73 seals on
painting ; title and 2 seals on mount, dated in correspondence with A. D.
1643. 0.495 x 7.3138.

55.18. Chinese, Ming or Ch‘ing dynasty (17th century). Landscape in ink and
color on paper; inscription and 8 seals on painting; inscription and 1 seal
on mount; by Ch ‘éng Sui (fl. 1630-1650). 1.433 x 0.530.

55.19. Chinese Ch‘ing dynasty (1644-1912). Landscape in ink on satin; signature
and two seals on painting; by Ch‘a Shih-piao; dated in correspendence
with A. D. 1694. 1.863 x 0.468.

55.20. Chinese, Ch‘ing dynasty (1644-1912). Album containing 16 landscapes
on paper, 15 in ink and color, 1 in ink; 16 inscriptions and 30 seals on
paintings, 1 inscription and 4 seals on mounts; by Hua Yen; dated in
correspondence with A. D. 1729. 0.229-0.238 x 0.153 x 0.1638.

55.21. Chinese, Ming and Ch‘ing dynasties (17th century). Album containing 10
paintings in ink on paper showing flowers, birds, insects, and fish; 9
signatures and 30 seals on paintings; 11 inscriptions and 44 seals on
mounts; by Chu Ta (fl. 1684-1674 or later). 0.255 x 0.230.

55.11. Coptic, third quarter of the 12th century (Damietta, Egypt). First page of
a religious codex made for the 73rd Jacobite Patriarch, Michael, son of
Zaraa (A. D. 1174-89); recto: a cross; verso: the four evangelists;
parchment with gold and colors; Arabic inscription in naskhi. 0.856 x
0.228.

55.25— Japanese, Muromachi period (1333-1568). Pair of 6-fold screens with

55.26. silk panels on paper grounds; panels painted in ink depicting landscapes ;
grounds decorated with floral patterns in colors on gold; by Kano
Motonobu (1476-1559). Each 1.752 x 3.758. (55.26 illustrated.)

POTTERY

55.12. Chinese, T‘ang dynasty (618-906). Covered jar; soft, pinkish-buff clay ;
soft lead glazes of dark green, dark blue, yellowish-brown, and white,
arranged in vertical patterns. 0.242 x 0.213. (Illustrated.)

55.15. Chinese, Ch‘ing dynasty, Ch‘ien-lung period (1736-1796). Writer’s box
of fine, white porcelain with pale, transparent celadon green glaze over
delicately painted slip designs of dragon, waves, and clouds, and inter-
locking scroll patterns; 6-character Ch‘ien-lung mark in underglaze blue
on base. 0.057 x 0.222 x 0.067.

56.5—- Chinese, Han dynasty (207 B. C.—A. D. 220). Mortuary figures of

56.7. ladies, two standing and one kneeling; grayish clay fired hard with traces
of red, brown, purple, and green pigments. Heights: 0.660, 0.662, and
0.493.

56.1. Persian, 9th-10th century, Nishapur. Bowl with design of two birds in
black slip on a white ground. 0.066 x 0.218.

SECRETARY'S REPORT 91

56.2. Persian, 12th century, Gurgan. Bowl of thin, white, vitreous, translucent
ware decorated with two bands of incised ornament inside and fine
holes piercing the body and mostly filled with the transparent glaze.
0.062 x 0.184.

Total number of accessions to date (including above) ----~- 10, 977
REPAIRS TO THE COLLECTIONS

One hundred and forty-seven Chinese and Japanese objects were
restored, repaired, or remounted by T. Sugiura. In addition to this
work on the collections, Mr. Sugiura completed ¢ao for five Chinese
books and mounted five rubbings for the library; he also remounted
and repaired a Japanese screen for the United States National

Museum.
CHANGES IN EXHIBITIONS

Changes in exhibitions amounted to 3,012. This abnormally large
number is accounted for by the redecoration of the exhibition gal-
leries and the installation of the Charles Lang Freer Centennial Exhi-
bition. The changes were as follows:

American art:

COpperep lates is ssa ne ee De heh eee ES ee = aly ¢
Rehan eee Seon ey Aree ees cae ee Se 46
TDAH Va f24 ati 0) SSL Be AE Spe fale Aas EMR St BOP Tap A SE a 23
Onepaintingsi oly) Sei OS ei Or. EMST ane 2ryant 124
Pastelsfand drawings. 2224 Se) ian eee ot eel) ree 36
AVY SLOT COROT S = == 28 0. Sia 8 37
SVS Exeter apie eee eB «ee ee a ee 10
Chinese art:
ESO Zee ee ee eee eR ae ae ne nO ERO, 2 SA SY SAR 672
Golds se Sees 2 EL Eee es 19
SUSU Ser aay fe AE garry ee 9 SE a eek AS 400
nS CGC Pes ieee See es De ass ae pd Te eg ee 8
WCE ee ee ee ee eee eee 5
MEDTIISC Rp iS= ee eee ee ee ee ee ee eee i!
EZELN TEE UN] SS es ee Ree ie ee, Bh ER, BN A Lee te a Sn Re Leni
POUL Yen ee ne Se ee eee ee ee Ae Se 305
PPV EE Ad ST] Vere Plt See es ts ie St eee 52
StOneisCUulD LUT CS ae a a ee a ee ee ee 50
Christian art:
CCEA aa pa Rae es ari ep Dp a ase eh reer Se aa =_ 4
(GHG WSS Re pe RI 2 ee 12
Exo] (pW Oh ae ens bles Ce ee eT eae a ek ae yo hhe Vind Fe Cee ee SO eels eA 31
VSR AVES OD po Gs ete hes Ss Sat TE eg Br 47
Levy aU geese os A Se ae et ee ee. ee ee eee ees sae 22
SU PEVCVEE Sed ay aah eet ae eR ee eee eh 3
Indian art:
BEST OT Z Ce ty tae a eee ae ae oe es es ee th a a 3
Manuseripeseret stl ls Owe Reed Mere ree eee te ees tas) 8 eer he 20
LEE DUO O ROCs) Be Opie Wa eee es BNR oe 4 2) CCE ee A eer Ree or 109

SSVI) S(Gullsinr he ae Cees ee ee ee er ee ee een 11

92 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Japanese art:

Bronze ®: 222s Oe Se. By a aie SAE ae) ee ee 3
Tacqner) L228 he oe 5 ee ee ee eee 72
Paintings 222233) Ue Le a ee ee eee alkyl
Pottery: 22422542 2639 e oe ae a ee et 124
Wood! Sculpture. 222 2522 Sn ee 2
Korean art:
Bronze: 23 22s sass ee eee oe ee ee eee il
Pottery, 22 2coh ae ee ee eee oe 18
Near Eastern art:
Bookbindings: 22226 22222232 2a ee es ee ee 25
Crystal (2s 2 2 Sa ce ee ane 3
Glass: 6:52 ond Bee Oe eS Se eee eee 12
Manuscripts. 22th 2224 220) Gee cue eee ee 32
Te tea wy. rk a 68
Paintings. 2222 2242s sens ee 173
Pottery. 22520225 See ee ee es 59
Stone: sculphure) =. _ 6 22S. Pee ee ene 5
Tibetan art:
Paintings 22 e228 ee oe ee ee ae ee ee 2
LIBRARY

The library was reopened to the public on December 19, 1955, after
being closed for a year for installation of steel stacks and decoration.
The folio shelves are especially appreciated, as the many elephant
volumes are now shelved not more than two to a shelf. These major
improvements in the library facilities are due to the initiative and
imagination of the librarian, Mrs. Bertha M. Usilton, who devised all
the plans for the new arrangement and saw them to completion.

The geographic breakdown of Far East, Near East, South Asia,
West, and Orient was discontinued in the reshelving. The Dewey
decimal classification scheme controls these breakdowns in the various
categories in the Western languages. Orientalia are cataloged and
shelved separately as before. A thorough reading of the shelves in
the shelving process revealed that only 15 books can be termed “lost”
in the 33 years of the library’s history.

The library is the laboratory of the entire staff, and it is here that
data for correct attribution, comparative material, and recorded
facts can be searched for and found. It has research material of the
greatest value in the realm of Oriental art. Welcome gifts from
scholars and learned institutions included a reproduction of the world
by the twelfth-century geographer Idrisi, received from the Embassy
of Iraq. An autographed letter of Mr. Whistler written to Thomas
Way was purchased. Books, pamphlets, and periodicals now number
35,000.

Despite the fact that the number of the year’s accessions was greater
than the previous year, and the added labor of moving into new
stacks, the accessioning and cataloging have been kept up to date.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 93

During the Charles Lang Freer Centennial commemorating the
birth of the founder of the Gallery, a special exhibition was made of
the monumental writings of Prof. Osvald Sirén, who was the first
recipient of the Charles Lang Freer Medal.

PUBLICATIONS

Five publications were issued by the Gallery as follows:

Title page and contents for Occasional Papers, vol. 2, 1955. (Smithsonian Publ.
4223.)

The Charles Lang Freer Medal (first presentation). Booklet containing a partial
bibliography by Prof. Osvald Sirén.

Charles Lang Freer Centennial Exhibition (1856-1956). Booklet listing objects
on exhibition in galleries.

First presentation of the Charles Lang Freer Medal (February 1956). Contains
partial bibliography by Prof. Osvald Sirén, opening remarks by Dr. Carmichael
and Mr. Wenley, presentation by Dr. Carmichael, and Prof. Sirén’s address.

Pope, John Alexander: Chinese porcelains from the Ardebil Shrine, xvi -+- 194
pp., 142 pis., 1956. (Smithsonian Publ. 4231.)

REPRODUCTIONS

The photographic laboratory made 3,782 items during the year as
follows: 2,494 prints, 374 negatives, 814 color transparencies, 64 black-
and-white slides, and 36 microfilms. Total negatives on hand, 11,173;
lantern slides, 9,542; 110 reproductions in the round of Freer Gallery

objects were sold.
BUILDING

The general condition of the building is good. All roof areas ap-
pear to be in good condition ; minor repairs were made when necessary
throughout the year. The ledge of the roof was repaired, and a coat-
ing of roofing compound was applied. The copper flashing surround-
ing the court area was retucked and caulked. AJl exterior walls were
waterproofed and repointed; all exterior water valves were replaced
or repaired on the outside of the building and in the court. All screen
doors and areaways are in good condition.

Redecoration of the interior was completed on December 9, 1955,
and rubber-tile floors were installed in the library and main office.
Fluorescent light fixtures were installed in all offices, work rooms,
storage rooms, and corridors, with the exception of the gallery corri-
dors where incandescent fixtures were put in.

The major work of the cabinet shop has been devoted to the making
of exhibition cases for the galleries. Miscellaneous odd jobs related
to storage, exhibition, restoration, crating, and maintenance of office
and Gallery equipment continue as usual.

Some of the alterations in the court planting planned last year, such
as reseeding, replacement of shrubs, removal of ivy, were undertaken,

94 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

and all plants, trees, and shrubs appear to be doing well and are main-
taining steady growth.

Work on the installation of the long-needed air-conditioning system
to safeguard the collections has begun.

ATTENDANCE

The Gallery was open to the public from 9 to 4: 30 every day except
Christmas day. The total number of visitors to come in the main en-
trance was 94,276. The highest monthly attendance was in April,
12,972, and the lowest was in December, 3,209.

There were 2,172 visitors to the office for the following purposes:

Mor general information: ~ == ee eee 855
Noisubmitobjects "for examina tion] oe ee oe ee 367
Worsee stall members22 See Bere ee ee 57 TSM LE ELL 162
To take photographs in the court or exhibition galleries__________ 157
To ‘studyiinelibraryls2. Sis Bee se ee ee ee Ne ROE 228
Mo see:buildine and installationsss sos) = tae ee eeeteeee es he ere eee 37
TT OVNEXATMINE KOT OTT OW: SLU Gs eae meee ce em ee 20
Do'sketch in'galleries: 2 --— SPAR SA PS ee 16
TopuseHerzreldwArchive. ees oe ys ee ee eee 4
To see objects in storage:
Warabastern paintin gee =" 4 x24 ais 4d ae aes) See eee 106
Harihasterns metalworkist: £. 20st eerie Cine Bee eee 20
Parwwasternipottenys 2.22 en eh SO ae ee 39
Far Wastern jade, lacquer, wood, ivory, etec______-___________ 20
Neanshasterm paintings. oases 0 Leu Se ea eee eee eee 9
NearuBasternvmetal works 2 tee ee eee eee 12
Near astern. pottery 22 eit en) noha Pa pee ee 3
Near Hastern glass, bookbindings, ete_____.2.-___-____--_ 6
CHristranrare CW ashe tem ON) ese ee ee 23

American art

AUDITORIUM

The series of illustrated lectures was continued as follows:

1955
October 18. Dr. Aschwin Lippe, Assistant Curator of Far Eastern Art, Metro-
politan Museum of Art, New York. “Early Chinese Paintings
in Formosa.” Attendance, 110.
November 15. Dr. Sherman E. Lee, Curator of Oriental Art, Cleveland Museum
of Art. “Kamakura Artin Japan.” Attendance, 193.
1956
January 17. Dr. Oleg Grabar, Assistant Professor in Islamic Art, University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor. “Umayyad Art, the Art of an
Empire.” Attendance, 171.
February 14. Prof. William F. Albright, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
“The Art and Architecture of the Age of Solomon.” Attend-
ance, 242.

Secretary’s Report, 1956 PLATE ¢

sole

Recent additions to the collections of the Freer Gallery of Art.

Secretary's Report, 1956

PLATE 4

Wy jo Alay]ey Tool yf 9} jo SUOT}S9]JOD oy} O} UuOTIpPpe JUBIY

9¢ GG

SECRETARY'S REPORT 95

1956
March 138. Mr. Chiang Yee, Columbia University, New York. “Western
Scenery through Chinese Eyes.” Attendance, 145.
April 17. Laurence Sickman, Director, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery

of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. “Early Chinese Figure
Painting.” Attendance, 157.

On February 25, 1956, the auditorium was the scene of ceremonies
commemorating the centennial of the birth of the Gallery’s founder.
This was marked by the first presentation of the Charles Lang Freer
Medal “for distinguished contribution to the knowledge and under-
standing of Oriental civilizations as reflected in their arts” to Prof.
Osvald Sirén of Stockholm. Also on the platform were Count Carl
L. Douglas, Minister Plenipotentiary, representing the Ambassador
of Sweden, Miss Katharine N. Rhoades, representing the Friends of
the Freer Gallery named in Mr. Freer’s last will and testament, the
Director of the Freer Gallery of Art, and the Secretary of the Smith-
sonian Institution. The proceedings were opened by Dr. Carmichael,
and following some remarks on the inauguration of the award by
Mr. Wenley, Dr. Carmichael made the presentation. Professor Sirén
responded with an address on the development of scholarship in the
Far Eastern field (particularly in America) during the last 50 years
and on the collecting of Chinese and Japanese art, together with some
personal recollections of Mr. Freer. The presentation was followed
by a reception in Gallery XVII. Attendance, 260.

Seven outside organizations used the auditorium, as follows:

1955
August 5. Dr. Remington Kellogg, Director, United States National Museum.
A talk to employees of the Smithsonian Institution on “Travel
in Russia.” Attendance, 190.
August 19. Paul Garber, Curator, National Air Museum. Motion pictures
for a group of World War I flyers. Attendance, 36.
October 11. Dr. Carmichael, Secretary, Smithsonian Institution, addressed
members of the Vassar Club on “Classicism and Romanticism
in Education.” Attendance, 48.
1956

January 19. District of Columbia Libraries Association meeting. Mr. Wenley
gave an address on “The Freer Gift and the Relation of the
Library to the Museum.” This was followed by a tour of the
Freer Gallery library. Attendance, 44.

April 18. Howard Sollenberger brought a group from the Foreign Service
Institute, State Department. Mr. Wenley gave a talk on “Back-
ground in Chinese Art, Shang through the Ming Dynasties.”
Attendance, 15.

May 17. United States Department of Agriculture, in conjunction with the
National Safety Council. General discussion meeting and
motion pictures on safety. Attendance, 30.

May 25. District of Columbia Psychological Group. Dr. Leonard Car-
michael, Secretary, Smithsonian Institution, introduced the
speaker, Dr. Joy Paul Guilford. Attendance, 39.

96 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

One other meeting was held in the building when the Far Eastern
Ceramic Group had its fall meeting in Storage IT and used the facili-
ties of the library. Attendance, 22.

STAFF ACTIVITIES

The work of the staff members has been devoted to the study of new
accessions, of objects contemplated for purchase, and of objects sub-
mitted for examination as well as to individual research projects in
the fields represented by the collections of Chinese, Japanese, Persian,
Arabic, and Indian materials. Reports, oral or written, and exclusive
of those made by the technical laboratory (listed below) were made
on 7,258 objects as follows: for private individuals, 4,975; for deal-
ers, 1,072; for other museums, 1,211. In all, 552 photographs were
examined, and 320 Oriental language inscriptions were translated for
outside individuals and institutions. By request 19 groups totaling
468 persons met in the exhibition galleries for docent service by staff
members. Two groups totaling 74 persons were given docent service
in the storage rooms.

Among the visitors were 70 distinguished foreign scholars or per-
sons holding official positions in their own countries who came here
under the auspices of the State Department to study museum ad-
ministration and practices in this country.

In the technical laboratory 90 objects from the Freer collections
and 74 from outside sources were examined. The following projects
were begun: Quantitative chemical analyses of ancient Chinese
bronzes; thin-section studies on Chinese porcelain bodies and glazes;
study of ancient Chinese bronze-iron objects to determine means of
fabrication and special behavior during soil corrosion. The following
projects were continued: X-ray diffraction studies on jade objects in
the Freer collections; examination of specimens of wall painting
from the ancient Christian church of the Chora, Istanbul (in cooper-
ation with Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection). The
following projects were completed: Spectrochemical analyses of
samples from ancient Persian and Near Eastern silver objects (results
to be published later) ; treatment and conservation of several Freer
Gallery objects, mostly bronzes. During the year, 22 written reports
were made and 56 verbal reports given on objects examined in the
technical laboratory.

By invitation the following lectures (illustrated unless otherwise
noted) were given outside the Gallery by staff members:

1955
November 8. Dr. Ettinghausen, at the Near Hastern Research Club, University

of Michigan, on ‘‘The Riddle of a Famous Persian Pottery
Plate.” Attendance, 35.

1955
November 9.

December 14.

1956
January 8.

March 2.

March 12.

March 22.

April 4.

April 11.

April 30.

May 31.

June 12.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 07

Dr. Ettinghausen, in Angell Hall, University of Michigan, on
“Paintings from the Albums of the Mughal Empire.” Attend-
ance, 75.

Mr. Stern, at China House, New York City, to the Chinese Art
Society of America, on “Hokusai Paintings and Drawings in
the Collection of the Freer Gallery of Art.” Attendance, 35.

Dr. Ettinghausen, at Pierce Hall, All Souls’ Unitarian Church,
Washington, D. C., on “The Art of the Muslim East.” Attend-
ance, 45.

Dr. Ettinghausen, for the Photographic Roundtable, Graduate
School, United States Department of Agriculture, on “Hx-
periences of an Art Photographer under the Crescent.” At-
tendance, 91.

Mr. Gettens, at New York State Teachers College, New Paltz, N. Y.,
on “Chemistry in Art and Archaeology.” Attendance, 150.

Mr. Pope, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, on “Ming Porcelain
and Its Travels.” Attendance, 110.

Mr. Stern, at the Far Eastern Association meeting in Philadel-
phia, on “Shiba Kokan—Artist.” Attendance, 50.

Mr. Stern, at American University, Washington, D. C., on “Hoku-
sai Paintings and Drawings in the Freer Gallery of Art.” At-
tendance, 60.

Mr. Stern, at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, on
‘Noted Examples of Japanese Paintings and Sculpture.” At-
tendance, 95.

Dr. Ettinghausen, before the Convegno “Volta,” Accademia
Nazionale dei Lincei, Villa Farvard, Florence, Italy, on “Per-
sian Ascension Scenes of the 14th Century.” Attendance, 65.

Mr. Gettens, at The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum,
Winterthur, Del., on “Museum Laboratories” in connection
with a 3-day conference titled, “Winterthur Seminars in Mu-
Seum Operation and Connoisseurship.” Attendance, 60.

On October 15 Mrs. Usilton attended a meeting of the Catalogers
and Classifiers for the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia,
in Washington, D. C. Members of the staff traveled outside Wash-
ington on official business as follows:

1955
July 5.

August 15-19.

September 2-3.

October 24.

Mrs. Usilton in Philadelphia attended the Art Reference
Round Table of the American Libraries Association.
Mr. Schwartz in Chicago attended the National Industrial
Photographic Conference.

Mr. Stern in New York examined objects belonging to
dealers.

Mr. Wenley in Ann Arbor attended a meeting of the Freer
Fund Committee at the University of Michigan.

November 7-19. Mr. Gettens in Sarasota, Fla., examined bronze and stone

sculpture at the John and Mable Ringling Museum.

November 8—10. Dr. Ettinghausen in Ann Arbor examined objects in a pri-

vate collection.

November 21-25. Mr. Wenley in New York examined objects at the Metro-

politan Museum of Art and belonging to dealers.

98

1955
December 12-16.
December 14-18.
December 21.
December 21.

1956
February 7-9.

March 8-12.

March 24-25.
April 3-6.
April 9-11.
April 10-11.

April 23-25.

April 30-
May 1.
May 5.
May 5.

May 19-

June 16.

May 25-27.

June 12-14.

June 12-15.

June 16-20.

June 18-
July 27.

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Dr. Ettinghausen in New York examined objects in the
New York Public Library, American Numismatic Society,
and belonging to dealers.

Mr. Stern in New York examined objects at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art and belonging to dealers.

Dr. Ettinghausen in Baltimore examined objects at the
Walters Art Gallery.

Mr. Gettens in Baltimore examined objects at the Walters
Art Gallery.

Dr. Ettinghausen in New York examined objects belonging
to dealers.

Mr. Stern in New York examined objects at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and belonging to
dealers.

Mr. Stern in Charlottesville, Va., examined objects in a pri-
vate collection.

Mr. Stern in Philadelphia examined objects at the Philadel-
phia Museum of Art.

Mr. Wenley in Baltimore attended meetings of the American
Oriental Society.

Mr. Pope in Abilene, Kans., examined objects at the Hisen-
hower Museum.

Mr. Gettens in New York examined objects at the Metropol-
itan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and belonging
to dealers. Also discussed bronze corrosion problems with
officials of the International Nickel Corporation.

Mr. Stern in Charlottesville, Va., conducted a seminar on
Japanese art at the University of Virginia.

Mr. Wenley in Boston attended meetings of the Far Eastern
Ceramic Group.

Mr. Pope in Boston presided at the all-day meeting of the
Far Eastern Ceramic Group.

Dr. Ettinghausen in Europe attended the 12th Convention
of the Fondazione “Alessandro Volta” of the Accademia
Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome and Florence. Also attended
the opening of the International Exhibition of Iranian Art
in Rome; studied manuscripts at the Royal Scottish Mu-
seum, Edinburgh, and at the British Museum, London.

Mr. Wenley in Cincinnati attended meetings of the Associa-
tion of Art Museum Directors held at the Cincinnati Art
Museum and the Taft Museum.

Mr. Gettens in Winterthur, Del., attended The Henry Francis
du Pont Winterthur Museum’s “Seminars in Museum
Operation and Connoisseurship.”

Mr. Stern in Boston examined objects at the Museum of Fine
Arts and in a private collection.

Mr. Stern in New York examined objects at the Brooklyn
Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library,
and belonging to dealers, and one private collection.

Dr. Ettinghausen in Columbus, Ohio, taught “A Survey
Course of Islamic Art” at Ohio State University.

SECRETARY'S REPORT 99

Members of the staff held honorary posts, received recognition, and
undertook additional duties outside the Gallery as follows:

Mr. Wenley:

Mr. Pope:

Dr. Ettinghausen:

Mr. Gettens:

Member, Visiting Committee, Dumbarton Oaks Research
Library and Collection.

Research Professor of Oriental Art, Department of Fine
Arts, University of Michigan.

Member of the Board of United States Civil Service
Examiners at Washington, D. C., for the Smithsonian
Institution.

Member, Board of Trustees, Textile Museum, Washington,
D.C:

Member, Council of the Far Eastern Ceramic Group.

Member, Smithsonian Art Commission.

Member, Consultative Committee, Ars Orientalis.

Chairman of the Louise Wallace Hackney Scholarship Com-
mittee of the American Oriental Society.

Member, Committee on Japanese Studies, American Council
of Learned Societies.

On February 27, 1956, at the studios of WRC (NBC) dis-
cussed the Freer Gallery of Art and its Collections on the
Patty Cavin radio show.

President, Far Eastern Ceramic Group.

Member, Editorial Board, Archives of the Chinese Art Society
of America.

President, Association of the Southern Alumni of the Phil-
lips Exeter Academy.

Member, Art Committee, Cosmos Club.

Research Professor of Islamie Art, Department of Fine Arts,
University of Michigan.

Near Eastern editor, Ars Orientalis.

Member, Editorial Board, The Art Bulletin.

Trustee, American Research Center in Egypt.

Member, Comitato Internazionale di Patronato, Museo In-
ternazionale delle Ceramiche, Faenza, Italy.

Member, Advisory Committee of Current Research on the
Middle East, to be published by the Middle East Institute,
Washington, D.C.

Consultant, Advisory Board of the Intermuseum Conservation
Association, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio.

Associate Editor, Studies in Conservation, published for the
International Institute for the Conservation of Museum
Objects, London.

Abstractor for Chemical Abstracts, American Chemical
Society.

Socio Corrispondente, Centro de Storia della Metallurgia
(Associazione Italiana di Metallurgia), Via Moscova 16,
Milano, Italy.

Member, Subcommittee for I. I. C. Abstracts, Chief of the
American Working Party, International Institute for the
Conservation of Museum Objects, London.

Member, Planning Committee for a proposed National Con-
servation Laboratory for the United States.

100 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Mr. Gettens: Member, Committee of Scientific Laboratories, International
Council of Museums, 10 Pare du Cinquantenaire, Bruxelles,
Belgique.
President, Washington Society, Archaeological Institute of
America.
Mr. Stern: Member, Program Committee, Far Eastern Association.

On February 21, at a ceremony in the Regents’ Room, Smithsonian
Institution, at 4: 00 o’clock, Dr. Carmichael, Secretary, presented Rus-
sell C. Mielke with a certificate of award and a check for “special and
meritorious services in carrying out the duties of general maintenance
foreman during Mr. Rawley’s long illness and subsequent retirement,
demonstrating in an outstanding manner ability to discharge these
added responsibilities, sometimes under rather trying circumstances.”

Respectfully submitted.

A. G. WENLEY, Director.

Dr. Lronarp CARMICHAEL,

Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.

Report on the National Air Museum

Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on the activities
of the National Air Museum for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1956:

STATUS OF PROPOSED NATIONAL AIR MUSEUM BUILDING

At the beginning of the fiscal year the vigorous efforts by the Smith-
sonian Institution to obtain a site for the proposed National Air
Museum building seemed about to succeed. The preferred site had
been chosen after a study of the original “wineglass pattern” plan
developed by the National Capital Planning Commission for im-
provement of the southwest Washington area. At the offices of that
Commission it was agreed that the site on Independence Avenue, be-
tween 9th and 12th Streets, was most desirable for the proposed Na-
tional Air Museum building. Subsequently, however, the Commission
decided to adopt a plan for the development of southwest Washington
proposed by the firm of Webb & Knapp, New York City. That plan
eliminated the preferred National Air Museum building site in favor
ofa 10th Street Mall. No alternate site has yet been assigned, although
several are being considered. Especial attention is being given sites
close to the other museum buildings in order to provide most con-
venient access to the visiting public with limited time in Washington.

Although the question of a site has not been answered, nevertheless
as a result of continuing efforts and cooperation the Smithsonian In-
stitution now has a broader appreciation and better knowledge of the
requirements for adequate care and housing of the National Aero-
nautical Collections. The architectural studies, which were generously
financed by the Aircraft Industries Association and the Air Trans-
port Association, and ably conducted by the architectural firm of
McKim, Mead & White, have provided the Institution with a magni-
ficent general internal and external plan of a building, scale drawings
of floor plans, perspective renderings, and scale models of a building
which is generally adaptable to any level site approximately 1,000 by
500 feet. A previous study conducted by the General Services Ad-
ministration, Public Buildings Service, produced a plan adaptable to
a larger area which would include outdoor exhibits and parking. As
the result of the work of the past several years, therefore, the Institu-
tion is provided with the principal features which can be adapted to
any chosen site.

101

102 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

At the close of the fiscal year, the Smithsonian Institution was pro-
ceeding with plans of buildings for other bureaus of the Institution.
it was decided that as soon as other units, now occupying space in the
Arts and Industries Building, are thus provided for, the space they
vacate will be made available to the National Air Museum. Such
space should be considered, however, only as an interim provision, and
not as a permanent solution of the constantly increasing need to give
adequate care and proper educational display to the Institution’s mar-
velous collection of aircraft. Four-fifths of that collection is hidden
away in storage, prevented from accomplishing its educational and
inspirational function for the students, engineers, and pilots of this
Nation which first gave powered and controlled wings to mankind.
Aeronautics is too important to the defense, industry, and progress of
our Nation to have this collection, embodying its very foundation and
development, so confined and suppressed as it now is.

ADVISORY BOARD

This Board of five members, specified in the Act establishing the
National Air Museum, continues to assist in the planning and opera-
tion of the Museum. Shortly after the beginning of the fiscal year,
Maj. Gen. George W. Mundy, the Air Force member, was assigned to
other duties away from the Washington area and was succeeded on the
Board by Maj. Gen. John P. Doyle. He and his assistant for Museum
matters, Maj. George C. Bales, have not only been ever ready to assign
Air Force personnel to help in maintaining the Air Force planes in the
exhibit, but also have directed the construction of a series of dioramas
and scale-model groups being made for the National Air Museum at
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to illustrate significant events in
Air Force history.

The Navy member of the Board, Rear Adm. James S. Russell, and
his alternates, Capt. C. C. Case and Alfred Verville, have kept close
contact with the Museum on a number of projects. These include the
restoration of a World War I Curtiss N-9 training seaplane, the
improved display of the series of models illustrating the develop-
ment of naval aircraft, and the preservation of the original wind-tun-
nel models developed at the Washington Navy Yard. Associated with
the latter project is the intention to construct a scale model of that
wind tunnel, which was developed in 1914. The Museum is indebted
also to the Navy for its continued storage of Museum material, thus
relieving the Museum of this physical custody while its own premises
and facilities are completely occupied.

On March 20, 1956, William B. Stout, one of the Presidential
appointees to the Board, passed away at his home in Phoenix, Ariz.
His constant interest and wise counsel were a most helpful resource in

SECRETARY’S REPORT 103

conducting the work and planning of the National Air Museum. Sev-
eral months before his death, Mr. Stout had brought to the Museum
a group of five early experimental model aircraft devised during the
late nineteenth century and including two he had made at that time,
evidencing his early interest in aeronautics. He continued active ex-
perimenting and designing throughout his life, and the aeronautical
world is richer because of his accomplishments. His last letters to
the Museum relate to his efforts in obtaining for the Collections an
example of the famous Ford-Stout trimotored transport, which was
one of the mainstays of the pioneer airlines during the 1930’s. In his
letters, he included sketches detailing his ideas for hall arrangements
and exhibit locations in the proposed National Air Museum building.

During the year, the other Presidential appointee, Grover Loening,
shared his progressive ideas for improvements and expansion of the
National Air Museum with the fifth member of the Board, the Secre-
tary of the Smithsonian Institution.

STEPHENSON BEQUEST

It will be recalled that Congress authorized the Secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution to accept as a gift from the late George H.
Stephenson of Philadelphia a statue of Gen. William Mitchell. The
development of this project is proceeding very satisfactorily. At the
time the previous report was submitted, the sculptor, Bruce Moore,
had completed his 14-size study and it has been approved by the Fine
Arts Commission. This has since been enlarged in plastiline to full
size, about 7 feet high. Details of the head, figure, uniform, and
other features are being perfected. The Director of the National
Collection of Fine Arts, Thomas M. Beggs, and the head curator
of the National Air Museum inspected this enlargement on February
2, 1956, and approved it in that elementary form. While continuing
his refinement of the sculpture, Mr. Moore has studied many photo-
graphs and motion pictures of General Mitchell and has had the
helpful assistance and constructive criticism of persons who knew the
General intimately. The sculpture will soon be ready for final inspec-
tion prior to casting.

SPECIAL EVENTS

On July 2, 1955, just 20 years after the world endurance record of
65314 hours continucus refueled flight had been established in a
Curtiss Robin airplane by the Key brothers, Algene and Fred, of
Meridian, Miss., that same airplane Ole Miss, piloted by Fred Key,
completed a flight from Meridian to Washington, D. C., for presenta-
tion to the National Air Museum. This accession not only adds an-
other event of flying history to the many outstanding accomplishments

412575578

104. ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

illustrated in this Museum by original aircraft, but also provides the
collection with an example of a 3-place commercial airplane which
was popular in the 1930’s. This record of over 27 days in the air was
an impressive demonstration of the reliability of American aircraft
and engines, as well as a tribute to the piloting skill and endurance
of the Key brothers.

On August 18, the Civil Air Patrol, an air-youth organization
sponsored by the Air Force to encourage aeronautical training and
national airmindedness, chose the National Air Museum as a fitting
location for paying tribute to their retiring head, Gen. Lucas V. Beau.
The ceremony was held in the Aircraft Building in front of the
Spad-XIITI airplane, a type which General Beau had flown during
World War I.

August 19 was the birth date of Orville Wright. At one time this
date was designated as Aviation Day, and although that term is now
generally applied to December 17, when the Wright brothers first flew
in 1903, August 19 is deserving of recognition. The National Air
Museum marked the day with a public lecture on World War I avia-
tion, Col. Burling Jarrett, curator of the Army Ordnance Museum at
Aberdeen, Md., being guest speaker. He showed motion pictures that
he had produced with the assistance of Maj. Kimbrough Brown,
USAF, recording the heroism of the famous aces, Georges Guynemer
of France and Baron Manfred von Richthofen of Germany.

On September 5, 1955, at a meeting of the Early Birds in Phila-
delphia, this organization of pioneer pilots, who flew solo during the
first 13 years of human flight, 1903-1916, designated the National Air
Museum as their official depository for mementos of those fundamen-
tally important years of aeronautics. The head curator was elected
secretary of this organization. As a result, this Museum has received
a number of important accessions from the membership. These in-
clude the Knabenshue airship of 1905, Boland air-speed indicator of
1910, an Elbridge and a Lawrance engine from William Parker, a
group of instruments and a Daniel rotary engine from Adm. Luis de
Florez, and other items included among those listed at the end of
this report.

Members of the Philadelphia Flying Club came to Washington in
their own planes October 30, 1955, for the purpose of seeing the
Smithsonian’s aircraft collection; and on April 3, 1956, a tour of the
Museum by members of the Association for Childhood Education
International was followed by a group discussion on the value of aero-
nautics as a medium in school courses. On June 13 a group of chil-
dren, sponsored by Representative Peter Mack, were given a descrip-
tive tour of the aircraft display.

The National Air Museum was represented, by invitation, at the
Wright brothers memorial banquet of the Aero Club of Washington

SECRETARY'S REPORT 105

on December 17, 1955, and at the annual banquet of the American
Helicopter Society on May 2, 1956. The head curator continued to
serve as a director of the National Aeronautic Association and a
member of the Brewer Trophy award committee. On August 28 he
received the annually awarded citation of the Air Line Traffic Associa-
tion in recognition of the progress achieved by the National Air
Museum in memorializing aeronautical history. During the year he
gave 17 lectures on various aspects of the history and development of
aeronautics as requested by various groups, including the Institute of
Aeronautical Sciences at the Fairchild Aviation Division, Hagers-
town, Md., and the Management Club of McDonnell Aircraft at St.
Louis, Mo. Three television and three radio presentations on histor-
ical and current aspects of aeronautics were prepared by the National
Air Museum during this year and broadcast from Washington stations.

For the annual meeting of the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of
Regents on January 18, 1956, the National Air Museum prepared a
special display illustrating the development of the world’s first liquid-
fueled rocket by Dr. Robert H. Goddard. The main item of this
display was the revised version of the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket,
fired March 16, 1926. This flight was a significant milestone in the
development of rockets. Dr. Goddard’s experiments were carried on
under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution from 1913 to 1930
and were aided by an additional Smithsonian grant in 1932. This
Institution allotted funds to Dr. Goddard from a Research Corpora-
tion grant, the Smithsonian’s Hodgkins fund, and from its own re-
search sources. Clark University, the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington
also gave aid to Dr. Goddard during the 1917-1930 period. His later
sponsor was the Daniel Florence Guggenheim Foundation until, in
World War II, the United States Navy financed his final accomplish-
ments. Dr. Goddard died on August 10, 1945, at age 62. This Regents
display was added to the permanent exhibits of the Museum and now
includes full-sized original rockets of 1934-35 and a larger rocket,
about 16 feet long and 1 foot in diameter, developed 1939-41. Dr.
Goddard’s experiments were copied by the Germans during their de-
velopment of the V-2 rocket weapon and formed the foundation for
modern rocket progress.

IMPROVEMENTS AND CHANGES IN EXHIBITS

During the first part of this fiscal year several halls in the Arts and
Industries Building were painted, requiring partial disassembly and
covering of the suspended aircraft in those halls and the repair and
reassembly of the planes after the painters had completed their work.
Because of changes being made in the halls of the Arts and Industries
Building, in connection with renovation of exhibits pertaining to

106 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

American history and technology, the National Air Museum was
required to remove another full-sized aircraft, the William H. Martin
glider of 1909, from exhibition. The same renovation program re-
quired moving the Wright brothers’ first military flyer of 1909 and
the Wright brothers’ first transcontinental flyer of 1911 to other
exhibition locations in the same building. With the assistance of
working parties supplied by the Air Force, repairs were made to the
Douglas World Cruiser, Loening amphibian, and Spad—XVI air-
planes. Several of the fabric-covered aircraft, particularly those
exhibited in the Aircraft Building, required patching.

The Museum is particularly proud of its collection of famous aero-
nautical trophies. Several of these, such as the Pulitzer Trophy and
the Curtiss Marine Trophy, have served to stimulate progress in the
past, while others, including the Robert J. Collier Trophy, Wright
Brothers Memorial, Thompson, and Harmon Trophies, continue to re-
ward those who attain excellence and to inspire others. Improvements
have been made throughout the year in the display of these trophies
and the associated exhibition of specimens which illustrate the basis
for the individual awards. The display describing the two world
flights of Wiley Post in the Winnie Mae, 1931 and 1933, the first
time with Harold Gatty, has been improved by the addition of speci-
mens that expand the physical records of these famous flights. The
exhibition of scale models illustrating types developed by the Wright
brothers and the Wright Company during the 17 years of progressive
development, from their first glider of 1900 to the type “L” of 1916,
has also increased in contents and educational interest. The develop-
ment of our Armed Forces’ aircraft, as illustrated by groups of scale
models, has been expanded by important additions.

STORAGE

At the beginning of this fiscal year, the National Air Museum was
busily continuing shipment of its stored collection of aircraft and
aeronautical materials from the original storage area at Park Ridge,
Ill., to the Suitland, Md., facility, in order to advance the project of
concentrating all the Museum’s stored material at one location in the
Washington, D. C., area where the proposed National Air Museum
building is to be constructed. A target date of January 1, 1956, had
originally been set for completing this transfer, but Museum person-
nel at Park Ridge, under the capable management of Walter Male,
beat this deadline by four months. The final load was disptached on
August 27, 1955, and the storage operation there was terminated
September 1.

Meanwhile, at Suitland the carloads and truckloads of material
were being placed in the storage buildings by the Suitland force di-

SECRETARY’S REPORT 107

rected by Stanley Potter, keeping pace, both in efficiency and speed,
with the hard-working Park Ridge crew. The last load was stored
on September 9. Most unfortunately Mr. Potter was severely in-
jured during the unloading of one of the final deliveries and has not
been able to return to work.

The construction of the largest of the Suitland buildings, which
will serve as a shop for the restoration and subassembly of aircraft,
was begun October 1 and completed January 27. This is 200 by 180
feet in area and will accommodate metal and woodworking machinery,
engine-handling devices, stocks of material, a spray booth, a fabric
and sheet-metal shop, and other equipment. During the period of
about seven years while these aircraft were at Park Ridge they were
unavoidably subjected to weather exposure and handling, and fur-
ther affected by their recent disassembly and shipment. With the
expectation of ultimately obtaining an adequate building for exhibi-
tion of the National Aeronautical Collections, it is vitally necessary
to conduct a continuing program of preparing these specimens for
durable, authentic, and attractive display in that building.

By the close of the fiscal year a force consisting of a foreman, two
mechanics, an assistant for maintenance, and an aide had been en-
gaged for duty at Suitland. They were setting up the individual
shops, sorting material, and selecting the aircraft most in need of
reconditioning.

Other projects at Suitland have included the repair of vehicular
handling equipment which was strenuously used during the aircraft
unloading operations, the repair of roads, and the rearrangement of
aircraft storage to clear one of the 4,000-square-foot buildings for
storing specimens of the Smithsonian’s National Collection of Fine
Arts and Division of Engineering.

The four Museum airplanes that were flown to Washington have
remained at Andrews Air Force Base where they landed. They were
moved to an end of a runway and at the close of the fiscal year a fence
was erected around them to protect them from damage. The dis-
mantling of the aircraft for storage of their parts at Suitland is the
first project of the next fiscal year for the Suitland crew.

INFORMATIONAL SERVICES

The supplying of information on aeronautical history; technical
development of aircraft; details of aircraft structure and operation;
the theory of flight; the collections of aircraft, engines, and flight
equipment in custody of the National Air Museum; biographies of air-
craft inventors, designers, manufacturers and pilots; and the fur-
nishing of photographs and drawings—these and other informational
services require a constantly increasing amount of time by the staff

108 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

of the Museum. These requests come from visitors to the Museum
who are interested in various details of the exhibits, from authors,
engineers, historians, teachers, students, and others whose need for
authoritative information leads them to this national depository for
aeronautical materials.

Among the numerous requests for assistance and information re-
ceived from other Government departments one of the most interesting
is the making of a historical film by the Navy Department, Bureau of
Aeronautics. It is astounding to realize that the evolution of naval
aircraft from the first 45-mile-per-hour 40-horsepower “hydroaero-
plane” of 1911 to the current supersonic jet-powered delta-winged
fighters has taken place in the active life span of a number of naval
aviators who retain keen recollections of this marvelous progress. In
this motion picture the memories of these men are being recorded and
illustrated by actual scenes taken from film records. The head curator
was appointed a technical director for this film, and it has been a
fascinating experience for him to listen to these stories in the words of
those persons who were actually there when history was being made.
For a number of scenes the Museum has supplied specimens which not
only stimulated recollections but also illustrated the vivid descriptions.
The Navy also requested assistance from the Museum in determining
the identification markings of carrier-borne aircraft of the 1930's, in
recalling details of the first aircraft landing aboard ship, and in dating
early catapulted takeoffs.

The Coast Guard is filling in the history of its aircraft, and was
pleased to obtain some needed illustrations from our reference files.
The Department of Justice, investigating the origins of inventions in
order to defend claims against the Government, was shown on a
Museum specimen of 1909, the Olmsted monoplane, a prior develop-
ment of a high-aspect-ratio elevated stabilizer, and was interested also
in the use by the Japanese on their transpacific incendiary balloons of
a means for automatically releasing ballast and explosives with
aneroid-operated relays, as evidenced by an example in the Museum.
The Central Intelligence Agency was also informed about these
Japanese balloons. The Air Force, in assembling a history of Mitchel
Field, was furnished with data and photographs of early air races
held there, and the Signal Corps, proud of the first military airplane
exhibited in the Museum, obtained help in describing its technical
details and history. A consulting engineer for the Atomic Energy
Commission was shown, in the files and library of this Museum, numer-
ous accounts and illustrations of flight-training devices to assist him
in preparing a curriculum for employees. The Treasury Department,
preparing Defense Bonds advertisements featuring famous Amer-
icans, was shown numerous biographical references in the National Air

SECRETARY’S REPORT 109

Museum files, and selected several to augment its program. The Voice
of America made a number of phone calls to the Museum to check
on details of scripts, and the Civil Aeronautics Administration re-
ceived helpful suggestions for the making of scale models of airplanes
used in accident investigations. These are only a few of the many
requests for assistance received from Government agencies. Several
Congressmen referred their constituents to the Museum or received
direct assistance in answering inquiries about historic aircraft, and
a research worker from the Bureau of the Budget was aided in his
study of the history of aerial photography.

Seventeen schools and colleges were assisted in preparing their
aeronautical courses, and numerous teachers and students consulted
the Museum for facts about many aircraft and related subjects.
Authors and an illustrator from the Civil Air Patrol were shown some
documents on aviation engines and propellers which aided them in
preparing texts. Aeronautical organizations that consulted the Na-
tional Air Museum included the National Aeronautical Association,
Royal Aeronautical Society, Institute of Aeronautical Sciences, Air
Transport Association, Air Industries Association, Washington
Junior Chamber of Commerce, and the National Aviation Education
Council. Several lecturers were assisted in preparation of texts and
in illustrating their talks.

Among the many interesting projects with which the Museum as-
sisted were three motion pictures, the producers of which have ex-
pressed their appreciation, not only for help in reproducing accurate
copies of historic aircraft, but also for supplying authentic facts for
the script. For “The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell” help in costum-
ing was supplied from actual uniforms of Mitchell preserved in this
Museum. The Spirit of St. Louis itself was measured, photographed,
and examined in detail to insure the accuracy of the copies of that
airplane constructed for the film. The third film project was the
story of the Wright brothers, and only in this Museum could the
technical directors find three original examples of Wright brothers’
aircraft, and a group of models from which they could scale details for
the reproductions they planned to make.

The list of airlines and aircraft manufacturers who were assisted
in writing their own company histories includes several which, but
for the Museum records, would have left gaps in their texts. The
publications that were given assistance include the National Geo-
graphic Magazine, Our Wonderful World, Reader’s Digest, Life,
Saturday Evening Post, American Aviation Daily, Pegasus, Skyways,
and Sperryscope. Numerous authors and artists based their work
on Museum material.

110 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Maintaining this informational] service is a task that has proved
its worth as evidenced by the needs and responses of those assisted.
This Museum is becoming increasingly recognized as a unique source
for authentic information, as embodied in the aircraft and other
specimens, the documentary files, the photograph collection, and in the
expert knowledge of the staff. Requests for this service are increasing
as it becomes more widely appreciated. An upsurge resulted from the
publication of an article describing this function.

This service has come to require more staff time than any other
duty, and yet those other duties must somehow be performed, especially
when they involve administrative requirements. Time must in some
way be found also to maintain the collection, both exhibited and stored,
and the associated records, to search for new material, to write texts
and other descriptions of aircraft and aeronautical objects in the
Museum, and to study. This constant searching for facts involves
not only the acquired specimens, but also texts, both historic and cur-
rent, in order that the staff’s personal knowledge and familiarity with
the collection—an intangible that is as valuable as any specimen—may
be constantly increased. Thus, the need for adequate facilities for
the National Air Museum—a building, equipment, and staff—becomes
increasingly emphasized.

PUBLICATIONS

By the end of the fiscal year all work on the ninth edition of the
Handbook of the National Aeronautical Collections was virtually
completed, and the book came off the press in mid-August. This
Handbook is a general history of aeronautics, as illustrated by the
principal specimens in the collections. It contains 166 pages of text
and 220 illustrations.

Progress this year on the Catalog of Aircraft has been principally
through the procurement of photographs of each of the airplanes, sea-
planes, gliders, rotorcraft, and experimental aircraft in the collec-
tions, and the assembling of data on each, preparatory to condensing
each item to a concise description.

Several of the information leaflets that describe individual air-
craft in the Museum and are used principally as inserts for cor-
respondence were revised and multigraphed. Despite progress with
supersonic aircraft, correspondence throughout the year reveals that
there is still widespread interest in the most basic of aircraft, the
kite, for both practical uses and sport. The Museum exhibits a num-
ber of oriental and domestic kites, including some that were made by

+“«The Expanding Role of the Smithsonian Institution in Aviation and Educa-
tion,” by Leonard Carmichael and Paul E. Garber, in Education for September
1955.

SECRETARY’S REPORT gas

aeronautical pioneers during their early experiments. Assembly of
material for a publication describing them has progressed during the
year, and promising leads are being investigated for the procurement
of several types of kites that should be obtained in order to complete
the series.

REFERENCE MATERIAL AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Documentation of the collections is an important procedure, in order
to authenticate the exhibits and acquire authoritative data from which
labels, catalogs, and other texts can be prepared. This material is
also essential for answering the thousands of questions received each
year and for serving those who come to the Museum engaged in re-
search. Realizing that the Museum has need for such material and
has facilities for keeping it in ready-reference form, a number of per-
sons and organizations have transferred reference items to this Mu-
seum. Appreciation is expressed to the following:

AERO DIGEST, Washington, D. C.: An assortment of photographs and texts,
acquired in connection with publication of this magazine.

AIRCRAFT INDUSTRIES ASSOCIATION, Washington, D. C. (through Joseph Geuting) :
The Aircraft Yearbook for 1955.

ANDREWS, Haronp, Ithaca, N. Y.: A group of scale drawings by Gene Schmidt
illustrating U. 8. fighter airplanes of the 1920’s.

Babe, CHARLES A., Cleveland, Ohio.: Three name plates from aircraft: American
Eagle, Kenyon and Williams, and Lincoln Page.

Bowers, PETER, Seattle, Wash.: The loan of a large collection of photographs of
World War I aircraft, from which copies were made for the Museum files.

CARRUTHERS, JOHN, Claremont, Calif.: A microfilm of a collection of documents,
announcements, posters, and news accounts of balloon ascents during the
nineteenth century.

Datiy, Compr. F. H., USN, Washington, D. C.: A photostatic copy of Maggs
Brothers’ catalog, London, 1923, illustrating and describing a collection of
aeronautical prints and texts.

Draper, Cot. Wm. G., USAF, Washington, D. C.: A photograph of the Aero
Commander, presidential airplane, autographed by President Dwight D. Hisen-
hower, Colonel Draper, pilot, and Maj. John W. Mitchell, copilot.

Esso AVIATION News Dicest, New York, N. Y.: 103 bound volumes of aviation
magazines, including Aero Digest, Air Transport, Aviation Week, Aeroplane,
Flight, Aviation, and others.

Grosz, P. M., Princeton, N. J.: Copies of Ernst Udet, Mein Fliegerleben, The
Skycraft Book, and The Second Boys’ Book of Model Airplanes.

HAMILTON, Epwarp G., Dearborn, Mich.: His flight log, listing flights in the
Ford-Stout Liberty-engine “Air Pullman,” during 1922-25 when the airmail
and transport route established by Henry Ford was pioneering operations
between Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland.

HARDESTY, BERGEN, Frankfort, Ind.: A scale drawing of the Nieuport-28, World
War I French pursuit airplane.

HEGENER, HENRI, Bennebroek, NH, The Netherlands: The loan of 90 photographs
of World War II aircraft, from which copies were made for the Museum files.
Hiwves-HeErm, Hrik, Fairfield, Conn.: 12 books on aeronautics and two copies of

American Helicopter.

112 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

KiLeMIn, Mrs. Eruer, Greenwich, Conn.: Records pertaining to aerodynamic
tests performed by her husband, the late Dr. Alexander Klemin, noted aero-
nautical engineer and teacher.

Lewis, Carr. R. A., Maywood, N. J.: A 3-sheet photostat copy of the navigator’s
log, recording the flight of the U. S. Air Force B-29 bomber Enola Gay, August
6, 1945, when it carried the first atomic bomb to be dropped in warfare, over
Hiroshima, Japan. Captain Lewis was copilot on this flight.

Lonpon TiMEs, London, England: “The Times Survey of British Aviation,” pre-
pared September 1955 ; review of historical and current developments in aircraft
engines, airports, and related services.

MacCarteE£, CHARLES J., Orlando, Fla.: The loan of a series of negatives, from
which prints were made for the Museum files, illustrating airplanes and flights
at the first military aviation school and field, Coliege Park, Md., 1910-14.

Nevin, Roser, Denver, Colo.: A scale drawing of the Wright Brothers Company
airplane, type “H,” of 1914.

Nieto, JoserpH, San Antonio, Tex.: Scale drawings of the U. S. Army Air Service
Curtiss R38C-2 Racer of 1925, and the Air Corps Boeing P-26 of 1933.

Nye, Wiis L., Hayward, Calif.: A scale drawing of the Douglas World Cruiser
airplane, flown by pilots of the U. S. Army Air Service on the first flight
around the world, 1924.

POPULAR MrcHANICS MAGAZINE, Chicago, Dl.: A drawing showing Getails of the
Winnie Mae airplane, including its engine and supercharger installation, and
the stratosphere suit devised by Wiley Post.

RICHARDSON, CHARLES L., Hebron Conn. (through his wife and Walter D. Sher-
wood): A copy of “Zeppelin, fahrt um die Welt,” an illustrated account of the
voyage around the world by the Graf Zeppelin airship, 1929.

SuMPTER SMITH, Mrs., Washington, D. C.: A series of scrapbooks maintained
by her from 1924 to 1939 recording aeronautical events of those years.

U. S. Ark Force, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio: A quantity of Technical
Orders, illustrating in detail the construction of a number of recent types
of aircraft in use by the Air Force.

U. 8S. Coast GuarpD, Washington, D. C. (through Norman Rubin): A series of
photographs illustrating types of aircraft used by this service.

U. S. Navy, Washington, D. C.: A set of scale drawings of the Curtiss N—-9 sea-
plane used during World War I for the training of naval student aviators.

VAN WEERDEN, J., Maarssen, The Netherlands: Three books on aeronautical his-
tory—from Icarus to Zeppelin, by Edgar Fuld; Mijlpalen (Milestones), by C.
Van Steenderen, describing airplanes and seaplanes prior to 1918; and Zij
Maakten Luchtvaartgeschiedenis, by C. Van Steenderen, Jr., describing air-
planes and seaplanes of the period 1910-36.

VERVILLE, ALFRED Y., Washington, D. C.: Descriptions and drawings of the “Mes-
senger” airplane designed by the donor, 1920; one of the earliest successful
mnilitary liaison and sport types.

WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC CorPOoRATION, Kansas City, Mo.: A drawing of the J-34
turbojet engine, produced by this company.

Wotrrsoun, Hans J., Suffern, N. Y.: Copies of the magazine Flugsport.

The Museum is also pleased to acknowledge the cooperation of the
Academy of Model Aeronautics, National Aeronautic Association,
the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, Harvey Lippincott
of Hebron, Conn., John H. Lundgren of St. Albans, N. Y., Robert P.
McComb of Moultrie, Ga., Chris Bielstein of Arlington, Va., and Ray

SECRETARY’S REPORT 113

Fife of Coronado, Calif., in improving the documentary files by gifts
and exchanges of magazines and other data.

During the year a small room in the Aircraft Building was equipped
as a depository for reference items, and as a study for use by members
of the staff and visitors.

ACCESSIONS

Additions to the National Aeronautical Collections received and re-
corded this year total 118 specimens in 45 separate accessions from 37
sources. Those from Government departments are entered as trans-
fers; others were received as gifts except as noted.

AtTcHison, Jos. ANTHONY, Washington, D. C.: Group of five aircraft squadron
insignia illustrating the devices adopted by units of the First Pursuit Group,
U. S. Army, in World War I; and four plaster sculptures showing primitive
concepts of flying gods in the Hittite, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian
religions (N. A. M. 870, purchased).

AvrTociro Co. or AMERICA, Philadelphia, Pa. (through Franklin Institute) : Pit-
eairn autogiro, the first aircraft of this type constructed in America, 1929
(N. A. M. 888).

BreecH AIRCRAFT Corp., Wichita, Kans.: Scale-model airplanes, 1:16, one illus-
trating the Beechcraft Bonanza airplane Waikiki Beech in which William Odom
flew from Honolulu to Teterboro, N. J., March 7-8, 1949, establishing a solo
distance record of 4,957.24 miles in 36 hours 2 minutes, and in which the Honor-
able Peter F. Mack made 2 solo flight around the world, Oct. 7, 1951—Feb. 7,
1952, visiting 30 nations and flying more than 30,000 miles in the interests of
international good will and acquainting himself with conditions in other coun-
tries. The other model is of the Beechcraft Super 18, 6-place twin-engined
monoplane in current production (N. A. M. 898).

BoLanp, Jos., Takoma Park, Md.: Replica of an air-speed meter devised and
constructed by the donor in 1910 (N. A. M. $02).

Byrp, Mrs. THos., Boyce, Va.: Uniforms and military equipment of the late Gen.
William Mitchell (N. A. M. 881). Two swords belonging to General Mitchell, one
having been presented to him by his uncle in 1898 when Mitchell was promoted
from private to lieutenant during the Spanish War aud became the youngest
officer in the Army; the other, his service sword (N. A. M. 904).

CLark AuToMOTIVE Musreum, Southampton, L. I., N. ¥Y.: Two aircraft engines,
an Anzani and a Caminez (N. A. M. 896).

COMMERCE, DEPARTMENT OF, CiviL AERONAUTICS ADMINISTRATION, Washington,
D. C.: Two aircraft beacons of the type used when the national airways were
first established (N. A. M. 893).

Der Ftorez, ApM. Luis, Pomfret, Conn.: A group of early aircraft instruments
which he assisted in developing during the World War I period, and a Daniel
rotary, 2-cycle aircraft engine (N. A. M. 906).

Doverias ArrcraAFtT Co., Inc., Santa Monica, Calif.: Scale models, 1:16, of the
F4D-1, Skyray, and the A4D-1, Skyraider, illustrating current types of naval
earrier-based fighting and attack airplanes (N. A. M. 892).

HEcx, W. Joun, Arlington, Va.: The first passenger ticket sold for the first com-
mercial airplane flight over the North Pole area from the United States to
Europe, by the Scandinavian Airlines System, Inc., November 18, 1954. 'The
donor had the distinction of being the first passenger (N. A. M. 875).

114 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

FAIRCHILD ENGINE & AIRPLANE CorP., Hagerstown, Md.: Scale models, 1: 48, illus-
trating the C-119 and C-123 cargo planes recently produced by this corporation
for the Armed Forces (N. A. M. 874).

Garper, Paut E., Washington, D. C.: An aviator’s helmet equipped with air
tubes, hoses, and mouthpiece used for instructing student pilots (N. A. M. 913).

Haney, Ciirton O., Reading, Pa.: A roll of “Penacloth” developed by the Penn-
sylvania Rubber Co. during the early days of flying, as a special fabric
for covering the wings of airplanes. This type of fabric was used by many of
the Early Birds, including the donor (N. A. M. 895).

HAMMonD, DEAN, Dearborn, Mich.: Stearman-Hammond airplane, a type de-
veloped by the donor in the early 1930’s when the Department of Commerce was
encouraging production of economical aircraft intended for private flying
(N. A. M. 886).

Hartman, A. J., Burlington, lowa: A Roberts airplane engine, 4 cylinders, 60 hp.,
together with the associated radiator and propeller that formed the power in-
stallation of an airplane of 1911 flown by the donor (N. A. M. 878).

Key, ALGENE and Frep, Meridian, Miss.: The Ole Miss, Curtiss Robin monoplane
which, June 4-July 1, 1935, established an official endurance record of 653
hours 34 minutes continuous flight, refueled in air (N. A. M. 883).

IKKNABENSHUE, Roy, Pasadena, Calif.: A replica of the dirigible airship which
he constructed in 1905 and piloted over New York City, that being the first time
a powered aircraft had flown over that metropolis (N. A. M. 894).

MaaratH, Curisty, Berkeley, Mo.: An early flying model airplane of about
1910 and a structural unit of the U. S. Army’s Goodyear RS-1 airship of 1932
(N. A. M. 884).

MANBECK, ESTELLE, Long Beach, Calif.: The first type of pin identifying mem-
bers of the Ninety Nine’s, organization of women pilots of which Amelia
Earhart was cofounder. The donor was past commander of the Amelia Ear-
hart Post #678, American Legion (N. A. M. 871).

Merca.r, Dr. G. W., Baltimore, Md.: 10 scale models, 1: 24, illustrating air-
planes used in World War I, including English, French, and German types
(N. A. M. 869).

Navy, DEPARTMENT OF THE, Washington, D. C.: The original ground-speed and
drift indicator developed by Harold Gatty and used by him when, as navigator,
he flew around the world with Wiley Post, June 23—July 1, 1931, received
from the U. S. Naval Observatory (N. A. M. 887). Scale model, 1:16, of
the Curtiss SOC-3 airplane, one of the final types of biplanes used by the
Navy, several having engaged the enemy when Pearl Harbor was attacked
in 1941 (N. A.M 903).

NESSEN, JOHN, Pleasant Valley, Conn.: A 6-cylinder Menasco aircraft engine,
this example having been used by Charles Lindbergh in the Miles “Mohawk”
airplane that he purchased and flew in England in 1937 (N. A. M. 900).

NortH AMERICAN AviATION, INc., Los Angeles, Calif.: Scale model, 1:16, of
the F-100 Supersabre, the first fighter to attain supersonic speed in level and
climbing flight. For the development of this airplane the donor was the
recipient of the Robert J. Collier Trophy award for 1953 (N. A. M. 911).

OLIver, Rowianp §., Washington, D. C.: A toy given to the donor in 1899,
illustrating an early concept of a foot-propelled parachutelike aircraft
(N. A. M. 899).

OLMSTED, CHAS. M., THE FAMILY AND ESTATE oF: An original full-sized amphibi-
ous aircraft developed 1909-12, incorporating many advanced features, in-
cluding retractable wheels, variable-camber wing, and elevated high-aspect-ratio
tail plane (N. A. M, 872).

ae ee eee ee a Se

SECRETARY'S REPORT 115

OLMSTED, JOHN B., Miami, Fla.: The original wind-tunnel model of an am-
phibious twin-pusher monoplane developed by his father, Charles M. Olmsted,
1909-1912 (N. A. M. 880).

Parker, WM. D., Bartlesville, Okla.: An Elbridge 3-cylinder airplane engine
used by the donor during some of his early flights, 1910-12; and a Lawrance
2-cylinder-opposed aircraft engine developed for installation in the “Penguin”
clipped-wing training airplanes of World War I (N. A. M. 907).

PFISTER, Mrs. ArTHUR, Aspen, Colo.: A Bell P-89 Airacobra airplane, a fighter
type developed for use in World War II, this example having been piloted
by the donor (nee Betty Haas) in postwar air races (N. A. M. 876).

Portz, Henry G., Garden Grove, Calif.: Scale model, 1:16, of the Turner-Laird
special racer piloted by Roscoe Turner when he won the 1939 Thompson Trophy
Race at an average speed of 282.53 m. p. h., becoming the only pilot to win
this famous trophy three times. (N. A. M. 905).

Post Orrick DrPaRTMENT, Washington, D. C.: A mail bag used in the Postal
Aviation Service on the first continuous scheduled public-service airmail
route in the world, New York-Philadelphia-Washington, 1918 (N. A. M. 889).
An airplane propeller, mahogany, from one of the airmail planes operated
by the Postal Aviation Service over the transcontinental mail routes about
1925, used with a Liberty engine (N. A. M. 908).

RIcKER, BERNARD, Washington, D. C.: A mail bag and post card dropped from
the German airship Graf Zeppelin when it circled over Washington after
making its first transatlantic flight from Germany to Lakehurst, N. J., October
15, 1928. The donor, then 13 years old, caught this mail bag and took it to
the Post Office where its contents were forwarded (N. A. M. 912).

Stout, Wm. B., Phoenix, Ariz.: A group of five early and experimental aircraft
models which the donor collected or constructed, illustrating elementary heli-
copters of the late nineteenth century, and gliders constructed from descrip-
tions by Octave Chanute (N. A. M. 878).

Toprina, WiLLIAM, Akron, Ohio: Scale models, 1:48, of two guided missiles,
the Chance Vought “Regulus” and the Martin B-61 ‘Matador,’ which are in
current production (N. A. M. 901).

Unirep AIRCRAFT Corp., Pratt & WHITNEY AIRCRAFT Division, Hartford, Conn.
(with assistance of Harvey Lippincott): A Bendix fuel injection unit of the
type used with the Wasp Major R-4360 engines (N. A. M. 882). The originat
example of the J-57 twin-spool turbojet engine, a type selected to power
several supersonic fighters of the U. S. Air Force and Navy and recently
developed tankers and bombers, including the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8.
The designer of this engine, Leonard 8S. Hobbs, was awarded the Robert J.
Collier Trophy for 1952 (N. A. M. 885). An R-2000 28D13G aircraft engine,
the Pratt & Whitney Co.’s one-hundredth experimental engine which served
as a basis for testing many improvements in design. This type installed in
DC-4 airplanes made aircraft history as the principal powerplant of the
famous Berlin airlift (N. A. M. 890). A full-sized sectionalized turbosuper-
charger of the type used in the Boeing B-17 superfortress bombers during
World War II to enable the engines to operate efficiently at high altitudes.
For development of the turbosupercharger Dr. Sanford A. Moss, of the General
Electric Co., was awarded the Robert J. Collier Trophy for 1940 (N. A. M.
891). Srkorsky Arrcrarr Division, Bridgeport, Conn.: Scale models 1: 48,
of the H-5 and H-19 helicopters, in current service (N. A. M. 897).

Unitep Arr Lines, Chicago, Ill.: Uniform of the type worn by the first stew-
ardesses of this airline which was the first to employ them, 1930 (N. A. M. 879).

116 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Voucut, CHANcE, AIRCRAFT, INC., Dallas, Tex.: A scale model, 1: 16, of the Navy
F8vU “Crusader,” a current type of carrier-based supersonic fighter (N. A. M.
909).

Women’s NATIONAL AERONAUTIC ASSOCIATION (through Mrs. Chester §. Bleyer,
Tulsa, Okla.) : Scale model, 1:16, of the William B. Stout Liberty-engined
“Air Pullman” with which Contract Air Mail Route #1 was inaugurated by the
Ford Motor Co. between Detroit and Cleveland, 1925 (N. A. M. 877). Seven
seale models, 1:16, illustrating airplanes flown in competition and in World
War II service by Jacqueline Cochrane (N. A. M. 910).

Respectfully submitted.
Pau Epwarp Garper, Head Curator.
Dr. Lronarp CARMICHAEL,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.

Report on the National Zoological Park

Sir: Transmitted herewith is a report on the operations of the Na-
tional Zoological Park for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1956.

In all, 742 accessions, comprising 1,710 individual animals, were
added to the collection during the year by gifts, deposits, purchases,
exchanges, births, and hatchings. Among these were many rare speci-
mens never before shown in this Zoo. The addition of new kinds of
animals enhances the value of the collection, which is maintained not
only for exhibition but also for research and education. Opportunities
for research are afforded students of biology, particularly vertebrate
zoology, as well as artists, photographers, and writers. Methods of
study that do not endanger the welfare of animals or the safety of
the public are encouraged.

In addition to the regular diversified activities of carrying on all
the operations of the Zoo, the services of the staff included answering
in person or by phone, mail, or telegraph questions regarding animals
and their care and transportation; furnishing to other Zoos and other
agencies, public and private, information regarding structures for
housing animals; cooperating with other agencies of Federal, State,
and municipal governments in research work; and preparing manu-
scripts for publication.

The stone restaurant building, which was constructed in the Park
in 1940, is leased at $84,452 a year. This money is deposited to the
credit of the Collector of Taxes, District of Columbia.

Elton Howe, for many years a watch and clock repairman in
Washington but now associated with the Diamond Ordnance Labora-
tory at the U. S. Bureau of Standards, generously presented to the
Zoo the 4-faced, 8-day clock that had stood at F Street near Thirteenth
since 1922. Mr. Howe put the clock in first-class condition when it was
installed, and plans to maintain it in running order as long as he can
do so. It has been set up at the intersection of the concourse on the
main road through the park, and was started on Monday, June 4, 1956.

FINANCES

The regular appropriation for the fiscal year was $669,300, which
is carried in the District of Columbia Appropriation Act. This
amount was supplemented by $21,600, which was transferred to the
appropriation in accordance with Public Law 94, to cover pay increases

117

118 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

made necessary by the Federal Employees’ Salary Increase Act of
1955, approved June 28, 1955.

THE EXHIBITS

Animals for exhibition are acquired by gift, deposit, purchase, ex-
change, birth, and hatching, and are removed by death, exchange, or
return of those on deposit. Although depositors are at liberty to
remove their specimens, many leave them permanently.

As in any colony of living things, there is a steady turnover, and the
exhibits are constantly changing. Thus, the inventory of specimens
in the collection on June 30 of each year does not show all the kinds
of animals that were exhibited during the year, for sometimes
creatures of outstanding interest at the time they were shown are no
longer in the collection at the time the inventory is made.

The United States National Museum is given first choice of all ani-
mals that die in the Zoo. If they are not desired for the Museum they
are then made available to other institutions or scientific workers.
Thus the value of the specimen continues long after it is dead.

The two pairs of young giraffes and the pair of young gaurs, as well
as other animals brought to the Zoo in 1987 by the National Geographic
Society—Smithsonian Institution Expedition, have bred so successfully
that the Zoo has been able to dispose of surplus stock having a total
exchange value greater than the entire cost of the trip. Such animals
are exchanged with other zoos and with animal dealers for specimens
that are needed for this collection.

ACCESSIONS

‘he Zoo is particularly fortunate in having friends who show their
sincere interest by bringing in specimens or arranging for acquisitions
from foreign countries.

To obtain suitable animals for exhibition extensive correspondence
throughout the world and a great number of personal contacts are
maintained. As a result it is frequently possible to obtain animals
that are not ordinarily available through animal dealers. Some of
these are gifts and some are obtained by purchase.

OUTSTANDING ACQUISITIONS

“Wirsts” and rarities are always welcomed, and the Zoo acquired
a gratifying number of such specimens during the year.

For the first time this Zoo has a pair of European bison, or wisents
(Bison bonasus), which are the European counterparts of the Amer-
ican bison. Wisents are extinct in the wild, but a few have survived
in captivity or in forest preserves in spite of wars in Europe.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 119

After trying for several years the National Geographic Society
procured for the Zoo a specimen of the very rare dwarf armadillo
(Burmeisterta retusa) of the Bolivian region of South America.
It was obtained by W. Frerking, a National Geographic Society
correspondent keenly interested in the undertaking, and was flown
from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, by the Pan American and National Air
Lines without cost. It arrived in perfect condition, and while not a
showy exhibition animal it is remarkable in form and appearance,
and its great rarity makes it an outstanding “first” for this Zoo. It
may be the first to be alive in the United States. It is about 7 inches
long. The pink color of the body shows through the shell, there is a
fringe of white hairs around the edge of the shell, and the hair of the
underparts is white. The feet are pink and the front feet have very
large claws for digging.

Lt. Col. Robert Traub, of the Army Medical Research Unit, who is
now stationed at Kuala Lumpur, Malaya, again generously offered
the Zoo a considerable assortment of animals, from which a few were
selected. The most outstanding specimen was a linsang (Prionodon
linsang) which unfortunately died only a few hours before reaching
Washington. It is very rare in the wild and is not known to have been
in captivity before.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, through the kindly interest of
Donald L. Spencer in Alaska and William Tierre in Washington,
made a noteworthy contribution of an Alaskan brown bear (Ursus
sp.)—a female cub born about February 1955.

The Army Medical School gave the Zoo seven chimpanzees of ex-
hibition quality.

The National Geographic Society, through Gilbert G. La Gorce,
presented two beavers (Castor canadensis), the first the Zoo has had
for some time.

Twenty specimens of a medium-size African galago (Galago sene-
galensis) were turned over to the Zoo by the Army Medical School
of Walter Reed Hospital, through Dr. J. A. Morris, after they had
served their purpose with the Medical Corps. They were in good
condition and are useful for both exhibition and exchange.

The Army Medical School also gave three Mongolian gerbils
(Meriones unguiculatus), which are sufficiently active during the day
to be good exhibition animals. This species was on exhibition only
once before.

Two interesting African small mammals, a rock rat (Aethomys
kaisert) and a kusu rat (Arvicanthus niloticus), were sent by Dr.
Lawrence Kilham of the National Institutes of Health while he was
engaged in research work at Entebbe, Uganda. These small mammals

412575—57——_9

120 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

have considerable external resemblance to some of the ratlike creatures
of North America and are interesting for exhibition.

A Himalayan snow cock (Tetraogallus h. himalayensis) was given
the Zoo by the Fish and Wildlife Service through Gardner Bump,
who was then in Pakistan, and F. C. Lincoln of the Washington
office. This is the first bird of this kind exhibited here. It is about the
size and form of a domestic chicken.

The Fish and Wildlife Service also presented the first specimens
of the sand grouse (Pterocles orientalis) the Zoo has ever had.

Two kea parrots (Vestor notabilis), gifts from the New Zealand
Government, were brought north for the Zoo by the Naval Antarctic
Expedition. These birds were at one time threatened with extinction
and are now rigidly protected. They have been successfully exhibited
here for many years, but these two additional specimens are most
welcome.

Three emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) were brought to
the Zoo by Malcolm Davis of the Zoo staff, who accompanied the
Antarctic Expedition known as Task Force 48. He also brought back
six parasitic gulls known as skuas (Catharacta maccormicki). The
penguins died of aspergillosis within a few days.

From Dr. Juan Rivero, of the University of Puerto Rico, came three
different species of the beautiful little green anolis of Puerto Rico.

The following were obtained by purchase:

An olingo, or bassaricyon (Bassaricyon gabbi), from the Leticia
region of Colombia. For many years this rare animal has been sought
in Central America and northern South America. It is a relative of
the raccoons and kinkajous and bears considerable resemblance to
the latter, but its ears are larger, its tail is not prehensile, and its
movements suggest that it is probably more terrestrial than the kinka-
jou. Only a few specimens of this genus are known from widely
scattered locations in Central America and northern South America.
This is the first one of its kind exhibited in the Zoo and probably the
first to be alive in the United States.

Two young Sumatran orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), which had
been deposited in the Zoo by Mr. and Mrs. Carl Krummel of Bal-
timore, Md.

A male, a female, and a young Saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica).

Fine specimens of male and female gelada baboons (7'heropithecus
gelada), the first the Zoo has had for several years. They are rare in
the wild and are noteworthy among the primates in having a naked
area on their red chest; in the female this area is bordered by a row
of tubercles on the skin more than one-eighth of an inch in diameter,
giving the impression that she wears a pink pearl necklace. The
single species of this interesting genus inhabits the mountainous parts
of Abyssinia.

SECRETARY’S REPORT nai

A South American tapir (Zapirus terrestris), which gives the Zoo
a pair of these river and swamp animals.

A pair of rib-faced deer, or muntjaks (d/untiacus muntjak).

A pair of beautiful young tamandua anteaters (Zamandua
tetradactyla).

Two African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus). The Zoo had some of these
animals several years ago, but they are not common in captivity.

Two black jacanas (Jacana spinosa hypomelaena). These tiny rela-
tives of the rails have extremely long slender toes and long legs,
and are well adapted to running on vegetation floating on the surface
of tropical streams and ponds. They are the first the Zoo has
exhibited.

A beautiful white-and-gray Guianan crested eagle (M/orphnus
guianensis) from the Leticia region of Colombia. The species ranges
from Honduras and Costa Rica south to Argentina and Bolivia but
is scarce throughout its range and very rare in captivity.

Two Inca terns (Larosterna inca), inhabitants of the coast of Peru
and Chile. These are the first that have been exhibited here and are
attractive additions to the bird house.

Two whooper swans (Cygnus cygnus), inhabitants of Europe and
Asia, but now rare.

A fine specimen of the comb duck (Sarkidiornis melanota), which
inhabits most of Africa and southern Asia.

A specimen of an interesting Manduit’s hawk-eagle (Spizaetus
ornatus) .

Surinam toads (Pipa pipa). These are the first of these very in-
teresting creatures the Zoo has had for some time. They are remark-
able for their method of reproduction—the male embeds the eggs in
the soft spongy skin of the back of the female, where they go through
the tadpole stage and emerge as little frogs.

A parrot snake (Leptophis occidentalis), from the Leticia region of
Colombia.

During the year contact was reestablished with a collector, J. D.
Handman, in Africa, who has sent several shipments of reptiles.
Among the more interesting ones were flap-necked chameleons (Cha-
muaeleon dilepis), striped sand snakes (Psammophis subtaeniatus) ,
sharp-nosed snakes (Rhamphiophis rostratus), Egyptian cobras
(Naja haje), African black cobras (Naja melanoleuca), boomslangs
(Dispholidus typus), African house snakes (Boaedon lineatum), and
plated lizards (Gerrhosaurus major).

Several specimens of the Amazon spotted turtle (Podocenemis uni-
filts). Heretofore these turtles have been very rare in collections, but
apparently the area in which they may be common is now being
explored for animals.

122 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

By exchange with the Philadelphia Zoological Society a specimen
of the Cape Barren goose (Cereopsis novaehollandiae) was acquired.
A small but interesting collection of lizards and scorpions from
the Florida Keys was obtained by exchange from Mr. and Mrs. Louis
H. Babbitt.
DEPOSITS

This year, as in many years past, various individuals have depos-
ited in the Zoo animals to which they desired to retain title. These
are most acceptable additions to the exhibits. Depositors are assured
that the animals will receive routine care, but the Zoo assumes no
responsibility and no obligation to replace any that do not survive.
The following animals were on deposit during the year:

A young red ukari (Cacajao rubicundus), deposited by William
Schwartz. Ukaris are unusual in collections because they do not thrive
in captivity, but because of the special care given this specimen it gives
promise of surviving.

A number of active young chimpanzees, on deposit from the Army
Medical Corps and the Johns Hopkins Medical School. They are
kept here until they are needed for research work by the respective
institutions. Most of them suffer no greater indignity or discomfort
than having a small amount of their blood taken for testing in a
medical laboratory. They provide one of the most interesting and
active exhibits.

Two specimens of Branick’s paca (Dinomys branickiz) on deposit
for three days. They are South American rodents that are very rare,
but the Zoo had had specimens of them on two previous occasions.

Some chukar quails (Alectornia graeca), deposited by the Pakistan
Embassy.

Ten different species of unusually attractive finches that were living
together, deposited by Dean Stambaugh, St. Albans School, Wash-
ington, D. C.

An interesting collection of Cuban reptiles, deposited by David
Hardy of Baltimore, Md.

A specimen of the Murray turtle (’mydura macquarie), depos-
ited by Donald Pumphrey.

DEPOSITORS AND DONORS AND THEIR GIFTS

(Deposits are marked *; unless otherwise indicated, address of donors is
Washington, D. C.)

Aaron, A. H., Hyattsville, Md., domestic | Alexander, Judith, 2 red-lined turtles.

rabbit. Amber, Dianne, Arlington, Va., 2 Peking
Aaron, Mrs. William H., Wheaton, Md., ducks.

domestie rabbit. Amos, James, screech owl.
Adams, Louis, timber rattlesnake. Anderberg, Sven, Hyattsville, Md., do-
Adgate, W. M., Bethesda, Md., 2 domes- mestie rabbit.

tie rabbits.

SECRETARY’S REPORT

Anderson, Bruce, Silver Spring, Md.,

alligator.

Anderson, R. G., Lanham, Md., 9 Peking
ducks.

Ariss, Michael and John, cottontail
rabbit.

Arnold, Mrs. Elting,
purple grackle.

Aro, Mrs. Thomas, Arlington, Va., grass
parakeet.

Atkeson, John C., Jr., Arlington, Va.,
sparrow hawk.

Babbitt, Lewis H., Petersham, Mass.,
timber rattlesnake.

Baker, Thomas G., Brentwood, Md., 9
domestic rabbits.

Baldwin, J. W., King George Co., Va.,
3 raccoons,

Barber, Robin,
Peking duck.

Barnwell, E. L., Alexandria, Va., Peking
duck.

Barrus, Russell W., Jr., Falls Church,
Va., eastern skunk.

Baster, Fred, domestic rabbit.

Bayer, F. M., 10 sea snakes.

Beall, Peter W., Bethesda, Md., mole
snake.

Beard, William H., skunk.

Beckett, Patricia and Charlotte, Be-
thesda, Md., 3 bantam fowl.

Berrell, Mrs. F. J., Peking duck.

Besby, Susan, Orange, Va., ground hog.

Bianchini, W. R., Hyattsville, Md., 2
Peking ducks.

Bigley, Georgia, *grass parakeet.

Bingham, Lt. Col. E. C., Arlington, Va.,
domestic rabbit.

Black, Charles N., Bladensburg, Md.,

Somerset, Md.,

Chevy Chase, Md.,

alligator.

Black, T. W., Cheverly, Md., red-lined
turtle.

Blankenship, William A., Bethesda,

Md., squirrel monkey.
Bohrer, Ronnie, Silver Spring,
Peking duck.
Borkart, Mrs. Olivia, *spider monkey.
Bowen, Edward W., Hyattsville, Md.,
alligator.
Bowker, Albert H., domestic rabbit.
Bozzi, Mrs. Francis G., 6 barn owls.
Brantner, Lester E., Rockville, Md.,
gray fox.

Md.,

123

Breazeale, Edgar B., chukar quail.

Brewer, C. M., Hyattsville, Md., caiman.

Bridge, John and Stephen, Greenbelt,
Md., spotted turtle, 3 snapping tur-
tles, pilot black snake.

Briggs, Michael, horned lizard.

Brooks, Virginia, domestic rabbit.

Brown, Helen, Louisa, Va., *owl mon-
key, *pig-tailed monkey.

Brown, Howard, Lexington Park, Md.,
bald eagle.

Bruzzess, Pvt. J. A., muscovy duck.

Butts, Dr. A. B., domestic rabbit.

Cabot, Caskie, Arlington, Va., pigeon.

Calvert, Gordon L., Silver Spring, Md.,
2 domestic rabbits.

Campbell, F. W., Alexandria, Va., Pe-
king duck.

Carpenter, W. K., Wilmington, Del., Af-
rican leopard.

Carr, Mrs. Myrtle, Muirkirk, Md., green
guenon.

Carroll, Mrs. Rachel, Silver Spring, Md.,
*white-throated capuchin monkey.

Carroll, Wyman, New Haven, Conn.,
gaboon viper.

Carter, Helen, *blue jay.

Chandler, Mrs. R., domestic rabbit.

Chapman, Cathy and Steve, Silver
Spring, Md., 2 Peking ducks.

Charman, H. W., Kensington, Md., do-
mestie rabbit.

Chauvenet, Allen, Silver Spring, Md., 3
opossums.

Chin, Calvin and Carol, domestic rabbit.
Christie, James, Knight, and Claude,
Alexandria, Va., *night monkey.
Clarke, Patrick J., Takoma Park, Md.,

caiman.

Clavelli, Mrs. Anita, domestic rabbit.

Clay, Rick H., Arlington, Va., squirrel
monkey.

Coiner, Robert W., Silver Spring, Md., 2
Peking ducks.

Collins, F., Falls Church, Va., hamster.

Cook, Sheila, caiman.

Cooke, M /Sst. Russell, Jr., black-and-
red marmoset, Geoffroy’s marmo-
set.

Corbin, Mrs. Mary Lee, Beltsville, Md.,
ringtail capuchin.

Corvick, Mrs. William A., McLean, Va.,
albino robin.

124

Crandon Zoo, Miami, Fla., soft-shelled
turtle.

Crocker, Charles D., Georgetown,
British Guiana, 2 anacondas.

Crockett, Mrs. J. 8., Brentwood, Md.,
caiman.

Crooks, Claudia, Peking duck.

Crooks, Henry A., Indian Head, Md.,
raccoon.

Culver, Charles E., Falls Church, Va.,
3 Peking ducks.

Curtis, Dr., rhesus monkey.

Curtis, Mrs. Charles, Silver Spring, Md.,
2 flying squirrels.

Danko, George J., 4 Peking ducks.

Davis, Frank K., ocelot.

Davis, Mrs. J. R., Peking duck.

Davis, Lawrence D., Hyattsville, Md.,
red-lined turtle.

Davis, Robert R., *kinkajou.

Davis, Skipper, Alexandria, Va., pilot
black snake.

Dawson, Jane A., Rockville, Md., cotton-
tail rabbit.

Degan, Donnie and Mary, Takoma Park,
Md., 4 white-tailed pigeons.

DePrato, Joe and Jack, Langley Park,
Md., 20 tree frogs, green frog, 2
toads.

Douglass, Beverly, *pale capuchin.

Drake, Mrs. Ruth H., grass parakeet.

Dunaey, Nicholas, brown capuchin, 2
caimans.

Duques, Mrs. Henry, Arlington, Ya.,
domestic rabbit.

Ebert, Jervey S., Rockville, Md., 4 pur-
ple martins.

Hby, Cecil A., Bethesda, Md., loon.

kin, Mrs. C. William, Bethesda, Md.,
gray squirrel.

Ellis, John H., Torrington,
eackling goose.

Emerson, F. A., Rockville, Md., golden
pheasant.

Emmett, Edith, domestic rabbit.

Ercannilla, M., cowbird.

Ezenour, Joan, Arlington, Va., 2 domes-
tic chickens.

Ezrine, Angy, Peking duck.

Fama, Joseph, Peking duck.

Faulstich, Albert J., domestic rabbit.

Fehrman, Ray, Silver Spring, Md., *2
collared turtledoves.

Conn.,

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Feighery, Frank, Sr., Colvin Run, Va.,
alligator.

Ferguson, Geary,
coachwhip snake.

Vields, Lary, Bethesda, Md., pilot black
snake.

Yisher, Viola, squirrel monkey.

Foley, John W., Kensington, Md., mud
turtle, box turtle, snapping turtle,
rabbit.

Fortenberry, C. G., Arlington,
domestic rabbit.

Foster, Daniel L., 2 red-bellied snakes.

Fox, James B., Bethesda, Md. *2 spar-
row hawks, *2 red-tailed hawks, *2
duck hawks.

Fraley, Patricia, Rockville, Md., Peking
duck.

Francis, Roddy, 2 domestic rabbits.

Freeman, Frank W., 4 sea herses.

Frick, Ann Tracey, Peking duck.

Frost, Mrs. W. P., Kensington, Md.,
domestic rabbit.

Fudge, Robert E., Dahlgreen,
Virginia deer.

Fuqua, Paul, Arlington, Va., snapping
turtle, 2 horned lizards.

Gambone, William A., Silver Spring,
Md., domestic rabbit.

Garber, Paul E., flying squirrel.

Garcia, Modesta, Silver Spring, Md.,
squirrel.

Garrison, T., domestic rabbit.

Gaver, Gordon, Thurmont, Md., *rhesus
monkey, *4 alligators, *alligator
turtle, *Javan macaque.

Gilliam, Homer, Falls Church, Va., fly-
ing squirrel.

Gingell, F. V., Fairhaven, Md., Geof-
froy’s marmoset.

Giuliani, Gilbert,
tarantula.

Gleason, Mrs. Naomi,
Md., caiman.

Gooch, Donald, Takoma Park, Md., 2
eastern skunks.

Gray, Joseph B., Seat Pleasant, Md.,
opossum, raccoon.

Alexandria, Va.,

Va.,

Va.,

Kensington, Md.,

Silver Spring,

Greco, James, Vienna, Va., common
goat.

Greenhow, Roger, Springfield, Va.,
painted turtle.

Greenwood, Walter, Arlington, Va.,

diamond-back turtle.

SECRETARY’S REPORT

125

Grunwell, William T., Arlington, Va.,| Hoffman, Irvin M., Bethesda, Md., 2

red-bellied turtle.

Gscheidle, John R., Chillum, Md., snap-
ping turtle.

Haldeman, Jay, Bethesda, Md., domes-
tie rabbit.

Hall, Mrs. Edna M., Arlington, Va., 2
black-widow spiders.

Hall, Raynaud, domestic rabbit.

Hammlin, Paul K., Kinston, N. C., 2
capuchin monkeys.

Hammond, James H., Chevy Chase,
Md., 6 guinea pigs.

Hand, Dr. J. D., Silver Spring, Md., hog-
nosed snake,

Hardy, David, Baltimore, Md., *4 Cuban
iguanas, *8 curl-tail lizards, *19
Cuban boas, *10 Cuban geckos, *3
Cuban turtles, *16 Cuban toads,
*Cuban racer, *4 ground boas, *Ju-
bito or Cuban grass snake, *hutia.

Hatchman, Mrs. M. G., Bethesda, Md.,
pilot black snake.

Hawkins, Clayton, Java rice bird, 4
grass parakeets.

Heilman, Miriam, Chevy Chase, Md.,
box turtle.

Helsig, C. P., Arlington, Va., 2 Peking
ducks.

Henderson, David and Elizabeth, Ar-
lington, Va., 2 hamsters.

Henderson, H. R., caiman.

Hendley, Carroll, Bladensburg,
red-lined turtle.

Hennessy, Richard L., San Francisco,
Calif., *Rosella parakeet.

Hewitt, Wesley, Silver Spring, Md.,
alligator.

Hibbert, B. L., Peking duck.

Hicks, William, 6 hamsters.

Highfield, Robert T., southern hill
mynah.

Hill, James C., 2 roosters.

Hobbs, Catherine B., 2 diamond-back
turtles.

Hobbs, E. E., Jr., Wheaton, Md., ring-
tail capuchin monkey.

Hodge, Mrs. W. H., Silver Spring, Md.,
domestic rabbit.

Hoffman, Irvin H., Cabin John, Md.,
Silver pheasant.

Md.,

wood ducks, 2 silver-spangled Ham-
burg fowls.
Hogeboom, Mrs. G. H., Kensington, M4.,
black-widow spider.
Hoke, John, 2 common iguanas.
Holland, Beatrice, grass parakeet.
Homan, Coke, eastern skunk.
Hood, Maj. Gen. Reuben C., Jr., USAF,

Ancon, Canal Zone, Galapagos
turtle.

Horne, Douglas B., Surry, Va., copper-
head snake.

Howell, Robert, Arlington, Va., 3 Java
finches.

Hubbard, Robert, Arlington, Va., alli-
gator.

Hubble, Mrs. W., rosy-faced lovebird.

Huggins, Mrs. Henry S., cottontail
rabbit.

Hughes, Mrs. Hannah, domestic turkey.

Hughes, Mrs. William G., Jr., horned
lizard.

Hutchinson, W. S., cockatiel.

Hynek, Frank, spiny-tailed iguana.

Ikao, Tanit, Burlington, N. J., *alligator.

Johnson, Richard W., Bethesda, Md.,
2 pocket mice.

Jolley, Christian L., Rockville, Md.,
Butler’s garter snake.

Jones, J. O., Falls Church, Va., 3 domes-
tie rabbits.

Jones, Marie A., Silver Spring, Md.,
Peking duck.

Kangas, Mike, Arlington, Va., 3 ospreys.

Kastantin, J., Rockville, Md., indigo
snake.

Kasten, Mrs. Marie A., 2 box turtles,
3 false map turtles, 2 red-lined
turtles, Florida water turtle.

Keeping, Jim, sparrow hawk.

Kennard, Marion, domestic rabbit.

Kilham, Dr. Lawrence, National Insti-
tutes of Health, *kusu rat, *rock
rat.

King, Nancy J., Peking duck.

Kirchmyer, R. H., red-lined turtle.

Klenzing, G. Stewart, Chambersburg,
Pa., caiman.

Kliban, Barnett
*mynah,
*mynah.

P., *2 lovebirds,
*yellow-headed parrot,

126

Krumke, Karl E., III, spotted turtle,
mole snake, pilot black snake, hog-
nosed snake.

Krummel, Carl, Baltimore, Md., *12
white headed nuns, *2 Sumatran
orangutans.

Kuntz, Dr. Robert, Navy Medical Cen-
ter, 2 western box turtles, western
race runner, western hog-nosed
snake, 8 horned lizards.

Lang, Luisa, Chevy Chase, Md., blue-
tailed skink.

Lash, Irvin F., Arlington, Va., 2 grass
parakeets.

Latham, Inez F., 2 cardinals.

Latham, Joseph D., Indian Head, Md.,
2 Peking ducks.

Latham, Louis, Arlington, Va., 6 opos-
sums.

Latham, Mrs. Marté, Pittsburgh, Pa.,
*2 Brannick’s paca.

Lawrence, Mrs. Betty, *blue jay.

Leach, Janet, Peking duck.

Leclereq, Richard P., Silver Spring, Md.,
wild rabbit.

Leland, Mrs. Carolyn, weeping capuchin.

Levangie, Betsy, squirrel monkey.

Liebert, Carolyn, Bethesda, Md., 2
domestic rabbits.

Linowes, David, domestic rabbit.

Lipovsky, Dr. L. J., *29 salamanders.

Lippman, Larry, Bethesda, Md., caiman.

Locke, Otto Martin, New Braunfels,
Tex., 2 indigo snakes, 8 rattle-
snakes.

Loeber, C. W., albino robin.

Logsdon, D. M., Annandale, Va., *opos-
sum.

Long, Clifford F., Alexandria, Va., 32
grass parakeets.

Loving, W. H., McLean, Va., 2 domestic
rabbits.

Ludwig, Charles D., Arlington, Va.,
*Cuban parrot.

Lumpkin, Allen, DeKay’s snake.

Madeira School, caiman.

Maiatics, Jerry, horseshoe crab.

March, Mr. and Mrs. Anthony, Bethesda,
Md., goat.

Marden, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, *2 flying
squirrels,

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Marmelstein, Allan, Silver Spring, Md.,
*capuchin monkey, 5 red-lined tur-
tles.

Martin, James Robert, Norfolk, Va., *2
soft-shelled turtles.

Maske, Jerry, domestic rabbit.

Massey, C. C., Alexandria, Va., 2 Peking
ducks.

Mausert, Lt. Col. Ryerson N., Falls
Church, Va., 7 Rouen ducks.

Mayo, W. A., cottontail rabbit.

Mendoza, R. H., domestic rabbit.

Merchant, Mrs. R. A. Arlington, Va.,
domestic rabbit.

Miller, Sam, domestic rabbit.

Money, Mark L., Herndon, Va., spotted
turtle.

Mora, Jeanne, Arlington, Va., domestic
rabbit.

Moreland, Frances, domestic rabbit.

Mork, M. W., black iguana.

Munroe, Willard N., Jr., Rangeley
Lakes, Maine, Virginia deer.

Murphy, Greer M., Chevy Chase, Md.,
caiman.

Murphy, Mrs. H. S., Arlington, Va.,
Peking duck.

Murphy, Jay, Arlington, Va., snapping
turtle.

Murray, Thomas M., Green Meadows,
Md., domestic rabbit.

Murrow, Mrs. J. S., raccoon.

Murrow, Roy, robin.

Musser, George, Springfield, Va., red-
shouldered hawk.

Myers, Earl H., Falls Church, Va., pale
eapuchin monkey.

McCormick, H. W., eastern skunk.

McCune, Malcolm, Silver Spring, Md., 2
chinchillas.

McDonald, Karen, Arlington, Va., 2
cottontail rabbits.

McDonald, Tillman,
prairie dog.

McGeown, A. W., Chevy Chase, Md.,
*crow.

McKinney, Frank D., hog-nosed snake.

McLean, Mrs. M., black-headed Gould-
ian finch.

McLean, Paul, domestie rabbit.

MeNeil, Jean, Peking duck.

Nathan, Dick, domestic rabbit.

Arlington, Va.,

SECRETARY’S REPORT

National Geographic Society, 2 beavers,
tapafrasco or dwarf armadillo.

National Institutes of Health, Bethesda,
Md., 3 squirrel monkeys, *rhesus
monkey.

Nelson, Sara L., squirrel monkey.

Nelson, T. P., McLean, Va., snapping
turtle.

Newkirk, George F., Bladensburg, Md.,
night heron.

New Zealand Government, 2 kea par-
rots.

Nixon, Patricia and Julie, caiman.

North Atlantic Fertilizer and Chemi-
cal Co., New York, N. Y., *5 regal
pythons, *3 mangrove snakes, *3
burrowing boas.

Norton, Lorraine, domestic rabbit.

Offutt, Courtney, Silver Spring, Md., 2
squirrels.

Olmstead, R. M., Beltsville, Md., barn
owl.

Pakistan, Embassy of, *20 chukar quail,
*§ immature quail.

Pardue,
Md., common goat.

Parker, Dorothy, Arlington,
Peking ducks.

Parker, HE. S., Fredericksburg,
Bantam fowl.

Parrish, Margaret, Woodbridge, Va.,
caiman.

Peppard, Kenneth, Alexandria, Va.,
Peking duck.

Phelps, Mrs. James F., Hyattsville, Md.,
skunk.

Pickeral, Charles, Falls Church, Va.,
pale capuchin.

Pickett, Grant, Arlington, Va., alliga-
tor.

Pinckard, Lois and Lucille, 2 alligators.

Pinckney, A. J., Hyattsville, Md., do-
mestie rabbit.

Plummer, Warren, boa constrictor.

Poppen, David, Arlington, Va., caiman.

Portland Zoo, Portland, Oreg., 2 em-
peror geese.

Post Office Department, horned lizard.

Prosise, Mrs. Martin, Vienna, Va., 2
Peking ducks.

Puerto Rico Zoological Gardens, Maya-
giiez, P. R., 29 anolis lizards.

Wile

Vial,

Coolidge F., Seat Pleasant,,

127

Pumphrey, Donald, Bladensburg, Md.,
*Murray turtle.

Queenin, Mrs. R., Jr., caiman.

Ramberg, Walter, Chevy Chase, Md.,
domestic goose.

Reed, Miss B. J., Silver Spring, Md.,
squirrel.

Reinhart, Maj. J. W., Silver Spring, Md.,
horned lizard.

Rhobotham children, Kensington, Md.,
domestic rabbit.

Rice, George H., Jr., Arlington, Va., 2
squirrel monkeys.

Richards, Randy, Falls Church, Va.,
crow.

Richardson, O. O., Manassas, Va., mole
snake.

Richmond, Robert, Falls Church, Va.,
eottontail rabbit.

Riggle, Gordon, Bethesda, Md., collared
lizard.

Riggs, Lowry, Rockville, Md., turtle.

River, Joseph D., raccoon.

Rivero, Dr. Juan, Puerto Rico, 30 speci-
mens representing 3 species of
anolis.

Roach, Norman C., Arlington,
Peking duck.

Roache, W. P., Hyattsville, Md., Canada
goose.

Roberts, Mrs. J. W., 2 opossums.

Robertson, Alan, domestic rabbit.

Robins, Mrs. N. B., Bethesda, Md.,
mole.

Roonce, Mrs. Elizabeth, Alexandria, Va.,
6 opossums.

Rosenthal, William, domestie duck.

Rubin, Carol, Alexandria, Va., Peking
duck.

Rucker, Eldred B., Falls Church, Va.,
skunk.

Rupp, Elizabeth Ann, Arlington, Va.,
domestic rabbit.

Saffeld, Lester W., 2 alligators.

Sanborn, Thornton, Bethesda,
Peking duck.

Sanders, Ray, painted turtle.

Satchel, Mrs. R. T., Woodstock, Va., 2
bald eagles.

Scheid, Carl Patrick, *duck hawk.

Schenk, Mrs. Robert, Peking duck.

Schroeder, Louis W., Rockville, Md.,
black-tufted marmoset.

Va.,

Md,

128

Schwartz, William,
*squirrel monkey.

Seofield, John, *sulphur-breasted tou-
can.

Seegers, Mrs. Scott, McLean, Va., *2
eardinals, *wood thrush.

Shaffer, Joseph T., Alexandria, Va.,
Virginia deer.

Shaw, John, Chevy Chase, Md., caiman.

Sheen, Michael, alls Church, Va., opos-
sum.

Shepard, Mrs. H. L., domestic rabbit.

Shields, Mrs. James W., Bethesda, Md.,
Peking duck.

Shooshan, Mrs. H. M., Bethesda, Md., 2
doves.

Shosteck, Robert, Brookville, Md., 6
mallard ducks.

Shutt, Mrs. Evelyn, Falls Church, Va.,
indigo snake, tarantula.

Sichel, Peter, opossum.

Sidwell Friends School, 9 domestic rab-
bits, 4 bantam hens.

Silvas, Mrs. Antonette, domestic rabbit.

Sims, Jerry, Arlington, Va., DeKay’s
snake.

Sisk, Mark, Takoma Park, Md., caiman.

Skelly, Gerald, Ft. Belvoir, Va., *8 cop-
perheads.

Small, Philip L., Martinsburg, W. Va.,
black-tufted marmoset.

Smith, Roger, Arlington, Va., flying
squirrel.

Smith, T. W., Alexandria, Va., Muscovy
duck.

Smith, William P., Silver Spring, Md.,
domestic rabbit.

Snapp, Randolph, McLean, Va., alli-
gator.

Speakes, Meredith E., Manassas, Va.,
Javan macaque.

Spiller, Mrs. S. K., Peking duck.

Sprehn, Stephen, caiman.

Stagner, H. R., Bethesda, Md., domes-
tie rabbit.

Stambaugh, Dean D., *2 owl finches,
*2 Gouldian finches, *2 cordon bleu
finches, *2 sharp-tailed finches,
*star finch, *2 orange waxbill
finches, “strawberry finch, *Euro-
pean goldfinch, *red-billed fire
finch, *8 canaries.

*ukari monkey,

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Stanbury, Kenneth, Fairfax, Va.,
black-widow spider.

Stiles, Bill, Falls Church, Va., snapping

turtle.

Stilter, Diane, Bethesda, Md., Peking
duck.

Swadley, Virgil, McLean, Va., common
mole.

Swank, Leslie, Arlington, Va., raccoon.
Taylor, James, 2 domestic rabbits.
Taylor, Mike, caiman.

Taylor, R. L., Chevy Chase, Md., 2
ospreys.

Tedron, R., Chevy Chase, Md., domestic
rabbit.

Thomsen, Evelyn R., Alexandria, Va.,
4 Peking ducks.

Thornton, Corp. Richard, Camp Le-
jeune, N. C., 2 Cooper’s hawks.
Tift, Bruce and Barbara, 2 guinea pigs.
Tolley, Benton C., Woodacres, Md., do-

mestie rabbit.

Tote-em-In Zoo, George Tregembo, Wil-
mington, N. C., corn snake, black
swamp snake.

Towneley, Hanson, mockingbird.

Traub, Lt. Col. Robert, Kuala Lumpur,
Malaya, 4 regal pythons, 2 two-
headed snakes, gliding snake, giant
gecko, linsang, binturong, Phayre’s
langur.

Travers, Connie,
mallard duck.

Travis, C. W., wood turtle, ribbon snake.

Trefflich, Henry, New York, N. Y., *king
cobra.

Trew, Mrs. Fred, Chevy Chase, Md. cai-
man.

Troiano, Mr. and Mrs. Frank, *spider
monkey.

Trotter, M. E., domestic rabbit.

Truitt, R. V., Stevensville, Md., 4 rac-
coons.

Tyrrell, W. B., Takoma Park, Md.,
opossum, pygmy rattlesnake, fence
lizard, greater five-lined skink.

Tyrrell, W. B., Willows, Md., 3 pilot
black snakes.

U. S. Army Medical School, 7 chimpan-
zees, 3 Mongolian gerbils.

Through Dr. J. A. Morris, 20 African
galagos.

College Park, Md.,

SECRETARY’S REPORT

U. S. Department of Agriculture, race-
runner snake.
U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

Through Gardner Bump, Karachi,
Pakistan, and F. C. Lincoln, snow
cock.

Through J. Stokley Ligon, Carlsbad,
N. Mex., 2 sand grouse.

Through David L. Spencer, Kenai,
Alaska, and William Tierre, Alas-
kan brown bear.

Through Bruce Stollberg, Squaw
Creek Refuge, Mound City, Mo., 2
blue geese.

Vanderhoof, Jonna,
horned lizard.

Van Tassel, M. E., Arlington, Va., Bra-
Zilian cardinal.

Vaughan, Merrill W., caiman.

Vigliotti, George A., Silver Spring, Md.,
kinkajou.

Villa, Kathy, Chillum, Md., 2 domestic
rabbits.

Vincent, Michael, snapping turtle.

Virus Research Institute, Entebbe,
Uganda, through Dr. J. A. Morris,
Army Medical School, Walter Reed
Hospital, 20 galagos.

Wadsworth, Richard, 2 grass parakeets.

Walter, Harry, College Park, Md., cai-
man.

Walter Reed Hospital, *5 Malayan tree
shrews, 4 chimpanzees.

Walters, Billy, *chicken snake.

Rockville, Md.,

129

Watson, Dr. Joseph, Chevy Chase, Md.,
ring-necked dove.

Watson, William D., Kensington, Md.,
caiman.

Wayland, O. D., Culpeper, V2., 3 grass
parakeets.

Weber, Jeanne, and Mrs. Bill Quinter,
snapping turtle.

Welbon, Henry G., Tokyo, Japan, For-
mosan flying squirrel.
Weston, Douglas, Arlington,

Peking ducks.

Wheeler, William J., Falis Church, Va.,
2 copperheads.

Whitley, James F., *yellow-vented par-
rot.

Wickenheisen, Walter, Kensington, Md.,
Muscovy duck.

Willard, Dolores J., jaguarundi.

Williams, Bobby and Johnny, Arling-
ton, Va., 2 Peking ducks.

Wills, Yvonne, domestic rabbit.

Witt, William, *pilot black snake, cop-
perhead snake, 2 tree frogs, *milk
snake, milk snake, king snake, 5
spotted turtles.

Wolk, Carolyn, gray squirrel.

Won, Clifford P., *red-blue-and-yellow

Warsti2

macaw.
Wood, Diana, domestic rabbit.
Worthington, Mrs. Sandra, Takoma
Park, Md., Peking duck.
Yarbrough, Arthur, Arlington, Va.,

sparrow hawk.

BIRTHS AND HATCHINGS

Conditions under which animals are kept on exhibition are usually

not favorable for breeding or raising young.

However, occasionally

young are born or hatched that are of unusual interest to the public

and are valuable as additions to the group or for exchange.

Out-

standing among the births at the Zoo were the following:

The herd of Nubian giraffes (Girajfa camelopardalis) again pro-
duced young, thus providing valuable exchange specimens.

The pygmy hippos (Choeropsis liberiensis) continue to produce
young, the eighteenth having been born during the fiscal year.

The water civets (Atilaw paludinosus), African relatives of the
mongoose, continue to produce young.

The colony of rather attractive slender-tailed cloud rats (Phloeomys

cumingii) continues to increase by births.

The original pair have

died of old age, but their progeny are carrying on.

130 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

The African porcupines (Hystriz galeata) continue to increase.

The crested screamers (Chauna torquata) again laid eggs and
hatched three young, but they did not survive.

Through the painstaking care of Mario De Prato, principal keeper
of the reptile house, reproduction among reptiles has been very
gratifying. The most outstanding of these follow:

Eggs were laid by the flap-neck chameleon (Chamaeleon dilepis)
on April 2, 1955, and 6 hatched on June 23. In spite of the utmost
efforts the young refused to eat and so survived only a few days.

A three-horned chamelon (Chamaeleon jacksoni) gave birth to 16
young on January 9, 1956.

The five-lined skinks hatched six eggs August 11, 1955.

Fourteen young green water snakes (Vatria cyclopion) were born
June 38, 1955. One egg of an indigo snake (Drymarchon corais
coupert) was hatched, and 10 red-bellied water snakes (Natria ery-
throgaster) were born.

An African house snake, or musaga (Boaedon lineatum), laid 21
eggs, and 7 of these hatched on December 11. These may be the first
of their kind to have been hatched in captivity.

An Egyptian cobra (Naja haje) laid 19 eggs on November 4, 1955.
On January 31, 1956, 3 of them hatched. Only one of the young
could be induced to eat freely. It thrived on baby mice. This was
the second time cobra eggs were hatched in the Zoo.

Eight rainbow boas (/'picrates cenchria) were born on March 12,
1956.

Following is a complete list of the births and hatchings:

MAMMALS
Num-
Scientific name Common name ber

AMMOUMAGUS LOTITO 32 Caton eee ee Aoudad, or Barbary sheep-_------ 8
Anoaidepressicornis. 2 =e 2s ed ae Anoaer a 3h .rare. Sa Ferree ae 1
Afilat Pauidinosus = -— =) Sn eee Water Civiet:Ssh28 so ot eet 1
ALTSTOLIR nico ei kia, ete. ee AHS Cele e ae ene aie ene ee 2
BelOngaurae ce oe ae ee es ( Gps bi eure ye aarot lana ude aeileats eee eats Ds 1
British arkrcattie-22. == oe 4

B08 TONS a a a ae Highland cattle_..._._-_-- 1
CaOllaseturisisp Doak tere ek 2 ye Southern Asiatie squirrel______-__ 2
GU PR GRINCH St. mt Doe Senoy ee aH Lae ea Womestich®oat-s-2 te. oe 2
Cercopithecus ceplus =. 2 oe Mustached monkey-..__________- 1
Cercopithecus neglectuss._.... = 220! DeBrazza’s guenon= _—-_--=_= 42° 1
Cervus canadensissa— 2 aa. eae Ae American elk. 26 Se CUeure sees 2
Conpasivelaphashs2 20 - Sita hi orig Rededeerae ss. 2 yw i ey hee 1
Cervusinipnon oe... = ee ee oS Silka ideertiee. 2) pe ela a bees 1
Choeropislibertensis. 22) Se. 2 Pyomv hippos ao ee eee J
Choloepus didactytus:-— = =e | ‘RWO-FOCG SIOth eats Seer eee 1
Brown tailow deers. 2-2. 3

DO AMA mn wn ae pean fallow deer....---------- 2

SECRETARY'S REPORT

MAMMALS—Continued
Scientific name Common name
DOSUDEOCLE PUNCLOLEs sae ae eee Speckledtacouuls se =) =e eee
REUES*CONCOLOT See Spe =e ee nae Pumar 222 2a s5 ee eee eee
HClO RLCOM Ene see, eee tS ee Iions sees oe ee eee 2
CLUSND OT CUS eae a ee = ee Blackileoparde ss -22222258 22 2—
Giraffa camelopardalis___..---------- (Eye eu lie Mie Rahat eee igs Eigen ats eee
Hippopotamus amphibius_.---------- Hippopotamus: 264 2.222554...
Hydronotes tnermis.——— =~ =~ 2. == Chinese water deer__.---_------
Hylobates agilis x H. lar pileatus_----- ivbridyp1b bone] Sasser ae
EU OUIENE: ose at Se ee African porcupines<2=2 22222222"
WCMORGLA Ns ao Lh ee ED Wolamia Sasi ee bee eel ae oe
HECTOR DEC OSS ha eet setts Sire hye ee E AID aCae serene Base a es aa ew ar
Teaniocenus TOSGliGa= = 5 35 aoe oo sh Golden marmoset®: 2.2L. =-.L...
WVUGCOCORTUULALLD nee re re ee Rhesustmonkey=o25-8 5. ee s-o5=
MMacwre syanuess oo. 235 2555-4. a8 ‘Barbary, ape. ss oss2 a). aoe
Odocotleus virginianus_...-.---------- Virginia decr== sss ee es eee
Odocoileus virginianus costaricensis_... Costa Rican deer___------------
OUISHTUSUN ONE eae Se eet ee Moufloness sts 3 ere Peers) sar ee
LES CTR ee, eke a ae ory a, Chimpanzee.) 8-2 ao oe
Phipeamys Cuming. 2-2 2 = Slender-tailed cloud rat____-----
Thalarctos maritimus x Ursus midden- Hybrid bear (second generation) --
dor ffi.
ETE iran Ti i ee ea et oS ee Grizzlyibear! 2362 Sai eas
BIRDS
VAT OSE DOL IIIT LO Se eae ee Mallard) ducks: = ssn 25s= Soe aya
IBVOnse CONGUCHSIS.. 2.4 ok Cansda.cousesa. 2 tees tee eee st
erin POT Aes se ots LS Grested screamer 2% == -2222=>=3.5
Melopsittacus undulatus......-------- Grass parakeeti=22i¢_2222is 0
Nycticorax nycticorax hoactli..-..-.---- Black-crowned night heron------
REPTILES
AMCTSILOL OTD ISCUUOT US == eee ne WisSterinocessins#=o esse
Hoaciontuicatum 8 of) 225120 se African house snake, or musaga- --
Chamacteon dilepis. i s5 2082 eo Le Flap-necked chameleon_-__-..----
Chamncicon yackROnias ae 528 oe Three-horned chameleon_-_-_-_----
CHiUSCMYSIDUCLO = ee ee So ee Painted turtles 222 +
Diadophis punctatus edwardsi___------ Ring-necked snake__-._--_--.---
Drymarchon corais couperit..--------- iiidizo snakes ss22 20 230s sev
Elaphe obsoleta obsoleta.__..--------- Riotibigsckisnakes.s ss. sae a
PE DUCTOLCSICEN CATIA pes Eke A Rainbow boner 22 eae a eas
HIAUIVCCESH) SCULLICS 2 me i ae eee Hive-linediskinke ==. 2021005 ae
LATENT ST) Tae Ro Hey puanmcopre oes 2 8
PN SITEDCUCIODCOM. <P See Sse ee @reenswatensnakes-- 22). ass"
Natricerythrogaster= = 22. Red-bellied water snake________-
DiGirec st pedonne A) PLING Ba ie Wistenisnakest0 242 2 lee sess
LOTETIOEKOYt = leks SER nS YT. DeMay s’enake:<2.2 2225 222eosse

FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY

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oo

A Siberian crane (Grus leucogeranus) gave its hornlike calls and
high-stepping dance, with appropriate wing movements, on June 26,

132 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

1956, the 50th anniversary of its arrival in the National Zoological
Park as a full-grown bird. This is a noteworthy longevity record,
and apparently the bird is in such condition that it should live consid-
erably longer.

RESEARCH

The National Zoological Park has no general research program, as
such. However, the successful keeping of any animal involves more or
less specific research. If the habits and requirements of a species in
captivity are not well known, they must be ascertained through
research, which may have to be carried out with all possible speed if a
newly received animal is to survive. The problems involved may con-
cern any or all of the following: Temperament of the animal; its need
for exercise and for companionship; diseases and external and internal
parasites to which it is subject; food preferences; housing, tempera-
ture, ventilation, and bedding.

If it is known in advance that a new animal is to be received, infor-
mation is sought from every possible source regarding its probable
requirements. Upon its arrival its age and physical condition are
noted, and any tentative plans for its care are modified or elaborated
as circumstances dictate. External injuries, if any, are treated, and
efforts are made to rid the animal of external parasites. Internal
parasites are watched for, and treatment to eliminate them is under-
taken. Observations on the animal are continued and changes are
made in its environment if necessary. If it refuses to eat, new foods are
offered and its preferences are noted.

The relatively low mortality rate among newly received animals and
the general good health of those in the collection attest the success of
the research that is carried on.

In addition to the problems concerned directly with the animals,
there are many others that involve research. One relates to the types of
construction materials most suitable for the housing and exhibition of
the animals and most economical to maintain. This calls for constant
study of various types of flooring, bars, wire fabrics, cage partitions,
doors, locks, and numerous other materials. Much research has also
been done on paints, and over a period of more than 25 years the Zoo has
tried many different kinds and has generally been among the first to
make use of new paints when they are suitable.

Another problem concerns the acquisition of ornamental plants and
shrubs for the Park. Some that might be entirely suitable from an
esthetic standpoint cannot be utilized for reasons peculiar to the Zoo.

Incidental research carried on by Ernest P. Walker, Assistant
Director, mainly in his home and on his own time, has concerned the
care of small animals about which little is known and which in many
cases had not been kept successfully in captivity. Outstanding among

SECRETARY’S REPORT 133

these were several different kinds of bats, African elephant shrews,
and North American shrews. His success he attributes largely to the
food formula? he developed, which is relished not only by these ani-
mals, but by many others.

Army medical research workers interested in the raising of tree
shrews because of their possible value as laboratory animals have been
impressed by Mr. Walker’s success with the other types of shrews and
have brought tree shrews to the Zoo. Given this food, the shrews
thrived on it and produced four litters of young. Indeed, the results
were so promising that the food has been canned in small quantities by
the National Canners Association, and two lots of it have been shipped
to Malay and Borneo by the Army medical workers. Also, a small
amount was recently taken to Mexico by Mr. Walker and turned over
to the Pan American Sanitary Bureau, which requested this material
for feeding bats they are studying in connection with research work
on rabies.

Information supplied in response to the many requests received
by mail, telephone, and from visitors is based on research by this Zoo,
or has been assembled from various sources, and in many instances
serves to facilitate scientific investigations that are being carried on
by other Federal or State institutions. Occasionally animals are de-
posited with the Zoo by research institutions until they are needed for
experimental purposes. Here they are cared for and are available to
the depositors when desired. The facilities thus provided contribute
indirectly to the research work of other organizations.

VETERINARIAN

For the first time since 1942 the National Zoological Park has a
veterinarian—Dr. Theodore H. Reed, appointed July 15, 1955. The
work of the veterinarian is threefold : to establish such a sound disease-
preventive program through nutrition, sanitation, parasite control,

*Ingredients: Yolk of 1 hard-boiled egg; approximately an equal amount of
rather dry cottage cheese; approximately an equal amount of ripe banana;
approximately an equal amount of mealworms; 6 drops of Jeculin; 6 drops of
wheat-germ oil; 3 grains of Theragram.

Mix with a mortar and pestle. If the wheat-germ oil is in 3-minim capsules,
put in two; also add the Theragram, which is a yellowish paste. Add afew drops
of water to soften the gelatin of the wheat-germ oil capsules and to dissolve the
Theragram. Then put the other ingredients in and grind all together with the
pestle until a paste is formed with the chitin of the worms scattered through it.

The mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) are the same or similar to those that get
into cereals. Cultures of them can be maintained in bran or cornmeal with the
addition of banana peelings, slices of raw potato, and occasionally light sprin-
klings of water to moisten the bran or cornmeal very slightly but not enough
to cause it to form lumps or to mildew.

134 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

laboratory examination, and environmental changes that the need for
treatment and surgery is reduced to a minimum; to treat diseased and
injured animals as necessary ; and to carry on research looking toward
better remedies and better health for the animals in captivity.

Changes in and additions to more than 92 of the diets have been
made, and benefits are beginning to be evident. Two second-genera-
tion hybrid bear cubs now 6 months old were raised on synthetic
bitches’ milk and are developing normally. The two young gorillas
continue to thrive. Nikumba, the male, weighed 17 pounds on arrival
at 15 months of age, and Moka, the female, weighed 20 pounds. Their
combined weight is now 100 pounds, the male being the heavier. Dr.
Joseph Watson, a private physician, is consultant pediatrician for
both the gorillas and orangutans.

A systematic parasite survey has been started, and treatment is
given where necessary. The new anthelmintic piprizine sulfate has
been used for roundworms with good results. It has the advantage
of being highly effective, relatively palatable and nontoxic. A satis-
factory method of treating reptiles for internal parasites is being
sought, and results so far are promising.

During the year 20 minor surgical cases were treated. The three
major operations were the removal of a fibroma between the two
lower canine teeth of a 19-year-old Bengal tiger, the reduction of an
umbilical hernia on a young male chimpanzee, and the removal of a
large mass (14 pint) of tapeworm cysts from the hind leg of a
De Brazza’s guenon. Lt. R. M. McCully, United States Air Force
(Veterinarian Corps), was the chief surgeon. Two unusual surgical
procedures were the removal of a marble-sized tumor from an African
lungfish and the extraction of an impacted tooth from an 18-foot
anaconda.

Treatment of infectious conditions has been as successful as could be
expected considering the difficulty in handling some of the patients.
In all, 119 mammals, 17 reptiles, and 25 birds were under treatment.

Every death that occurs at the Zoo is listed. When an animal dies
every effort is made to determine the cause of death, and to profit
from the findings.

The three emperor penguins received May 1, 1956, arrived infected
with aspergillosis. Treatment with Mycostatin (Squibb) and Alivar
(Winthrop) by inhalation with a DeVilbis nebulizer was immediately
started. One penguin died within 12 hours; the other two survived 5
days. The pathological reports on the two that died last showed
that the mold was not sporulating, indicating that an early treatment
against the disease would have been effective had there been oppor-
tunity.

Assistance in post-mortem procedures and all histopathologic exam-
inations were given by Drs. Eyestone and Lombard, National In-

PLATE 5

cretary’s Report, 1956

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Secretary's Report, 1956 PLATE 6

Wisent, or European bison (Bison bonasus). These are the first of these animals to be
exhibited in the National Zoological Park. Wisents are extinct in the wild and there

are only a few in captivity. This picture shows the high, narrow form characteristic
of the animal. They are much less massive than the American bison. ‘The photograph
suggests slightly more of a hump than these animals possess.

Secretary's Report, 1956

*sIvaA OS ueyuy oIOUW Joife O07 out “TOE AN ‘d SOUT Aq ydeis0\04g
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PLATE 7

Secretary's Report, 1956 PLATE 8

Nt
I

1. Dwarf armadillo (Burmetsteria retusa), the first that has been exhibited in the National
Zoological Park. It slept through a prolonged photographing session. Such extremely
sound sleep is characteristic of some of the burrowing animals. The very large digging
claws of the front foot are well shown. The Spanish name “‘tapafrasco” for these animals
means bottle cap, in allusion to the hard plate that covers the rear of the animal.

a RT

2. Young olingo (Bassaricyon sp.), the first exhibited in the National Zoological Park.
Photographs by Ernest P. Walker.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 135

stitutes of Health, and the veterinary section of the Armed Forces
Institute of Pathology.

IMPROVEMENTS AND MAINTENANCE

The new building containing restrooms, headquarters for the police,
and office and storage space for the gardener, which was opened to
the public March 15, 1956, was designed by the Department of Build-
ings and Grounds of the Government of the District of Columbia in
accordance with provisions of law. The $197,000 appropriated for the
structure was carried in the District of Columbia Public Works Appro-
priation for 1955. With the small unexpended balance of the appro-
priation a driveway and a loading platform at the storeroom in the
basement of the building are to be constructed.

The routine work of maintenance and construction, which is carried
on practically every day of the year, consists of such varied tasks as
the removal of stoppages from drains and sewers, repairs of faucets,
doors, cages, water lines, steam lines, boilers, refrigeration equipment,
buildings, roads, and walks, and innumerable miscellaneous jobs nec-
essary to keep the National Zoological Park in a safe and presentable
condition. The need for the exercise of great care in working around
animals requires that practically all this kind of work be done by the
Zoo’s own specially trained workmen, who must not only perform
mechanical work but also cooperate with the keeper force so that
nothing is done that will injure the animals, the public, or themselves.

All designing, construction, repair, and maintenance work done in
the Park during the year were performed by the Zoo’s mechanical
department; but because of inadequate funds this work was limited to
that most urgently needed. It has been impossible to keep pace with
the deterioration of the old structures that require extensive repairs,
and some of them have had to be abandoned. The mechanical shops
designed and built new metal skylights for several animal houses. Ex-
tensive repairs were necessary to some of the stone buildings con-
structed during WPA days about 20 years ago.

Over a period of years there has been a gradual increase in the
amount of trimming of trees necessary along the roads, walks, and
paths, and in the exhibition area. Because of disease or age, some
of the trees are dying and must be cut down. Others must be trimmed
to remove dead or broken limbs that might fall and injure persons or
animals, or damage automobiles or structures.

The job of cleaning up the grounds is a major undertaking. Using
all available manpower, it usually takes 5 to 10 days to pick up the
trash and restore the park to a fair degree of presentability after
Easter Sunday and Monday. This work has of necessity been reduced
to a minimum. The lawns, shrubs, and trees cannot be kept in as

412575—57——__10

136 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

attractive condition as they might be because of lack of maintenance
funds. However, curtailment of this work results in less harm than
does the neglect of structures and fences.

From time to time during the year earth has been received for the
fill across the road from the large-mammal house. After the fill is
completed a sidewalk will be laid on that side of the road, providing
a greater measure of safety for the public. Until the fill settles, the
area will be used for a car-parking site, and later paddocks will be
placed on it.

The accessibility of the police headquarters in the new building has
so greatly increased the demands upon the police for first aid, in-
formation, and general assistance that it has been necessary to take
two men off patrol to maintain the service in the office. This leaves
the regular patrol force shorthanded, even with the temporary part-
time policemen that have been employed.

In addition to routine maintenance considerable reconstruction, as
well as new construction, is necessary to meet the requirements of ani-
mals or changed conditions. For example, with the prospect of
obtaining more penguins from the Navy Antarctic Expedition, ex-
tensive work was done on the penguin room with a view to filtering
the air to remove practically all air-borne germs and spores, maintain-
ing slightly lower temperatures, providing chilled water for the
swimming pool and for hosing down the cage. As the cooling system
has been in use for 20 years and it is uncertain how much longer it will
continue to function, an additional cooling unit for the cage was in-
stalled. This will be used when the old system fails or must be
repaired.

The two young gorillas that were given the Zoo by Russell Arundel
in 1955 have outgrown two cages, and a third had to be built. This
involved not only building a new wall in the great apes room in the
small-mammal house, but the construction of a retirement cage and the
laying of a new floor. Also, a new thermostat was installed to provide
better control of the temperature in this room for the gorillas.

With the appointment of a veterinarian it became necessary to pro-
vide an office for him and a hospital for the animals. An old stone
building is being adapted for the purpose and a beginning made to
equip it for surgery, treatment, and laboratory work. This has re-
quired installation of a new heating plant, remodeling of cages, and
painting the inside of the building.

VISITORS

Attendance at the Zoo this year reached a total of 3,788,229, an all-
time high record. In general this figure is based on estimated rather
than on actual counts, but the following actual counts made by mem-
bers of the police force on certain days are of interest: Reptile house,

SECRETARY’S REPORT lisyé

Sunday, September 4, 1955, 11,813 persons; the next day, Labor Day,
9,661 at the same building; small-mammal house, Sunday, April 29,
1956, 9,517 visitors. On Sunday, June 3, 1956, a check of cars entering
the Connecticut Avenue gate in 1 hour recorded 200 cars with 669 pas-

sengers.
Estimated number of visitors for fiscal year 1956

dali (G3) ee D477 O00 | Mebruaryaas sea se 180, 950
AN TEST] 2 SE Be Ee SS 460'S00) March] = + tte see erie 199, 585
Septemberi22 sat 2528 22s Stetety LOL (Ge ol La ee ee eet 470, 274
October ees sae pases eee 344,000) | Mia y Sees ie we 435, 300
INO YGHO IT) a 188 (OO unex S22 oes 2 Se eee es — 364,000
Weremberse =o. a en ee 81, 550 —_—
wanuary 1956) soos ee 127, 350 TNotal=2a==e—s5 sea 3, 788, 229

Groups came to the Zoo from schools in Formosa and 32 States, some
as far away as Alabama, California, Florida, and Maine.

Number of groups from schools

Locality Number | Number Locality Number | Number
of groups | in groups of groups | in groups
Allnbamp ee s.se ceo Fs See 19 1 270) ||| einnesotass-cs- 2 soe ee ee 5 173
IATKANSas= ones eel 1 OSui MUVEISSISSI p plas ae aera 4 205
Colorado: 32022 Sk Men Se 1 149 Nowseampshire--=-22=->- -22= 1 46
Connectiont=224 2 32 10 764.|| New Jersey-=--+-= 2... ~<= 32. 19 1,389
Delaware ee 7 B26) PING WY Orkeeoe= ae ee eee 101 6, 589
District of Columbia_-__-_-_-_- 141 8,049 || North Carolina .._-.____._.__- 186 11, 123
lori dae A ae a 13 15789) |nO iow 2 ae See ee 38 1, 965
(C iia es See 48 10, 487 || Pennsylvania__....___..._--_- 238 11, 964
Jb) hye SEE eee oe aaya: S 5 17291\ South’ Carolings=-2)2)5_- 22252 73 2, 202
iris neers nee hn eee ee 8 640) ||| (South Dakotas-22 2-2-2 5-22 = 1 32
KANSAS eee eee ane ee en eS 1 38)" || el enniessee= =) =< = sa oe 61 2, 973
Kontuckysoseeu esse: See ipl G666U | MiVermont=2.-=+eece a se eee 1 24
MOMisign nes = kee se 3 124 eVarginipaee. =o ee oo hee 562 32, 986
Wiain@us se tae Sone ee 16 6867 || MWiestavirginias sss. esses 29 2, 833
Marylanid= S30 125i s2 ss. bolt 543 30; 451e) |e WAScOnsine-=s saee== sees eee 3 284
Massachusetts_...-....----_-- 11 657 ——_——_
Michigances = skeen 2 8 631 TOtaleeee eee eae 2, 168 134, 479

About 2 p. m. each day the cars then parked in the Zoo are counted
and listed according to the State, Territory, or country from which
they came. This is, of course, not a census of the cars coming to
the Zoo, but is valuable in showing the percentage of attendance, by
States, of people in private automobiles. Many District of Columbia,
Maryland, and Virginia cars come to the Zoo to bring guests from
other States. The tabulation for the fiscal year 1955 is as follows:

Percent Percent
Marviandesc. sete ee Dock Wil Q) 10) see ee ee eee 1.3
WAT PINT Ree eet eee eye ao VES AVIT SIN aes eee eee ee 1.0
Districtiof Columbia =_ 22 -—--_— 22. 4 | Massachusetts _________-_______ 0.9
ennsylvania eit 2228s eee GS OW Wloridat 42s Pe ee Sees Se 0.9
ING WAVOMKG ee kD 29) || Califormiay a. ss eee ee 0.8
Northi@aroling= oo ee 2.6

138 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

The remaining 8.1 percent came from Alaska, Austria, British
Columbia, Canada, Canal Zone, Costa Rica, England, France,
Germany, Hawaii, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Newfoundland, Philippine
Islands, and Puerto Rico.

On the days of even small attendance there are cars parked in the
Zoo from at least 15 States, Territories, District of Columbia, and
foreign countries. On average days there are cars from about 22
States, Territories, the District of Columbia, and foreign countries;
and during the periods of greatest attendance the cars represent not
less than 34 different States, Territories, and countries.

Parking spaces in the Zoo now accommodate 1,079 cars when the bus
parking place is utilized, and 969 cars when it is not used.

COOPERATION

At all times special efforts are made to maintain friendly contacts
with other Government and State agencies, private concerns and
individuals, and scientific workers for mutual assistance. As a result
the Zoo receives much help and advice and many valuable specimens,
and in turn it furnishes information and, whenever possible, specimens
it does not need.

Special acknowledgment is due the United States Dispatch Agent
in New York City, Howard Fyfe, an officer of the State Department,
who has frequently been called upon to clear shipments of animals
coming from abroad. This he has done, often at great personal in-
convenience, and the animals have been forwarded to Washington
without the loss of a single specimen.

U. S. Marshal Carlton G. Beall turned over to the Zoo 50 bags of
rice and 200 pounds of poultry that had been condemned by the court.
The National Institutes of Health, the Army Medical Center, the Navy
Medical Center, and the Nutritional Laboratory of the Department of
Agriculture gave the Zoo mice, rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, and other
animals no longer suitable for their purposes. These are valuable
foods for many animals. The poultry division of the Department of
Agriculture gave a considerable number of day-old chicks that were
hatched in connection with certain of its experiments. These are a
highly desirable addition to the diet of many animals. The Fish and
Wildlife Service also gave some young chicks.

Dr. John C. Pearson, of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s aquarium,
in the Commerce Building, has traded specimens and given much
valuable assistance and advice.

Samuel M. Poiley, associate chief of the animal production section,
National Institutes of Health, continued to supply surplus laboratory
animals, some of which were desirable additions to the exhibition
collection.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 139

C. W. Phillips and P. R. Achenbach of the National Bureau of
Standards and R. W. Seiders of the General Services Administration
gave the Zoo valuable advice in connection with many of the problems
incidental to improving conditions in the penguin cage.

The National Institutes of Health, the Armed Forces Institute of
Pathology, the Johns Hopkins Medical School, and the Neurophys-
iology section of Walter Reed Medical School have given valuable
assistance and advice in the treatment and handling of animals. The
zoological division of the U. S. Department of Agriculture Research
Center, Beltsville, Md., continued to identify parasites found on the
animals.

Dr. Charles G. Curbin, associate veterinarian, medical division, bu-
reau of medicine, Food and Drug Administration, has supplied the
Zoo with surplus medicines, and the following commercial firms have
been extremely kind in furnishing drugs for use and for clinical] trials:

Lederle Laboratories.

Schenley Laboratory, Inc. (pharmaceutical division).

B. R. Squibb & Sons,
Upjohn Co.
Wyeth Laboratories.

The DeVilbiss Co. lent equipment for experimental purposes.

At the request of the Pan American Sanitary Bureau, a branch of
the World Health Organization, Ernest P. Walker, Assistant Direc-
tor of the Zoo, went to Mexico to photograph bats. Mr. Walker has
specialized in the photographing of mammals and has taken many pic-
tures of bats, both fiying and at rest. Certain species in Central and
South America have been found to be involved in the spread of rabies.
There have been no satisfactory photographs or drawings that could
be used by public health workers and others to determine and demon-
strate the kind of bats that they might be studying or discussing.
Therefore, they desired photographs that could be used in this work.
Mr. Walker left Washington October 31 and returned December 22.

NEEDS OF THE ZOO

Because of the natural deterioration of structures and equipment,
and rising costs, the need for more funds for maintenance, repair, and
improvements becomes more critical every year. The newest of the
exhibition buildings are 19 years old, the reptile house is 25 years old,
and the bird house is 28 years old. These and the buildings and other
structures that were erected during the depression days now require
a constantly increasing amount of repairs. It has recently been neces-
sary to abandon 10 enclosures that have deteriorated to such an extent
that they can no longer be repaired. Large areas of the grounds
have had to be neglected entirely, or given scant care, in order that

140 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

the meager funds available may be used to maintain the areas most
used by the public.

Additional funds are most urgently needed for personnel, mainte-
nance, installations, and the following construction :

Buildings:

A new administration building to replace the 151-year-old historic
landmark that is still in use as an office building but that is neither
suitably located nor well adapted for the purpose.

A building to house antelopes and other hoofed animals that require
a heated building.

A fireproof service building for receiving animals shipped in, quar-
antining them, and caring for those in ill health or those that cannot
be placed on exhibition.

E’nclosures :
Enclosures and pools for beavers, otters, seals, and nutrias, which
cannot be adequately cared for or exhibited under existing conditions.
New paddocks for the exhibition of such animals as deer, sheep,
goats, and other hoofed animals, to provide for the exhibition of a
greater assortment of these attractive and valuable animals,

Installations:

A new ventilation system for the bird house.

A vacuum pump to provide more efficient and economical operation
of the heating system in the reptile house.

An air compressor for general use about the park, particularly for
freeing sewers of stoppages, operating air hammers, blowing out
boiler tubes, and for use in excavation and construction work.

Additional parking space to be developed on about 14,000 square
yards of land in several different locations, mainly near the creek.

An additional coal bunker for storage of a reserve supply of coal.

Personnel and maintenance:

1 assistant director. The steadily increasing popularity of the Zoo
as a source of both entertainment and education has developed such
a volume of requests for information that there is now need for an
additional scientist to share the load of answering queries and to as-
sist in other administrative work so that the Director and Assistant
Director can devote more time to general supervision of the Zoo.

1 general mechanic to assist the maintenance personnel in what has
hitherto been a losing race in trying to keep pace with natural deterio-
ration in the structures.

6 laborers for the mechanical force to replace 6 who were reallo-
cated by the Wage Board to the position of truck drivers, thus cutting
the laborer force from 13 to 7—a number way below the minimum

SECRETARY'S REPORT 141

necessary to carry on even the most urgently needed work that must
be done in the Zoo every day in the year.

1 gardener (foreman) and 1 laborer for the gardener’s crew for
proper maintenance of the grounds, removal of dead or fallen tree
limbs and other safety hazards.

2 attendants for the public restrooms to maintain these rooms in a
clean and sanitary condition and to prevent vandalism.

2 policemen to serve as station clerks in the new police headquarters.

3 property and supply clerks to comply with the requirements of
keeping property and inventory records, in accordance with the pro-
gram laid down by the General Services Administration.

ANIMALS IN THE COLLECTION ON JUNE 30, 1956

MAMMALS
Scientific name Common name Number
MONOTREMATA
Tachyglossidae:
Tachyglossus aculeatus._....------- Echidna, or spiny anteater_______ 2
MARSUPIALIA
Didelphiidae:
Caluromys philander. 2 _------ Woolly opossum_-_...-._------ 2
Phalangeridae:
Petaurus norfolcensts_-. 222. Lesser flying phalanger____---_-_-- 3
Trichosurus vulpecula__........---- Nulpine opossum). 2—- 2) 2k 1
Phascolomyidae:
Lastorhinus latifrons..........---- Hairy-nosed wombat___._.------ 3
Vombatus hirsutus22 22-2... .--L- Mainland» wombat.2=2—-.2..-"2. 1
Macropodidae:
Dendrolagus inusius.._...-.-------- ‘ree Kangaroo. 22 ee a ee ee 1
Hypsiprymnodon moschatus_-_------ Ra bce Oar OO see eee 5
Macropus giganteus_...__.__.-__-- Grasp kanparods ses 6. soe ee 3
MGESAPUS TU US 2 2. Ste ee ed: kangarog.22)25) 22 So ee 1
Protemnodon agilis.............--- Wielidbyse so to pea ee 1
Protemnodon bicolor__...-.-------- Swap wauabyese coe) en 2
Protemnodon dorsalis._......-.---- Black-striped wallaby_---------- if
INSECTIVORA
Erinaceidae:
Hrinaceus europdeus_-------------- European hedgehog___________-- 1
PRIMATES
Lemuridae:
Galago crassicaudatus_..._.-.------ Galera 28 Sos Se A 4
Galago senegalensis____...-.------- African. galago..—. Bee ose es ot 2
TCATULL TE TIUILCOLC 0 ne eg ee ae Acoumba Jem: — = Sas ais eae Y 2
Deni Menges. — Saat Bie Le Mongoz lemur: 2. sae ree Be 1
Lorisidae:
eV VetICebUs COncang 222 eo be es oS BlOW JOLIS. «cas ee SS 3
LON IeUCUS ADO 2 feet Bets Pottos. a. so ee ne 1

142

Scientific name

Cebidae:
Ateles fuscicep robustus__-..---------
Aieles geoffroyt geoffroyi or griscesens_
Ateles geoffroyi vellerosus._...------
ALOLULS HET CULTG GLULLS ne
Cacajao rubtcundus = 29s
Callimico goeldis Sans ee
Cebusial bajar ses ae ee ene
Cebuseapuctiuses &o- o- s ee eS
Cebus fatuclitn. 2. sce
Wagotnpicalagounch = ae ee
SQUNITISCTURCUR =. ao = Cee ee

Callithricidae:
Caliithniavorolio tae oa ee
Callithrxpeniediatasee = eee
GCebuellaminmacase sass seen ee
DBeontocebus'rosalia-2 22-2222 2 = ee
Marikinamigricollist= (2 ae

Cercopithecidae:
Allenopithecus nigroviridis_.._...-.--
Cerncocebusialoigendae= same a
Cercocebus aterrimius2. = 52 e5-see
Cercocebus aterrimus opdenboschit_ _ -
Gencocebus chiysogastere == ee ae
Cercocebus fuliginosus= = -.=-=----<~
Cercocebus galeritus agilis._._._------
Cercocebus torguaiises= 22 sees ne
Cercopithecus aethiops pygerythrus_ --
Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus------
Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus X C.

a. pygerythrus.

Cercopithecus cephus_-=2 222222
Cercopithecus diana. see sn eee ees
Cercopithecus diana roloway__------
Cercopithecus neglectuse.— 0 2a 2
Cercopithecus nuctitansa. == see eee
Cercopithecus nictitans petaurista_.---
Cercopithecus preusst= 22 ne ae
Colobus:polykomos: 2. > 44a eee
Comopithecus hamadryas_..--------
MGCACE TUS Mnordaes- = eee aes

Macaca philippinensis.......-...---
Wiaracaaimicdse es eae ose e te eek
Machcaspectost= 2-22 4 s0 xe ele
Macoraisylianius. 2202 2 a es tle
Mandriligs sphingen = seat sos ees
Paptocomajus. 2235 = eet sae
PEDO CUNOCEDNGIUG Sa eee a ae
IPresbytts DROyrel co ce eee ee
Theropithecus gelada__......-------

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Common name

Colombian black spider monkey_-
Spider monkeys .2 20 8 ons
Spider. monkeyse 208. ee
Nighimonkey =. s2Saee eee
Red‘ikeri- == Season eens ae

Brown capuchin monkey_______-
White-throated capuchin monkey.
Capuchimanonkey #2522 222s
Woolly ‘monkey-2- 22202222 2205
Squirrel monkey___.__...___._--

Geoffroy’s marmoset___..._--.--
Black-tufted marmoset_________-
Pigmy marmoset=.222222 22222
Golden) marmosets 322 ae

Allen’s monkey 228 <2 ees See
Gray-cheeked mangabey -_-__----_-
Black-crested mangabey___-__-_-
Crested mangabey___--_._--___-
Golden-bellied mangabey_______-
Sooty mangabey =.= .<22---=2-s=
Agile mangabey o25_=222-2 ee oo5
Red-crowned mangabey--_-_----_-
Vervet guenons2)2-222. Uae
Greenjguenons 22-2225. 5 2552 oe
Hybrid, green guenon X vervet
guenon.
Mustached monkey.-._--.---__--
Diana*monkey . 2 eee. oe eee
Roloway monkey2ee= see
De Brazza’s guenon______-.----.
White-nosed guenon___-----__-_-
Lesser white-nosed guenon__-_-__-
Preussi's| guenon= 222-22 255 22 3
White-tailed colobus__....------
Hamadryas baboon= =. -=2-—s-=—
VANE AC ACC eee eee ee
Moor macaquesss. 20222 22eeeeee
Rhesus monkey= === se se ae eee
Pig-tailed monkey--.-------.-.-
Philippine macaque__=52---232--
Toque or bonnet monkey_-------
Red-faced macaque._..-_-------
Barbary, ape..3. 22s susie sees
Mandrilln 6 Jacek eee ee

Goldenibaboons] eee
Spectacled languri- S230 s- 222422
Gelada baboons] 222 seas. aaa

Number

NON NH RR Pe w~ moh ee On RN ORF KR Oe ee

od —
NRrYMDENNRF RENN PE NNR RR ewe op

SECRETARY’S REPORT

Scientific name
Pongidae:

Gortllargorillas == 222s sas
Hylobates agilis X H. lar pileatus----
Hylobates hoolock__---------
EIR OUGLESHLOT tame ee
Fijlovates motochs.=-=—..=-=-
JEGSD, GAT Te ee ee
Pongo pygmaeus abelit__._---

Pongo pygmacus pygmaeus

Myrmecophagidae:

Myrmecophaga tridactyla_-- --
Tamandua tetradactyla_-_-_----

Bradypodidae:

Choloepus didactylus..._.----

Dasypodidae:

Burmeisteria retusa___-------
Chaetophractus villosus_-_-----

Leporidae:

Oryctolagus cuniculus_.------
Sylvilagus floridana...------

Sciuridae:

Calloscrunus BDL eee 2S
Callosciurus caniceps_-_------
Callosciurus erythraeus_..._..------
Callosciurus nigrovittatus___--
Citellus undulatus kennicottii
Cynomys ludovicianus - - - ----
Glaucomys volans volans__----
Menetes berdmorei__------_--
WOluIG tied. 2 = Se
ISCLUNUSIMIG Ene a se eee
Tamas siriatus.-.-—.-_-— ~~

Heteromyidae:

Perognathus parvus olivaceus

Castoridae:

Castor canadensis__...------

Cricetidae:

Mesocricetus auratus___-----

Muridae:

Acomys caharinus_._--------
Aethomys kaiseri__..--------
Arvicanthus niloticus_.-.--~--
Cricetomys gambianus _ _ -----
Meriones unguiculatus__-_--~--
Phloeomys cumingii_.-------
Rattus infraluteus_.---------
otius sabanus.___.-...-=—

Common name

Eby brid) sibbon_ 22s) 2 ae
Hloolock ol a- at =a nee! See
White-handed gibbon__________-_
Wau-wau gibbon___...........-
@himpanzee~ 32 22 oo ok eS
Bornean oranguvane =e
Sumatran orangutan____._____--

ENDENTATA

Giantantesters2 25s eee
Tamandua=ce6 soso ot eee

Tapafrasco, or dwarf armadillo__-
Hairyrarmadillo. <2 5.2 ee

LAGOMORPHA

RODENTIA

Southern Asiatic squirrel________
Golden-backed squirrel__________
PAGS Ss) SQUIITCL: o-oo one oe
Southern Asiatic squirrel_______-_
Arctic ground squirrel_____-_--_--
Praiie.dog .- 2.25. saee ee
Eastern flying squirrel_-___------
Berdmore’s squirrel. 2.22 - = 22-5
Giant Indian squirrel___._-_-___
Hox SqUiirele secre eee = ee
Hasterm chipmunk. =.-2--22--=-=

Rocketmouseson see eee
Beay ele ee eee eee
Hamsters eee ete eee

Egyptian spiny mouse-____-----
ROCK abae ten oe eee aan oes

Giant pouched rat.2- == es =
Monrolianigerbilas ===) s-o— = 2 ——

Kanabalu dree rate2- =e — ee
Large spiny-backed tree rat__----

Slender-tailed cloud rat________~-

—

me bo
et ie SOON De Ne

—_—

iS rad) SMS LS 1s =)

144 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Scientific name Common name Number
Gliridae:
Graphiirus murinus2. 2-2 eee IOTMOUSes sso eee eee ane 1
Hystricidae:
Acanthion brachyurum___---------- Malay *porcupine=-2 2 oe 1
Ey stris GQlealta =e eee ae ATIC an POLCUpiNne === =e 5
Caviidae:
Casta porcellus =32 92225 foe ae Guinesa=pigts 22 coe eee 8
Hydrochoeridae:
Hydrochoerus hydrochoeris_--------- Capy bara 2-2 --e 2-2 eee 4
Dasyproctidae:
Chines pacaya= ae ese eS fT RARE gen ch Sete alts a ee a 5
Dasyprocdaaes sons ee Ae eee eS AGOULIL 22 aso cae eee ees 13
Dasyprocta punctata_...----------- Speckled agoutiz=-22-- = --s-—— 6
Dinomys branickiy2 222202 22. IBTANICK S’paCkeee = ne ae eee 2
Chinchillidae:
Chinchilla.chinchilla_2== 2222-2222 -- Chinchillgves ste sone eee 2
EAGtavim VISCalcia=- see ae Peruvian! viscacciae ss) ]- eee 1
Capromyidae:
IMNOCHStOTCOUDUS 5— = ae ee Coypus S22 ese eee 2
CARNIVORA
Canidae:
Canismntanciicuss* s2e2 5) ess 2 Dingo. fsetsel ss eeneeeeeeaclee 1
Canisilupus nubilusnc—s-- -==- S55 Woliie 2 eee 4
Ganisimesomelasteeee aoe eee eee Blaek-backed jackal_..-.------- 1
Canisimigen Tinie: se oe Red wolft:2ks2s22-225sessesee2 1
Mennecusiend@s 22. 552228 eo eee Pentiec fox. 22 222322 s.\- se eee 2
Tajcaonw pictues =e < Sees rs Soe, © African hunting dog=- 2=2===-=== 2
Nyctereutes procyonoides__--------- Reccoon Goes. sass ese s=s sees 6
Otocyon: megalotis.=2-52-- = =--2=- Big-eared fox 22 o2-<- oe 2 oe ee 4
SMCOLROS VENQUICUS. oe Se Busitdog ss... tee eae oe 2
Urocyon cinereoargenteus_---------- Gray fOx2c= 2 ahs 222 essen see 11
Red fox =2 2 iesceses ssn ees 18
VUE DE KET fies ial pees {OX 5225522225 eee 4
Ursidae:
Buarctosamertcanus=—- == =o Black'bear: 222-524 sesene= = 2
Helarctos malayanus_----=-.------- Malay sun bears. 22 - see ae 3
Selenarctos thibetanus...__-=--_..=- Himalayan bears 2.222 2s2-s5s=— 2
Selenarctos thibetanus japonicus----- Japanese black bear-—--..------ 1
Selenarctos thibetanus ussuricus - - - - - Korean bears 22 4s 2s2525se55 55 2
Thalorctos Mmorivmus=2-222 22-525 2= Polar bears222+ <2 Sss32ee5s5e4" 1
Thalarctos maritimus X Ursus mid- Hod first generation - - -- 4
dendor ffi. yorid bear ‘| second generation_-_ 3
TremanctOsiOrnQlus= = 5-5-5 S2 Spectacledtbear2 222-522-222 --— 1
Wrseaiip ae eens a esses Alaskan brown bear---.-------- 2
Wrsisvanclost= 23 2s ee oe European brown bear---_-------- 1
Ursus arctos occidentalis_---------- Syrian brown bear.=2==---==--.—- 2
Wrswsrgyas tess ae ewe ee ee Alaskan Peninsula bear- -------- 2
Wreusthoriltseee ee See Grizzly beareas=sse-- 42 2-2=-= 2
Ursus middendorffi_.-.------------ Kodiak: bearvs: js 5555 225 22 25— 2
TP SUSRULICCTISIS Sa ee Sitka: brown bearse22232- 2222 -=- 3

SECRETARY’S REPORT

Scientific name Common name Number
Procyonidae:
PALILIESe) BIEN he aha 5s See as esserpand ae. pase eet 2
passanicyon gauur. 5—2 28 2S Olin go #2 rss tee 2 1
IBOSSQRUSCUSICST ILL USee ee eee eee Ringtail, or cacomistle_________- 2
PNEISIER NENLCAR ee Se ee Coatinund? 22224 = 5-2 sees ee 4
INGSUOANGSU Geen Ree ee ee ed <coatimundis-+=25) ssc" 22" s 1
Tea ee TFS ay le eee aU te eee 6
EROLUONSOLON Ss ee cena ee eee Raccoons eee 19
Mustelidae:
Marstcla cversmanni.2..-..<--2-===- Albino ferret. = o-oo atest 2
Mustela frenata noveboracensis_-_---- Wicasere ree Sea ee ar 3
FACE ONUTQNOTOASTLVENSTS =a a eae Flat-tailed! otter. 22----=42-.- Z
WHMOUGIE DONGLE 2 a2= 52525-55255 5 California spotted skunk___-__-- 2
INTICAE Det Cyt eee ee I a ae i rea Badger sss52 s2oce2 ee eet 1
FNC OANOT BORO See gl ET oc er oe 2
Cryptoproctidae:
Onyploprocia fer0t Wea ek Hot a ae Ee See re el 1
Viverridae:
ARPES ULUUTONG oo ooo =a eee eke Binturong) 2-22 o-es5. 6 see 1
Amin paludinosus=——---.—.--2~--—= Watercivet-<--=222. eee 4
RIDEINCOICIVCHN Gs te es ea = APTICAN ClVCtas one eee 1
GruelaQencnG=— 5-2 kone eee Greire Gitke Ue 2 en cee ea 2
Genetta genetta neumanii___-_-_---- Goleta ere ete sa ee ee Oe 2
Hernestes'zchneumon. .-.=<.-=-L2- African MOngooses == -2525=-2522= 2
Tchneumie albicauda 2. +<-==< White-tailed mongoose___--__--- 2
Paguma larvata taivana___--------- Formosan masked civet__------- 1
Veverracangalunga2 2.5.2 .525- Ground/civetses2 = 222 Sake. 1
Hyaenidae:
Crocuta crocuta germinans_..------- Spotted hyenas. - --- a tee, 2
HA oenm RY Aen 22 oe | eel fhe il Sbrped hyena. 2 fee AS er 2
Felidae:
AeIBOntd FUvOla. wet = ss eek @heetahets 22-222 35.2522 sens 2
EIRICRAUS 22 os 22 Se a Jumple cat.= 24 ae Sa lh ea 2
Melssiconcolor 2. hace Basel 8 oe f Eq.) 12 +: ea ee eee Renee Poh a rs 10
[ECs NOG ys SES an ene eRe ed bone. 2 2 S226 ee ae 9
Melis OCT eOtGn = Sec ence eesee Waiter Cabs 22. -2csssguaesteee 2
WenaONCNs ooo es ke ACUAR SS a7 5 oe ne PN see ek 3
Melasspareros= 228 2522 22s ek Beet Pampas;cat.2_ 22-5 5 2=4=3-522= 1
WOCHIAIDOLOMIIS 2 tons See ee fate = Occlotes= essen ass eee ese ae 1
A Aimean leopard: = 2.5.2. =2ae* 4
FOR pace cece sates SSeS ae leopard=.3.0 23. seb ees a 2
PICLERUSEY IE ese ee 22 ee Sa Setvalicatek- 2 sts he eee ee 1
LUE DH ok a a ne nner, SEO ea Bengal tigers = 922. seb ee See 3
[STIS (27s | Rae ee eS te ee Margay catsn selere io haa ole Soy 1
Ha Uaer CONGUCNSES - - Sale safe hk eee 1 yg 1. 0 Wg rls Dey ne eae 1
1 EM GOO ae eee ee eee IBODICAG see wee eee a eee. 2
PINNIPEDIA
Otariidae:
Olarag jlavescens. 2) S22 == ee Patagonian sea-lion.__-_-_------ 2

Zalophus californianus._...-------- Seashoms o2os5 tense eee ese See

146 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Scientific name Common name Number
TUBULIDENTATA
Orycteropodidae:
Oryelerapus afers222-2 eS Antbear, or aardvark___-._.-__-- 1
PROBOSCIDEA
Elephantidae:
Blephas macimnis- =. Seen Indian elephant: -222 5) saa wee 2
PERISSODACTYLA
Equidae:
US VOSTNUS SS nos a Burrovonmoonkeyaer asso aes 1
Equus burchelli antiquorum__-_------ Chapmanisizebraa a= ee 1
Equus burchelli boehmi_....-------- Grant's 2ebrea-.e ese 3
Ds ETAT pr | ag a ek ee OO ES Grevars Zebra os< ee ee eee 3
ENS KONG 2 oe oa a ee Asiatic wild ass, or kiang_______- 1
ENIUMS ONAUCT Se soe ee see Onagers seen ce soo ons ee eee 1
ESQUUSH Di Ze OS iit Mongolian wild horse_---------- 2
Tapiridae:
ACTOCGUI ANOLE ae ae ee indian tapire === se eee 2
PG DUPUS CERES NUR eee ere ere ee Brazilian tapir=¢ 32) 22 een 2
Rhinocerotidae:
IDTCer GS OICORNIS ae ee ee a African rhinoceross === = ee 2
EentWOCerOs UNICOTMIS = ae oa Great Indian one-horned rhinoc- 1
eros.
ARTIODACTYLA
Suidae:
SUSISChOlG awe ee ot LSS See Buropean: wild boars-22 958. Sees 1
Tayassuidae:
Pecari tajacu angulatus..---------- Collared peccary-...-..-..22" 2
Hippopotamidae:
Choeropsis liberiensis__-.---------- Pyemy-hippo .-=--.2=hesse2 as 6
Hippopotamus amphibius-_-.-------- Hippopotamus =.- 522-2222 52--2" 3
Camelidae:
Camelus bactrianus....=-=2222122=2 Bactrianseamel. 2-24. 552-3eeave 2
Camelus dromedarius_------------- Single-humped camel---_-------- 1
Hamarglama-aa ees ses 2 os ee SN Tlamabees ss ea Se a eee 8
Lamaglamaiquanicos22222 252 --3 Guanacos wast 552525- ee 4
Timor pc0s = Js6 sss 545= 252 Se Alpacasss=S4e2--5.-5955- eee 4
VicUugnawicugndss22 224 se eee Vicutias. 2225 352-25 eee 1
Cervidae:
Axis$0g1ss 145255 4. ee aes ARG CCRS 528 ai: 2 a eee ee 5
Cervus. canadensis...= i. 22922-22582 American elk. at seen eee 6
Cerpusvelaphiuss2s222 =e eee Red: deers ..3433444-2 2 - eee 4
Cerpusinipponsese eae eee Sika deersss ee Soa se ses. 8eeee 8
Cervus nippon manchuricus__------- Dybowsky’s: deers. 222222122225 2
Dine dan ae fallow: decr=2-2.4 Sunny = 19
Dhaene hS aaa ee) Oke White. fallow deer..22-22522--S9 welt
Elaphurus davidianus_-_-.---------- Pérev David's deer. S222 =. 2-_-- 2
FEIVGrO poles Unenntts= ee ee Chinese water deer___.--------- 4
Mantiacus muntiak.._---2--..-=2- Rabstaced:deer 2s = ee ee eee 2
Odocoileus virginianus_-.---------- Virginia deerat son ee 14
Odocoileus virginianus costaricensis_. Costa Rican deer._.-.---------- 5

SECRETARY'S REPORT

147

Scientific name Common name Number
Giraffidae:
Giraffa camelopardalis__----------- Nubian: piraife.< 22 325 258s ce 5
Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata____- Reticulated giraffe.._....__..___- 1
Antilocapridae:
Antilocapra americana.._---------- Pronghorn antelope______-_-___- 1
Bovidae:
NLL AGUS LCTULG sae te ee ee IROQUGHCE ee oe S22) te eke eres 18
AMO GOPTESSICOTNIS . = = aS Nee Oy ates PNG ieoBe te Ngee ai ect en 2
PMUBMGOUNUR == ooo eo a CCR re II Ran OE ee en 5
EXUSOTUOTS ONO rae eee Aimierican = DISO Maen soe eer Be if
EER OUONESHS ne on a Se European bison, or wisent_______ 23
JEU CY 0.7 7 6 gee Re i Sap ee ae Vo. 2\ {Va sige Si, BR Se ee ea ae 2
West Highland or Kyloe cattle___ 5
I os ia eer Park: cattle o-oo ee 12
ESILUGLUSNO2LOG TS = a eee ee ee ee Water Duralots: ter sear secs = 1
Capra aegagrus cretensis_._-------- Cretian agrimi goat___._._.__.-- 1
EEE OS ee petal ce) aE eee Womestie sabe =e os ee es 12
Cephalophus nigrifrons__._-------- Black-fronted duiker__._________- 1
Hemitragus jemlahicus..--.-------- ele ies Ra Abe te eee nt 2
RDARATEIESE TONG Soe oh MOuiOnE = 22 ao 2 te Cons 2 otk 3
Poephagus grunniens_....-...--—--- A Sa ee ee en ee A oe 5
PACRAOSS RAYOUT 2s 2 oe Bitie seeps a= =. et ee eee 1
DSILIVIEL CALL ECE 8 Lee pales AIbelopes = 5 ees oe 3
MECH UES CO EY. 2 oe AGTIGATT DUT ALO™ 2 eee os 3
MOP AUaOrYE: 22 1 DYN oo ee ee Se ee See 2
BIRDS
SPHENISCIFORMES
Speniscidae:
Aptenodytes patagonica____-------- King penpuin 8-2-2522. 025. 49et 4
yGOscelis adeliae. = ee Adelie¢;pencuin ==. === - = 2 eee 1
Spheniscus humboldti__..-...------ Humboldt’s penguin________-__- 8
STRUTHIONIFORMES
Struthionidae:
MIMUNIOCOMCLUEo- = 222. 8 oe Ontrich 2228 st Se ee 1
RHEIFORMES
Rheidae:
LE) DT RIT NTE 17 1 [1s Re A ei OY a aa hea ee See. st rae ee ee 2
CASUARIIFORMES
Casuariidae:
Casuarius unappendiculatus
URAVPENACOTNS ee EE One-wattled cassowary..-_---_-- 1
Dromiceiidae:
Dromiceius novaehollandiae___------ Bates © 2 Sere SE Se 4
PELECANIFORMES
Pelecanidae:
Pelecanus erythrorhynchus__-------- White, pelicano. = Sasa tes aed 6
Pelecanus occidentalis occidentalis... Brown pelican...-.-_---------- 2
Pelecanus onocrotalus____.._...----- Rose-colored pelican__._________ 3
Phalacrocoracidae:
Phalacrocoraz aurttus albociliatus....6. Farallon cormorant_._----------- 1

148 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Scientific name Common name Number
CICONIIFORMES
Ardeidae:
Pilorsdacoeruled 3. a ee IBltie heron 23 Sewers eee 2
eucopnoye (kyla noe ae ee Snowy eeretssseoe sae eee 3
Notophoyz novaehollandiae_-_------- White-faced heron_.__....--_--- 1
Nycticoraz nycticorax hoactli_------- Black-crowned night heron__-_-_-- 3
Tigrisoma, lineatum 2-22 ae ‘Picer bittern=..0 - Soo ee ee 3
Balaenicipitidae:
Balaeniceps rena see se Shoebll os se eee i|
Cochleariidae:
Cochlearius cochlearius_..---------- Boat-billed' herone=-2 "= 2-222 -- == 2
Ciconiidae:
Dissoura episcopus...-.=-.-.-=---- Woolly-necked stork_....-_-_-__ 1
Leptoptilus crumeniferus ----------- Maraboujstork: =.= -.2esset 1
Leptonulus jQUanICuUs..— 25255 -— === Lesser adjutant. = =--.---==-s=< 2
Threskiornithidae:
AjGid Oj0j0 2-2 ooo en ene ees = Roseste spoonbill- = ==- =" see 2
UGOCEILIES UOC ese aa ee Witten bisa. -sae ea eee oe ce 3
PA OCUTUS TRLUCh- oe ee eee Scarlet ubis. 22 22 - ene wera eee 3
Mayctenia americands one ee Wood Ibish 22 sat eee ae ih
Plegadisiautumndlis==- = 22 eee (Glossy ibis." se ee ee 2
Threskiornis melanocephala_-_-_------ Black-headed ibis.-.....---.---- 1
Phoenicopteridae:
Phoenicopterus antiquorum_-------- Old World flaminpoS==2 eee s-=— 1
Phoenicopterus chilensis._._-------- Chilean flamingou 2 2224" -=- == 2
Phoenicopterus ruber__.----------- Cuban lamingols= ees. eee 1
ANSERIFORMES
Anhimidae:
Chainaxiorgugra = =n 222 ee eee Crested screamer:.-=-..---25.8% 5
Anatidae:
Ale snonsa=sa2= oases ee nae ee Wood duck <..° 2. se ahn. seen 7
Aix sponsa X Aythya americana_.__ Hybrid, wood duck X red-headed 2
duck.
PANGS ACI aes Tuan eee Pintailjduck«edee 5 = ee eee 4
Anas crecca carolinensis._.._-------- Green-winged teal_.._._._..______- 3
SAM ASIdtSCOTse a Sateen see ee Blue-winged teal_......_..---_- 3
Mallardiduck= === ae === === 15
Anas: plaiyrhynchos.-.-2---2-=---= {ou duck=264 5220-0. 2a eee 6
White mallard duck__.____-___- 1
Anas platyrhynchos X A. p.domestica. Hybrid, mallard X Peking duck.. 24
Anas platyrhynchos domestica__----- Rekincvadicks= 2252" — === ane aoe 50
Anas platyrhynchos X A. acuta_---- Hybrid, mallard duck X American 1
pintail duck.
Anas poectlorhyncha---=4.-22-0-— Indian spotted-bill duck_____---- 1
AICS URL Lt DES ae eee eee Black ducket#ect. 25255222 eee 1
Anser aibijrone==- S222 sae ee White-fronted goose__-.--..----- 2
Anser anser domesticus ..---------- Domestic Chinese goose_..__---- 5
Anseranus semipalmata___--------- Australian pied goose. _--------- 1
PAR YONG INENLCO1 Oman ae ae Red=neadediducks25422 2-5-5 5== 4
Aythya valisinertaio..-- 254-28. 22 = - Canvasback dutkwseos hese ates 3
Branta,camadensts=.2- sees 2 hese Canada igooseletaekse uae ae Se 44

SECRETARY'S REPORT 149

Scientific name Common name Number
Anatidae—Continued
Branta canadensis canadensis X Chen Hybrid, Canada goose X_ blue 2
caerulescens goose.
Branta canadensis minima. - --- MeO) .Cacklingssgoose-2-- 32s se Bes: 14
Branta canadensis occidentalis _ - ___- White-cheeked goose___________- 29
Garrenaumnoschataaa a= oe IMaISCOviVed UG Kena ee ee ens 12
Cereopsis novaehollandiae - - - -~----- Cape Barren goose_____________- 2
Rhemaianiwca = == so = 22 Se Tee Snuwi0ose= 252 8e sn see eee 7
Oieumenerilescens.. 2 2 = 22 se = = lie M008e = Se ee So 3
Chenvhyperborea 2 == =. 2c Lesser snow goose--__._--_-_--- 2
REN OS Ste eee yee ees Je ROSS SifOOsC 22 area =st see 4
CHENODIROU GLE 2 SA 8 oe Black Swans sas er eke ee 3
Chloephaga leucoptera__.-___-.--_-- Upland*c0o0se=s2 sees ees ae 2
Coseoroba-cosconoba:=.2 22. PS - - Coscoroba_-__--- papestneg. ch Anetta nhs 1
Cygnusrcolumbianus..5-2--.--.--- Whistling swante=: 2222 3s 4
Cugmemricygniuse-- 522 _> ee Wihooper swanss2 020-95 == 2
CUGITUSEOLOT A Sean ee oe Miuterswan 2225 eae 2
Dendrocygna autumnalis____------- Black-bellied tree duck_______-__- 35
Dendronessa galericulata_________-_- Wien cdaninnc ck eee 2
Padmocrmandica === 200 22 a0 ee Indian bar-headed goose. ____-_--_- 6
Marecracamerscand 222) Baldpates 2308 sh-2 ok ee eae 1
Vein Bea ane ee St eee Red-crested pochard_-_-_______--- 1
ipmarwuniinis= == =< se i eee Lexseriscnup?s=ss20 7522 --- 1
ighectcrcanag CO = Soy pat Himperomgoose=ea eae =a 2
Plectropterus gambensis---_-------- Spur-winged goose___-___-_-_--- 1
Sarkidiornis melanota------------- Combiduek ss 22265258 se soa 1
OMALCTIOMNOUISSUMOG == 2 a= ee GER C kates ee ee 1
Wanonna tanormansos * 2 S20 European shell duck______------ 1
FALCONIFORMES
Cathartidae:
CET bes CUP: tier eh ‘Miurkeyawulture: 202-2052 4
COnTG DSTO OLS ee ee Blackavultres. sess 2a eee ee 6
GABEMTUSDPClas 75 = a8 ee ye Rtppell’s vulture. 23-3. te 2
Pseudogyps africanus_.------------ Vulture: see ke et 5 ete 1
parcoramphus PApG.- =.=. --.-=-- King vultures. 22 22322 = aeianseagh 1
Sagittariidae:
Sagittarius serpentarius___--------- secretary bird: 2.2. 2 eek 2
Accipitridae:
LEDER INGICEN STE. 3 nt Red=tatled hawk... .-.-=-=-.- ci
PSUIRCAN LEN CNS! 5S 2 ee Red-shouldered hawk----------- 1
PS uCOMDOPLUOCREOUS..- = 82 52 = Buzzard eagle. 953.222 .=.2-2. 54e 1
ECOL RIPONROnt = Sire el coleye he Swainson’s hawk. 222208 soo 2s022 1
Haliaeetus leucocephalus ___--------- Baldeaciens == 22. esses seers 10
Haliaeetus leucogaster__------------ White-breasted sea eagle__-_--_--_- if
Pinlenstimanius £823 Idler es use. Brahiminy, kite... 3 Sesseers 1
IGE psO nOeny gi & 2. tees 2 Senet Harpyreagieta.-- Sesh eesle 1
Milvago chimachima--------------- Yellow-headed milvago---------- 1
Milvago chimango__--------------- Chimgngo.s. 2232. S52 Sits 2 Ae 2
Milvus migrans parasitus - - - ------- African yellow-billed kite_-_--_-_- 2
Morphnus guianensis_..------------ Guianan crested eagle__.--_------ 1
Pandion haliaetus carolinensis_ ----- Osprey asta eases 2 oh 6
Pithecophagus jefferyi_------------- Monkey-eating eagle___--------- 1
Wpzarlne Ornatus. =. - == -- Manduit’s hawk-eagle-_-_--------- 2

150 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956
Scientific name Common name Number
Falconidae:
Palco mexicantie!</.— 22-22 ee Prairie falcon-_ += Sens aah--4st 1
Falco peregrinus anatum_.--------- Duck hawkeeieess ashes Ste 1
Faleo sparvertie_ 22 2..-2ee Sparrow hawk==..-5-222#-2)2=3 2
Poljborus plancus. 2-2 222222222 South America caracara___-.---- 3
GALLIFORMES
Megapodiidae:
Alecturolathamt 2220.2 29 3 Brush turkey. <= 220 2s eee 1
Cracidae:
Crancilbertt ae eee ae Blue-cered curassow - ----------- 2
Cranwmanagmensts2-_ 2-62 3o5 ot Panama ourasssow=22 -2 5224234 =2= 1

Phasianidae:
AleClOnNtSIOTCCCO =e ae an ee ee
ArQustanusiGhguss= 222 i20se se 2S
Chrysolophus amherstiae_----------
Ghrysblophus pictus: 222)

Colonus virgintanius. 252 2S280 2S 2222 |

Crossopiilon aunitum. —=.3..-----—=
Gallusigallits 222 ee

Gennaeus leucomelanus_.----------
Hierophasis swinhowi_-------------
Lophortyx californica vallicola__-_----
ophoriye gambelttoaa=as2- 2 =
Pavorcristaiuses as ase e eee

Chukariquail: 2525222) 5 es
Argus pheasant) 2-2 oo ee ose
Lady Amherst pheasant_-__------
Goldenjpheasant= . = 42-2
Bobwhite: quail... 22. 5-2-2 nee
Red bobwhite quail_.__._....---
Blue-cered pheasant-_--.--------
Redijunele-fowlesss-2 es
Long-tailed fowl_22 2-22.
Fighting fowlo2o22 2222-2. ee
Bantamichickenesss] ss 5—seeeee
Silkyebantami = 222s ee eee
Silver-spangled Hamburg fowl- _-
Belgian bearded bantam_____--_--
INepal pheasant] 22 3=- ees] ee eee
Swinhoe’s pheasant____.-_--_---
California valley quail_--_------
Gamibel squalls. 22262 22 ee
Pesfowloos 22532245 5555052 eS

Phasianus colchicus torquatus_------ eee t rr e

Pterocles orientalis. 2020 22 8 BALE Sand-grousewow oes

Tetraogallus h. himalayensis_------- Snow cockS-24-- SS Sue
Numididae:

Numidaumelcagriss 2-2 Sha. hee White guinea fowl......22£2--22
Meleagrididae:

Meleagrzs qallopav0ss.2s2 5222 — eee e Domestic turkey 2222-5 5-=5 522"

GRUIFORMES

Gruidae:
AMIRTOPOLdeS ViITGOL Jenene See
Balearica pavonina..___.._. -Sines Die
Balearica regulorum gibbericeps-_ ~~ --
Grus canadensis... 2. > Paid so. jk hon
Grus leucageranus =~ 2 eae ei
Psophiidae:
Psophiaerepianse-- 2 see

Demoiselle crane = 3222 S222
West African crowned crane_-_--_-
East African crowned crane____--
Florida sandhill crane__._-.------
Siberian crane=2_2252- sees See

Gray-backed trumpeter._.------

no
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a ee

SECRETARY’S REPORT AS |

Scientific name Common name Number
Rallidae:
ECOMOINET ICON De ee American. coot_ Jest 225.22 25¥< 4
Gallinula chloropus cachinnans-__---- Fiorida; gallinules: soe se 4
Laterallus leucopyrrhus_-..-------- Black-and-white crake_-__--- -- 1
Porphyrio poliocephalus__._.-------- South Pacific swamp hen__--_---- 1
Rallus limicola limicola__---------- Mirernia, rales = es eek ek Aes 1
Eurypygidae:
Pro pyod Nellgs See eee ee eee St Slay DIGhern. 2.02.05 5 o555 tee Se 4 2
Cariamidae:
Carsama: cristiia......,. 2So 522268 ahs Cariama, or seriama. ....==-====- 2
Otididae:
Chlamydotis undulata macqueenti_._. MacQueen’s bustard__-_-------- 2
GHARADRIIFORMES
Recurvirostridae:
Himantopus mexicanus_..--------- Black-necked stilt. ....._.-.--- 1
Burhinidae:
Brarinus Uisivtatus. <2 2.3 os South American thick-knee-__-__-- 2
Haematopodidae:
Haematopus ostralegus_..-.-------- Oystereatcher= 525k 2
Charadriidae:
Belonopterus cayennensis_._..------- South American lapwing_--_----- 2
Charadrius vociferus._._.~.~.-----= Malideer: =o ar ehe 2 ee see 1
Stercorariidae:
Catharacta maccormicki._...------- MacCormick’s skua___-..-.-----. 5
Laridae:
WHT OStCENG INCE eee aes Seas Wines Pern Ss st 2
GOTUSEGUTECTL ne ee ee Baughine ulle! 5: 2 1
OTUs dela warensige nse s Ring-billed cull 4 2
Garus dominicanus.2--- <2. -- = Kelp pullo t= ---o ha ee ee 2
Larus novaehollandiae_..-.-------- SEVER pulls ne Soe ee Re 14
COLUMBIFORMES
Columbidae:
Conmuag (Ota 2) Son ee Domestic pigeon == -52- = s- 3
Columba nigrirostris_.-........---- Black-billed pigeon__.....-.---- 1
Gallicolumba luzonica__..-..------- Bleeding-heart dove____-------- 6
Geaneiia cuneaia__.- 25 =-- ne Diamond Gove= 2.22 2257 3
Gouri Orclonile 2 oe ee Crowned pigeon__.-~+-- =. 22-2. 2
Lophophaps ferruginea__.---------- Red-plumed pigeon_---.-_------ 6
Streptopelia decaocto__._._.--------- Ring-necked dove_-___---------- 41
Streptopelia tranquebarica__-------- Blue-headed ring dove____------ 3
Wenn ne OstONeG. =e eee tS White-winged dove_____---.---- 2
Aenatdura macroura:— 2-5. =--= Mourning dover 22--- 55-557 5
PSITTACIFORMES
Psittacidae:
MMMMOFNES ASCRETES@ =~ oe cess Yellow-collared lovebird.__------ 3
Agapornis personata__._..---------- Masked lovebird- =_-~ ~~ =.==2--~ 5
Agapornis roseicollis__._......------ Rosy-faced lovebird.....-.-.---- 1
wmazone-Gestiea.__ = 5 St 4 32 Blue-fronted parrot..-..-.------ 2
Amazona auropalliata___..-------- Yellow-naped parrot.__.-----.-- 3
MOEORG PROCNKS oo te he Finsoh’s parrot.2 222225) 552 0 33. > 1

412575—57——-11

152 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Scientific name Common name Number

Psittacidae—Continued

Amazona leucocephala__------------ Cuban parrotoes saree ts. Susie 1
Amazona ochrocephala__------------ Yellow-headed parrot__--_------- 1
AIM QZON Gr OT OUNG as eee ee Double yellow-headed parrot_--_-_- 4
Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus___------ Hyacinthine macaw__._-._.--__-- 1
AG OOrOnGUNG eee eee eee Yellow-and-blue macaw--_-------- 4
Arai Chlonoplel. a= ee ae ee Red-and-blue macaw-.-..-------- 3
ALG NOCH Sse ae eee es oe ee Red-blue-and-yellow macaw- --.--- 2
Aratinga, canicularigas 33 So) aa ee Petz’s,parakeet..c 3. BUSS Sees 1
VATU GUL NORMNGGe | hee ee a 2 ae Rusty-cheeked parrot___-_______- 4
Callocepthalon fimbriatum_---------- Gang-gang cockatoo___.__.._---- 4
Calyptorhynchus magnificus___------ Banksian cockatoo:-. 2.22 == 22225 2
Domiceula garrulas = 2235-252 aaa Redon ses an eee 1
Piclectus Mectar Giga. 2 ae Eclectus parnot.-- 2) eee eee 1
EGrpus CHONODUULUS= cn noe tne ore Little green parakeet___._._..__-_- 1
GikGtor GubGe ss soe eee eee eee NWinite Cockatoo 22 05 eee 2
Rakatoerducrapseven 0 en toe Solomon Islands cockatoo__-_____- 1
IG GLOCNOOLCTILG See ae Sulphur-crested cockatoo______-_- 8
Kakatoeleadbeatertt== = = Pat 2) 2 fe ae Leadbeater’s cockatoo_____...--_- 10
Kakatoe moluccensts——- 22-22 == Great red-crested cockatoo_-_-__--- 1
Kakatoe sanguineus. 222 22-2 Bare-eyed cockatoo_.------------ 5
Melopsittacus undulatus___._-------- Grassoparakeets =.= Los > aes taee 48
Nestor MOLAbIS 2s a = eee eS Kea, parrot. 2282s sae eee 3
Nymphicus hollandicus_-_----------- Cockatiel: == «=tiae) Na eet eemerseee 3
PrORUS ONERSILUUS Se oe ee ee ee ee Blue-headed conure___----------- 1
PIG Cer CusTeleg ans == ee ee ne Pennant/s!parakect=s2222- 25-2222 3
Pa COnCUSTCLEM TUS = a ae osellasparakecet ees === ee 1
FZAGUCEDRALUSESCREG ALLS Sana a a Yellow-vented parrot._....__---_- 1
Polmleisswaisonis. 2222252 ses see Barraband’s parakeet_--...--.--- 2
Psritucule cupariaces 2 2s eee Red-shouldered parakeet__-_----- 1
Psittacula kramert.. =. 2) = ass Kramer's parakeet... 22.522 scs22 1
StlaCusiercthacusa ee ee ATriCAnveT ay DALLOt = ae ee 2
Trichoglossus moluccanus.---------- Rainbow, Jorikeet. 2-23-22. —-==—= 3
CUCULIFORMES

Cuculidae:
Eudynamys scolospacea_-_----------- Koel tsFs> sears Sa eye eee 1

Musophagidae:
Criniferranicanuere= eee ee Plantain-eater 222 UUse 22. OMe ree 2
DOM ACOlCOn ELCs a ee eee South African turaco! 2 ~_-_=-=2 =~ 1
Tauraco Gonaldsont. &. 2. na oe Donaldsen’s*turacoe =o 52. ee Senrr 1
GAC DCN SES tan rm Se ene eee are Purpleduracos<s=2=sseenee= see 1

STRIGIFORMES

Tytonidae:
Tso GUNG PLOUUR Cola nee oe Barn Owlte sees sae oo eee 8

Strigidae:
ES TADOMUUEG UIE 0101S ee eee Greatrhormedtowliees see ee 8
Bubo virginianus elutus__.-_------~-- Colombian great horned owl-_----- 1
ISCULD OTC UD Un et ae ee Mialayatis hin o20 wl ne 1
ORS TESTO SIS tee eee eR ee Screech owlts ssf. eee =) ee eee 2
Sire DOO Qin anos aes ewe SSS sse Barredvowlessonses Senos eee eee 16

SECRETARY’S REPORT Bi 153

Scientific name Common name Number
CAPRIMULGIFORMES
Podargidae:
POUL GUS SU IGOLUCS n= on ea Brogiigutiiss <e seee eemee 1
TROGONIFORMES
Trogoniidae:
EROnOMOAChUS MOCINO= == 2 2 a nee Ouetzal a ee ee ae 2
EXIOLCLUS TETRNUNUS 22a Oe ee Cuban trogan® += had sew Moses a
CORACIIFORMES
Alcedinidae:
OCCLONGUGdSt ens cas he nse L MOO Kalb Uti rs ee ee 5
Bucerotidae:
PACEROS MUCOUS Sa ae ee eee SE Wreathedhornbille ae eee 1
Acerosvundulatus--- 2222. . 025220 24 Malayan hornbill.. - 2223454545 1
Anthracoceros coronatus____-------- Piedthornbille eae eae ys al J
EL CETOSHOUCOMIVIS ote ot eh eet ate Concave-casqued hornbill_______ 1
SUCETOS RY OTOCOT UL = eae 2a Philippimeshormbillz=s.2s4 eee 1
ucervus Goestwnicus! 22) 2220262. Abyssinian ground hornbill____-_- 1
Bycanistes subcylindricus____.--_~-- Black-and-white casqued horn- 1
bill.
ROCK USK ACKSONI ease See eee Jacksons hormbillsae2sse-== === 1
Momotidae:
WMomovisilessonis= == 5-22 se ae Motimotatesseaeesese Vig. fates’ 2
PICIFORMES
Ramphastidae:
Andugena baillony: Seize eee iss Baillonistoucanet == eesaee 1
Pteroglossus torquatus___.._-------- Ringed! toucanetu. = ee a eee 4
hamphasios connate oes a. see Sulphur-breasted toucan___----- 2
EMM DNUStOS LOCO = . 2... Se BaP ‘EGco toucan* =~ 225 Sieeseee She: 3
PASSERIFORMES
Cotingidae:
Chasmorhynchus nudicollis___------ Bellin dist Ste ie ake SCS 1
RUG UCOVM TAL DUCOLG ae ae a ee Orange cock-of-the-rock______.-- 2
Rupicola sanguinolenta__.._.------- Searlet cock-of-the-rock__._.---- 1
Tyrannidae:
EZOMUSASU PIU OL US: et ae Kiskadee flycatcher_--------_-<< 2
Corvidae:
Corvus Glo. sana beaten Geet White-breasted crow___--------- 1
Corvus brachyrhynchos___---------- (CTO Ws ae eee as eS 3
Corvus corax principalis___.__------ Raven et arte en ns Rene nearer c. 1
COrPis CNSGlEN G2 at sate Ea a Indiantcrowe=s=e=- ee aeee Sa 2
Cyanocita cristata, 222 ae Blve qayseoates ees he Be Te ee 2
Gymnorhina hypoleuca___----.----.. White-backed piping crow__-_--- H
ZOE MUU Eas op ere ee Sot Eee Yellow-billed magpie____----_--- is 1
Pte W1Ce hudsonicd. 9 She Miao pices ate ee Sie ee ee 3
Wrocissa. cacruiea. fab to. ee Formosan red-billed pie..-__-_-_-- 1
Ptilonorhynchidae:
Ptilonorhynchus violaceus. ..------- Sabimebowelbind ses ee 3
Timaliidae:

GOEEIGe DICOlOn = oo 5 oS Sel White-headed laughing thrush._- 2

154 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Scientific name Common name Number
Pycnonotidae:
Pycnonotus leucogenys..-..-------- White-cheeked bulbul__.________ 1
Mimidae:
Mimus polyglottos._.._.....-------- Mockingbird--=2.). 22... c2eo. 1
Mimus polyglottos leucopterus_._.--- Western mockingbird_-.____-__- 1
Turdidae:
Geoktehia ciining. 2-2 2 oe ae Orange-headed ground thrush___-_ 1
Platyerchla flares 4 eee Yellow-footed thrush__________-_ 1
Thamnolaea cinnemomeiventris__.--- iiiWOnatsee 22 0 eee eames 2
TIN ASTRON OLOTE US oo a a { tO aaaeiauniiainid dees ee :
San 5 Albino TORIN= = 222022 eee 1
Sturnidae:
Acridotheres triste Ustsok Sie Jungle mynah: J. 2-32 Sates se 1
Graculasreligzosa.— . Uitee OF Sate? Jeti raniyana es 22 a a ee 2
Gracula religiosa indica_____._____- hesser shalt y 1. eee ee ee 2
Lamprocolius purpureus_.--._----- Burchell’s glossy starling..______ 3
prea SUpEervus. —_ Si aA sue Tricolored or superb starling______ 1
SHE DIOR TPN ad Oe OM Se Gray-headed mynah____________ 1
SeurnUsulgarter ae — phys hee head DUAN... ia eee eee yee epee 1
Ploceidae:
Aidemosyne modesta_....-.-------- Plum-headed finch_..........-.. 1
ANAT US CLG Sens en a eee Cut-throat weaver finch_________ 11
Oovlennanpichamem ss asc e a epeent in Painted finch i220) ees eee 1
Diatropura procne. 55 2252 22 ees Giant whydaho2 222 so eee 5
Bsirilad Gmandava: 202552200022. Dtrawberry Hnchs 2] ee eee 2
Stiri COnangolens7S ae ee Cordon bleutinch= == ae 4
Bsirilda asirild- -- 27222002 Se rae Red-eared waxbill_._.._....__-_ 1
Bsirilda-cmerca_- = 2.. aan. eee Common’ waxbillassusuy_ passe 4
Esirilda melpodai St _O2ieiee etn Orange-cheeked waxbill__-_.____ 7
Estrildassenegala-2-= === ear ae Hire: finch: fe 22 ss = hanya ee 1
TEP I ECCLES Tho ae ee eee Yellow-crowned bishop weaver__. 14
EAU DVCCLES OTE = ee ee ee ae Red bishop weaver. -—....--.---- 7
Lonchura leucogastrotdes__-_..------ Bengali finch. .-- 2/22 2 | See 4
LORCRULG MOG = ene ee eee White-headed nun_____________- 25
Lonchura-malacca-2- 2 ee eee Black-throated munia___._______ 2
Lonchurapunctulaia.- 9. ee Spice finch .2+ ie Ona he Bionge 1
IA OOO a ae Be ee oe Java finche) <2 232). ee 3
Plocerpascer maka. = 22 See Mahali weaver-=2 - 2ifl22.b S2g08 1
IPLOCEUS OMYa2 Beets” ye we Len Paya Weaver. o-2ss2oste abe eee 14
ALOGEALSE DULCE NATIVES ae eee ee Vitelline masked weaver_______-- 3
Poeniilavacuucaudases* 2 hoo ee Shaft-tailed: finch: ! 22 3ul2L 1. 222 2
Poephila gouldiae ene HOB oe seeisis sansa :
tele hie ldadar dion cu hoc Black-headed Gouldian finech_____ 4
Poephila guttata castanotis_._._.____-- Zebra: finchs= =< <2 2 Na ar 41
IPacpiila TUjCauda See eo oe eae Starfinchs= =. 22S Feposans 1
Quelemiguelen sae eRe ve Red-billed- weaver. ===.. 52228222 1
Steganopleura bichenovit___-------- Bicheno’s finch.- 22 hos i) aaa e 3
Steganuara paradisea_._ 2 Paradiseswhydah= === Sees eax 11
Icteridae:
Agelaius icterocephalus___-._._____- Yellow-headed marshbird________ 1
EROS CP ROU ee oo oo eS ee Giraud’sorioleso 2 ee a eae 1
I CLETUSKICLET ALS ae ee ee Troupiales s+ 22.2220 See 2

SECRETARY’S REPORT 155

Scientific name Common name Number
Icteridae—Continued
COUSCOUS CUtACUIG | Uae Seno teys Purple erackie=.. .. ects e pore 1
Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus-__---- Yellow-headed blackbird -_-_--_-__-_- 1
Xanthornus decumanus__--_-------- Crested oropendola____________-_ 1
Thraupidae:
Calosmza rujicapilla____. ._..-...=- Brown-headed tanager_________-_ 1
Ramphocelus dimidiatus_.__-.----- Crimson tanagers= sos eee 6
Ramphocelus passerini___._._------ Passerini’s tanager___.._._.____- 4
ERT agnts CONG. . Ais a huts Bluevtana cerns... sae eee i
PT Oupisileucoplend Ae 5 sae nee White-edged tanager___________-_ 2
Fringillidae:
Carduelis carduelighs228 222s European goldfinch____________- 5
Carpodacus mexicanus frontalis_- __- House finches 222 2222 = Senile 1
PALOCni CUCULLOLE = a ees ee Brazilianicardinalla= = sess =e aaa 1
Paroaria gularis nigro-genis___----- Black-eared cardinal___________- 4
PODS DECOMLOnUCL@ a ee ae Ringed warbling finch__________- 2
SAMUS (CU Ae ee eS Caviery (2225 3G arte eee ae 19
pzealts luteola 2 =22 2522) 2k Sok Saffron-finghen += ...1 BRM) 235G No 4 6
Sporophila gutturalis_....._._------ Yellow-billed finch_____________-_ 13
REPTILES
LORICATA
Crocodylidae:
Alligator mississipiensis_....------ ALI G atone ee se ee re ee 20
PNIQUIOn StNENSS oo Bk Chinese: alligator. 2 soc e225 252%. 2 2
Carman sclerons= S62 =o te aah AC alanine ee een eee ee 16
Crocedylus aculus: -2—. 2s8-2 ete 3 American crocodile___...---..-- 3
Crocodylus cataphractus...--------- Narrow-nosed crocodile__._-_-__- 1
Crocoayulusmiuloncus= = ease ae African crocodile. __.=..--1.-.~< 1
Croronylus porosus= 2 ---——---==- Salt-water crocodile__._._____---- 1
Osteolaemus tetraspis._....-------- Broad-nosed crocodile__--------- 3
Tomistoma schlegelt_....-22=-2~2-- Gavia = oo eee a ets 1
SAURIA
Gekkonidae:
EEE VOTES | REIS ale eel tees eR GIADD SOCK Os = ee ee 1
Tarentola mauritanica_-...-------- GeCkG fea oe es ee eee ae 1
Gerrhosauridae:
Gerrhosaurus major_...-..:-.----= Pisted Harden ee csc eau keer 8
Iguanidae:
AMOS COTOLINENSIB® 222 ne Americanvanolissas === ==) ses 15
Annize cristatellis. -— - oon 3 a= as555 5% Little crested anolis___.......---- 5
ARGOS CGUESETTS == oe Fae Giantranolistene sa asec ee ee 2
ATTOLLSUCTUG US ee seo ie Kru grsvan Oliswery a= a= eee = sete 5
PASTE C SUSE OUI G22 oe West Indian anolis_..__.._------ 4
Ctenosaura acanthura_.------------ Spiny-tailed iguana___---------- 5
Cyclura macleayi.-. 2 - 22 ae Cubstligigna. 220 2 1
CHClUny SeNeCQeTt. = Mona Island iguana___--------- 1
GUANO LOUAN Oa ls le ee Common j1cuane =< 252 5
Sceloporus undulatus. _..---------- TRONCO TH ZANT. a2 an Seep 1
Helodermatidae:
FHeloderma horridum._.-.~.-----~-- Mexican beaded lizard__---_---- 2
Heloderma suspectum-_------------- GHAIMONStEr =o 22 oa ee ak 6

156 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Scientific name Common name Number
Varanidae:
Wananws ail oncusseee= see ee eee African ImOnitOns2 swells eas 1
Wananus Vanissa eee. see Australian lace monitor___-_____ 2
Teiidae:
Tupinambis nigropunctatus___------ Black-teot=22s55 224.2222. een 2
Scincidae:
Chalcides senoides =... 74BHEN2 eee ee Three-fingered skink__-_..-_---- 3
PAGER MUG ALCHLLOS Oa ee IAOLioaeubaree eltatelice Ee Ee 2
FIGCPNiG AOnetep en so) eras fas Wihitesiskimk 2.2 £2 sue. aegeyege 8
Bhimecesipasciatuses 2 eee Greater five-lined skink_______-_- 2
Seincus officinalis. 22-22 22-2 ee Sandiuskinlks 2. 2 eee 12
Urochysaunus Tugosuseocsee 22a eee Stump-tailed lizard___...______-_ 1
Chameleontidae:
Chamaeleondileniss 2a ee ee eee Flap-necked chameleon________-- 1
SERPENTES
Boidae:
BGOKCNY ORUSiCOOK Lise ee Cool’sstreeibosa sees eee 1
BOGE NYOTS C11) Ai1s rae eee Preeibois.2 82. ae oe ee 1
Constrictor constrictor. 2 225-252 2-— iS ORICONStTIC LOL === = ae 1
Consinictor timperator.—— 22 2 ee mp error pO tee == ee — = a= ae ae 2
UCR OLE SHOT LLU Cs mee Cuban: boss) 2. ae see aes 4
JB MOROGAS COMBO a a oe eS Se Rainbow bods sesese— eae eee 5
EHC OLESHAILO GIL QU Saar Puertopican) DOdass= === eee if
EYE TL COOtCUSY As ae = eae Bon Ss ye Sharp-tailed sand boa____.__---- i
Bunectes muntivis= asses 2 eS Anaconda=-<2 ==. -.S22Ueet Som vi
2 OTUTLOU UTS a ee ae Indian rock=pythonss2s=2-s22s2= 1
IRyihonTregvuse a aaa oe ee eee iBalli pythons ss===2—2e—— ht 4
UN OTAT CUCU OLS = ee Regalipython= 2 3422222) eee 5
iPythonssebagsea=2= sien es eee Africans yi hoOne= == senses 2
Colubridae:
ACrOChOrdUs: JOVONICHS =~ es See Elephant trunk snake__________-
LA TUZOMONELEG CIS iim me asin mk omy ER SIRE Faded snakes=.+.l 0S S002 Baie
BOGgeuon lineatumaa sue = ae es African house snake, or musaga_ -
IBMOM Gendron sss. == ae eee Mangrove,snake. 22. 22-2 222
Carphophis amoena__------------- Lyra aaae SoM Ce Ee 2
Diadophis punctatus edwardsi___.--- Ring-necked snake_______--__---
DispROl aus LU NUS =o 2 2 ea ee eee ee Boonislangss=oo- 5. a ae ee
Drymarchon corais cowperi.-------- Indigosnake: 222-522 e see

Miaphe gutiata ssi a

Gorntsnakess 52502 oe. eee
‘Albinolcormsnakes= = eee eee

Elaphe obsoleta confinis..._._------- Southern pilot black snake_____--
Elaphe obsoleia obsoleta____-.------ Pilot black snakesys 2 =e ee 22
ila mhenguia anu ae e Chickenjsnakes= esse en. eee
Hetenodon comorinie 2° Soop eae Hopg-nosed'snake= ie 2S 22s eee
Lampropeliis doliata:--. 2. ----=-.- Searlet king snake: _----_=_-_ 22 -
Lampropeltis getulus californiae--_-_-- California king snake_--_-------
Lampropeltis getulus floridana_----- Florida, king, snakes2= 222225522 5—
Lampropeltis getulus getulus_------- Kane snakes. 25 ess eee see
Lampropeltis getulus splendida___--- Sonoran king snake___.---.-----
Lampropeltis rhombomaculata_.----- Moleisnakette 22 teres e sa. sae
Lampropeltis triangulum__--------- Milk snakes 23262 ene ee

Leptopnis occvdentalses- sso sees eee Parrot snakes Sao eee coe eee

A
Let NS oe OO ond or ms me wil me

SECRETARY’S REPORT Log

Scientific name Common name Number
Colubridae—Continued
WAIT CHCLO PION = 52% os ae Green water’snake:. 2-2-3. 2 2
IN GUnTGACNIU NR OQUSLCT ate ee Red-bellied water snake_____-__-. 2
Natriz stpedon subsp_.----_------- Wiater snake: <28 2s 2s eee See ee 3
Natriz stpedon fasciata__---------- Southern banded water snake__-_-_ 1
Natriz sipedon pictiventris___-__---- Florida water snake____-_------- 1
Natriz sipedon sipedon__..--------- Watermsnakes 5. oes sa eee = 2
IN CUGILOGTS ULL ee Brown water snake_______.___-_- 4
INC RICRLESSCLLOLO eee et ee ee iessellatedssnake® 222222225522" 1
Psammophis subtaeniatus__-_------ Striped sand snake _-.-....--_-- 1
Rhamphiophis rostratus__.--------- Sharp-nosed snake_____...__-_-_- 2
ISTONETECLOCK LY te eee ee ete oe Delays sSnaken== 2) se see eee 2
Storeria o. occipitomaculata_.______~ Red-bellied snake__________-_--- 1
DhaMnopnis Sauntuse 2-22 Rib bonvsnagkes nae eee = 1
CMR ODRESISTRLCLL See ee ee Garter-snakersso= eee essere 3
INELGLOGIUUSE ITT LLGTLC Ls se African: twigssnake® ——) 522 eles ]
Zamenis florulentus_...-.-.------- oy pulaneTacer esas aa es ete ane 2
Elapidae:
LSAT TE) 105 11 en a ee li yh ch ee Hoypiieancep bras =. 2a. eee ee 18
DP CREMMMICI eas em es ee a ee IGN CON Tat. see a ee eee 1
INGE HATO Is< jase seeked= se Blackicobratet=ss0) seen e= seers ul
BNET TOUTE (agate pe al Ae il le Fo indianycobras o.oo eo ee 5
Crotalidae:
Ancistroden contortrix contortrix__-__- Southern copperhead snake-_-_-_-__- 1
Ancistrodon contortrix mokeson_..._.._ Northern copperhead snake__--_-_- 1
Ancistrodon piscivorus..-..--.----- Wiaterimoccasinaas. "2a aae ae 1
CLAGIUSTGI Oe = eee ese eee Texas diamondback rattlesnake _- +
(CROMMMS LLOPPHMB SaaS SoBe saw eee Timbernatiiesnakess =]. —5 2. 2— 1
PES ETILSUIN GT UUS! 2 ene Pygmy rattlesnakes —- 22 -_=-==_-- 1
TESTUDINATA
Chelyidae:
IBSOLRACRETLYS OSU =e eee South American side-necked turtle_ 2
Chelodina longicollis. - 52-2 oo = Australian side-necked turtle_____ 3
CREIYS MOTTO se 9 A eh ek Le Matamata turtles 2.2 52-2 es. 5ee 2
IBGE TUS See aes South American side-necked turtle_ 1
Hydromedusa tectifera_____._------ Small side-necked turtle________- 2
Phrynops geoffroyana__________--_-- Geoffroy’s side-necked turtle____-_ 1
IAM OONAOTIOS SSP He se ae eae Large side-necked turtle_________ 15
Platemys platycephala__-________-- Flat-headed! turtles=222-222 2-2 5
Kinosternidae:
Kinosternum cruentatum_____------ South American mud turtle_____- 1
Kinosternon subrubrum______------ Mud"turtlet 222) aaa eee eee 12
Sternotherus odoratus_22_.— 2222228 Muskituntie Yasaniae wee 2a aere 10
Chelydridae:
Chelydra serpentina._.2.2-.22222-- Snapping turtles 22 es Bae 15
Emydidae:
SOLO GLAU CSCO ae a Indian fresh-water turtle_______- 1
CRTUSEMIUSKDUCIGs ao = ee Boe Painted turtle: -.2 2.525525 222 2 - 31
Glemmiysiguitai@es a Spotted turtles: 2-02 eee Saves 6
Clemmiys ansculpia. 3. =---..----=- Wood :turtlesee 2 ao oe = 4
Clemmys marmorata marmorata----- Paciic pond: turntlessas=e seas 1
Cyclemys amboinensis...---------- Kursikura box turtless22==22- == 1

158 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Scientific name Common name Number
Emydidae—Continued
Eniydurakreqiin £2382 ee Terefet’s turtles cee ee 3
Emydura macquartae...--=---=---< Nurray) turtles eee a ee 8
mys orbiculanig. 2.0 £26 ee ees European pond turtle___-_------ 3
Graptemys barbourts._.2 -----32-=+ Berbour’s turtle. 2-222 ee 7
Graptemys geographica_..----------- Map turtle... 5s. as 3
Graptemys pseudogeographica------- False map turtles: - = .-~=.2.-=.<- 4
KaninysrOclian Was oe ae Hinge-backiturtle._ = .2.2.-=+==- 2
Malaclemys terrapin centrata_ - - ---- Southern diamondback turtle___-_- 4
Pseudemys decussata.. --2----==-=- Cuban water turtle..........--- 1
Pseudemys elegans_.-..----------- Mobilerturtle: 2324243 eet 12
Pseudemys floridana__..----------- Florida water turtle.__._..-.-.-- 8
Pseudemys floridana suwannensis___ Suwannee turtle_.___.---------- df
Pseudemys ornata._...---2=-<-=-=-= Central American turtle_______-- 2
Pseudemys rubriventris___---------- Red-bellied) turtle:=2=22222=25 "22 4
Pseudemiys seripias 2 ooo Red-lined turtle=2—-=22.).-5- 322 = 12
Pseudemys scripta callirostris_------ South American red-lined turtle.. 12
Pseudemys scripta troostii____------ Cumberland iturtles==225=ss>s=— 10
Rhinoclemmys punctularia_--------- South American red-headed turtle_ 1
Merrapene COn6ina = 22 eee Boxtturtless: -2o = aa ee 50
Terrapene carolina triunguis____---- Three-toed box turtle-___.------ 3
Terr anene'07 OTNGIa= = 22 = S2 2 s= Western box turtle. ~.----_-.--= 2
Pelomedusidae:
IPRrYN OPS GUNG Ba es es South American gibba turtle____- 3
Pelomedusg guleqtasss aa ae African water vUntLe es 1
IPEMISTOSiIIG LCA S aan ee African black mud turtle______-- 8
PPCLUSTOSHRUIILCLUS = African snake-neck turtle______-- 8
IPOAOCHENUISMIENT LIS === ee Amazon spotted turtle__..------ 15
Testudinidae:
Restwae Bpe= so 24225522 esl Pee Galapagos turtle. = 222225522 1
Testudo elephanteng..2— =... 2-22. - Giant, Aldabra turtle222-2-— 52" 2
Testudo ephippium_._--..2-2------ Galapagos turtle. 222222 22225) 4
Testudo marqunata_— = 22252522222 Margined ‘turtle... 2242-92 2-2202 1
Testudo tabulatas 222223 2 South American turtle____------ 1
Testudeoicina si oes SIO See ee Galdpagos turtle. ....---------- 1
Trionychidae:
Trionyejerog. <2 ee eee American soft-shelled turtle__---- if
Trionys rungs. 2oL 22s 2a African soft-shelled turtle___----- 2
AMPHIBIANS
CAUDATA
Salamandridae:
Diemictylus pyrrhogaster_---------- Red-belliedinewtssssoe5----- = 31
Diemictylus viridescens__----------- Red-spotted newt... ---..-----==2 5
VarichatorosG22= 3-3 eee eee ae California newt... 22422232225" 2
Amphiumidae:
Amphiuma. meanss-2 2525-252 22--22 Congoreelioe 222522. eeen eases 1
SALIENTIA
Dendrobatidae:
Dendrobates tintoria..__-------==== Arrow-poison frog. --- 2 eet 2
Bufonidae:
(BuO OIMETACONUS. = eee ane American {ead a 5222----2-sc= 4

Bujo Manns. . 2o2 22-5 sens oe Gisnt'toad .25 2252 se gee ae ee

SECRETARY'S REPORT 159

Scientific name Common name Number
Bufonidae—Continued
SO PALECNOMIS ns ose Rococo toad -a22e ee Ses 1
Bujo pellocephalugcsius-i...-=2-.. Cuban toad: 2247 eer sl 7
LSSTH TR hos, kA ee SMe We, 2 ieee Send Burapean toad Se 7 1
Leptodactylidae:
Ceratophrys calcarata_.----.------- Colombian horned frog_________- 2
Ceratophrys ornata__-.------------ Argentine horned frog_______.__- 1
Hylidae:
VIN CINETER 26 2 ot eeeee teens Green- tree frog-=-.-22--.- ue! 3
Piya eruciers-— ke eee eee ces prime peeper= 2-22.22 e Le en 4
digia squiren@.. oS. 25225. 2282-5 Squirrel-tree frog: =2 io l2u oie 4
Helaiwersicolor © 22 -). = shee oe Gray. tree froraesue-222-2 52 3 et 2
Microhylidae:
Microhyla carolinensis._.---------- Narrow-mouthed toad____----_- Pe
Pipidae:
BSI T i. 2k OR le ed ee eee Surinam COAd (seeks ee ese 4
Ranidae:
GRUP As es eee ATTICA DULL TOR Sse, eae ee 15
ATE CLOMMANS [2S ae en TCG, MOPS nn ee a eee ee meee 4
FISHES
Acanthodoras spinosissimus__..------- Talking cathsh. 2. See = 1
Acanthophthalmus semicinctus__.----- TherperkuGllss 222s 22 eee 3
aeas westudineus..—- =. 52. k=. Climbing perches. 2 es es 5
Astronotus ocellatus...-.-........-~-< Peacock cichlids: 22. ee ee 4
Barbus evereiiy ti isc) Weed iad uke s Clown: barbi tas. ets a) eek Pe
Reape Atle gli anes n ese uL a iphipine fishes.) s o-asenl Gh ay 1
Brachygobius xanthozonus._...------- Bumblebee-fish__..._.._._-.-___ 2
Corydoras hasiatus 222262. 224.222. Coryderastecto os cio eeli ly etes 15
Electrophorus electricus.....--------- Hlectri¢jeclt etei.e2 4 puts eens 1
Hyphessobrycon innesi__...-.-------- INeomtietira 228 Ag) 3 Saunesd on 9
Labeo chrysophekadion.._-.-.--.----- Blackisharifishie3 1) Jewisses ole 2
E ’ Guppy 223 s3ee2 tere cto nay 25
Die RPMS ELICLINILIER he e pecs ae ee ce tee 35
Lepidosiren paradoza__.-.-.---------- South American lungfish__-_-__-_- 1
Metnntagpeend 2d scl? . beh ect Metynnis Ree _ Selassie s teats ph 3
Plecostomus plecostomus....---------- Armored) Gatfish $22 eet hat 350 2
Protopterus annectens__...-.---------- African lungfish 2.92 oeos ssio_ 2
Quintana Girizond_-- 2 Sa - 2-2 Cuban mosquitofish.____...____- 1
Serrasaimius niger... =... -=- Piranac so - ee eee ete 1
plernarchell@ schottit_< 2 5.5222. == African: knifefish 24. os. 7if-t nce 3
Tanichihys albonubess. 22. 22..-.-.-. White Cloud Mountain fish______ 1
mennopnorus heer... 262 osm Greenrswordtails 5.4275 os 4
ARACHNIDS
LEGA OTS | | ee SP APARiMAn Sen. ele ee 1
batrodectue mactans.-...~..===<=- Black-widow spider_-.....---.-- 1
INSECTS
UP SS ee eee er Giant eockroseh. 2 o. 22-25... 100
MOLLUSKS

me a Pond tanailss soe ees eee eel 10

160 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

STATUS OF THE COLLECTION

Class Species or | Individuals
subspecies

Mammals... 2. = s»-8 eee ear ae 246 786
Birds. .2- 2222 30 ees Pee See 300 1, 212
d ERC) 0h CYS pe Oe OR I et a ea ye ee ee 148 625
Amphibians: 2.224 Se eae ee eee oe ee 21 107
TT) ea a a gE te EP en RS 22 123
Ara chnidse sfc £c7s. 32 ee see Bers Boek 2. oe es ee 2 2
HmSecte= oo 6 6 eS Le Sh eel ee Se ee 2 100
IMOMUSiS silt ae ee BS ee ee eee if 10
WOtAl eats ee eS oe ne ee ee 742 2, 965
Animalston hand duly le lOhh —. = aes ar ee eee Eon 3, 140
ACCessions during the year: == = aoe eee eee a eee Bee ee 1,710
Total number of animals in collection during the year______-____- 5, 120

Removals for various reasons such as death, exchanges, return of animals
ONT CPOSIt. CLO Mee ao ree Sa oa ok eS ee ee eee ees 2,155
Inveolicction-on ume, 30; (9062-2 ese s case See 2, 965

2The Zoo is given many small creatures that have been pets in homes where
they are no longer welcome, or where circumstances necessitate giving them up.
These include ducks, chickens, and rabbits given to children at Easter time,
parakeets, alligators, caimans, guinea-pigs, etc. Also many of the common local
wild things that are found by children or adults who think the creatures need
help are brought to the Zoo. This includes a wide array, but particularly gray
squirrels, cottontail rabbits, opossums, skunks, raccoons, foxes, woodchucks,
blue jays, robins, sparrows, box turtles, as well as other less plentiful forms.
The quantity of these received far exceeds the need for exhibition animals and
facilities to care for them; therefore, some are used in exchange for other
animals that are needed, and some are liberated. During the past year there
were 215 individuals of 19 different kinds of such unneeded animals brought in.
These were accessioned and therefore are recorded, which accounts in part for
the large number of removals listed.

Respectfully submitted.
W. M. Mann, Director.
Dr. Lronarp CARMICHAEL,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.

Report on the Canal Zone Biological Area

Sm: It gives me pleasure to present herewith the annual report
on the Canal Zone Biological Area for the fiscal year ended June 30,
1956. The principal portion of this report was prepared by James
Zetek, who retired from the position of resident manager of this
bureau on May 30, 1956. Mr. Zetek has been succeeded by Dr. Carl
B. Koford who assumed his duties as resident naturalist on June 30,
1956.

SCIENTISTS AND THEIR STUDIES

During the fiscal year 51 scientists, not including the Corrosion
Conference group, came to the laboratory. Some of these, such as
the research team from the University of Oslo, stayed for extended
periods. In addition, there were many scientists who wanted to “get
acquainted” with the island and had scheduled a one-day stopover

to inspect the laboratory and the forest area.

Investigator
Altman, Stuart,
Walter Reed Medical Center.
Athern, D. D.,
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institu-
tion.
Blew, Oscar,
U. 8. Forest Service.
Coursan, Blair,
General Biological Supply House.
Davis, Malcolm,
National Zoological Park.
Enders, Robt. E.,
Swarthmore College.
Enger, E. S.,
University of Oslo.
Gillespie, David M.,
Ohio State University.
Haas, Theodore P.,
Philadelphia College of Pharmacy.
Hartman, Frank A.,
Ohio State University.
Hartman, Armaguedon,
El Volean, Chiriqui.
Henry, Mr. and Mrs. T. R.,
Washington, D. C.

Principal interest or special study
Biology of mammals and birds, partic-
ularly howler monkeys.
General biological survey.

Evaluation of reports on termite re-
sistance tests.
Bird and mammal studies.

Biological survey.

Histochemical studies and mammals
surveys.

Member of Dr. Scholander’s research
group.

Assistant to Dr. Hartman.

Plant studies.

Muscle studies of birds and adrenal
gland.

Assistant to Drs. Enders and Wislocki.

Obtaining press release material for
the Smithsonian Institution.

161

162

Investigator

Heed, Dr. and Mrs. Wm. B.,
The Genetics Foundation,
Tex.

Horning, Dr. and Mrs. BE. C.,
National Heart Institute, Bethesda,
Md.

Hoover, Mr. and Mrs. I. C.,
Arlington, Va.

Hyman, Dr. Libbie,

American Museum of Natural His-
tory.

Johnson, H. R.,

U.S. Forest Service.

Krog, John,
University of Oslo.

Leivestad, Helge,
University of Oslo.

Lloyd, Ivan M.,

Eastman Kodak Tropical Research
Laboratory.

Lufburrow, R. A,

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institu-
tion.

Lundy, W. E.,

Assistant treasurer, Panama Canal.

Olivares, Ismael,
Eastman Kodak Tropical Research
Laboratory.

Pinney, Roy,
New York City.

Reed, Mrs. Albert C.,

Salt Pines, Cape Cod, Mass.

Rettenmeyer, Mr. and Mrs. Carl,
University of Kansas.

Riegel, Mr. and Mrs. H. J.,

Dwight, Il.

Ruud, Berthe,
University of Oslo.

Scholander, Dr. and Mrs. Per,
University of Oslo.

Schrader, Dr. Sally Hughes,

Columbia University.

Stoutamier, Warren P.,
Fort Myers, Fla.

Serafin, Mitrotti,

Eastman Kodak Tropical Research
Laboratory.

Soper, Cleveland C.,

Eastman Kodak Tropical Research
Laboratory.

Austin,

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Principal interest or special study

Survey and collection of wild Dro-
sophila for gene research.

Survey for future chemical studies.

Ornithological studies.

General survey, especially of the soil
fauna.

Examination of tests of treated woods
against termite attacks.

Associate of Dr. Scholander.

Member of Dr. Scholander’s research

group.
Deterioration and corrosion studies.

General biology.

Continuing studies of the birds, mam-
mals, and insects.

Fungi as affecting photographic equip-
ment.

Photography of wildlife.

Ornithology.

Soil organisms and general entomology.

Study of birds.

Member of Dr. Scholander’s research
group.

Heat regulation in sloths and other
mammals.

Cytological studies.

Wildlife protection studies.

Corrosion and deterioration studies.

Corrosion and deterioration studies,

SECRETARY’S REPORT 163

Investigator Principal interest or special study

Swift, Paul F., Physical and chemical studies related to
Eastman Kodak Tropical Research corrosion and deterioration.
Laboratory.

Verity, Erwin, Photography and study of mammals.
Walt Disney Production.

Verrall, A. F., Inspection of controls for corrosion and
U.S. Forest Service. termite installations.

Warren, James W., Study of fungus-growing ants.
Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Weber, Neal A., Study of fungus-growing ants.
Swarthmore College.

Wetmore, Dr. and Mrs. Alexander, Continuation of bird studies.
Smithsonian Institution.

Wilmar, Mr. and Mrs. H., Photography and study of mammals.
Walt Disney Production.

Wislocki, Louis, Associate of Dr. Enders.
Swarthmore College.

Zeigler, John N., General biological observations.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institu-
tion.

Corrosion Conference Annual conference on island.

(a group of United States scientists).

VISITORS

The visitors who spent at least a day on Barro Colorado Island *
this year totaled 440. The majority of these were local people, but
there were some who came by plane or boat to the mainland and had
included a side trip to the laboratory in their plans. As in other years,
all appeared to be very enthusiastic, and many expressed the wish
that they could stay longer or return again at some later time.

RAINFALL

In 1955, during the dry season (January through April) rains of
0.01 inch or more fell on 44 of the 120 days (128 hours) and amounted
to 10.78 inches, as compared to 5.84 inches during 1954.

During the wet season of 1955 (May through December) rains of
0.01 inch or more fell on 202 of the 245 days and amounted to 103.64
inches as compared to 99.85 inches during 1954.

During 1955 rain fell on 246 days (975 hours), and averaged only
0.45 inch per day, almost 0.12 inch per hour.

March was the driest month of 1955 (0.21 inch) and November the
wettest (17.14 inches). The wettest year of record (31 years) was

* Anyone contemplating a visit to this unique spot in the American Tropics
should communicate with the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Wash-
ington 25, D. C., or with the Resident Naturalist of the Canal Zone Biological
Area, Drawer “C,” Balboa, Canal Zone.

164 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

1935 with 143.42 inches, and the driest year of record was 1930 with
only 76.57 inches.

The maxima of record for short periods were 5 minutes 1.30 inches;
10 minutes 1.65 inches; 1 hour 4.11 inches; 2 hours 4.81 inches.

TABLE 1.—Annual rainfall, Barro Colorado Island

Total Station Total Station
Year inches average Year inches average
OZ Soe Oe ha ae OAM Sieben ee 1AM a oh YB pes Leen TB oe pn 91.82 108. 41
PO DGes 2 dae S22 eS OO OAD Mee ght eo ae LOM lOssa5
LO Dip x cis Code ee TIL ey oe LW bees | A abe A ee 120. 29 109. 20
1S AS tesa aa Sd ae pe ee de HOMO 2 SOMO AA ee ee ay eee eee 111.96 109. 30
ODO Reis OP aE TESARITOGH SOI 1945. eee eee 120.42 109. 84
TOS QR erars es Tene se oon » VO 14) 1946022. Sia aeaere 87. 3 108. 81
Oe is pt Ms Rg V2 SOO wel OA: OOM MOA ee eee 77.92 107. 49
ORD a ot eh eee TUB SPI" waa 7G} || IMCS a 83.16 106. 43
VOSS Rie yu tee LOM 73) OS. S 2G 4G ois ee ae eee 114.86 106. 76
POSAL Sasa foe aM 22542 SOT OA O50 Rees eee 114.51 107. 07
LOSS Reve ele ese 437427 OOS So Obes eee LIQ 2 OR 28
P9OS3Ge 2 seks ehhh ees Ey cokes oO eS | epi ee 97.68 106. 94
1S 37 eee ee AY eat cae NAL Bye UTD 1 |) Be ee 104.97 106. 87
fA a tl gl alte ee bb 1 O97 UVONG 21) Ob Awe creer eee 105. 68 106. 82
POZO SEG ery ee a IbiUiss, a7 a) VE || Te 114.42 107. 09
LGAQE i sees. A te oe 86. 51 109. 43

Taste 2.—Comparison of 1954 and 1955 rainfall, Barro Colorado Island (inches)

Total Accumu-
Month Station | Years of | Excess or lated

average | record | deficiency | excess or

1954 1955 deficiency
VATU AI) oe ere nee Lee ease 1. 24 9.05 2.08 30 +6. 97 +6. 97
HE Diary pee eae ee ene eee eee 1.29 | 0.46 1, 22 30 —0. 76 +6. 21
March sc ee teen eens ane. eee Rees une 0. 21 0. 90 1.16 30 —0. 26 -+5. 95
TAUPO: pat ane = SN oa ae 3.10 0.37 3.07 31 —2.70 +3. 25
Wiaiy oo a eee. Shes SS SIS es ee eS eee 8S 11.09 | 10.58 10. 838 31 —0. 25 +3. 00
AAT eee a eRe 2 Be eee eee 12.06 | 18.54 11.25 31 +2, 29 +5. 29
Ay oe eee See Re eee one ee eeecne os 15. 05 11. 49 11. 56 31 —0.07 +-5. 22
PAI OUISE sae owe se ae eee eee 12,92} 11.36 12227, 31 —0.91 +4.31
Septemiberzenac-= sess a sees aoe ea ae 11.19 9. 27 9. 93 31 —0. 66 +3. 65
Octd ber: 2-2 eee ee ee 13.14 | 16.33 18.75 31 +2. 58 +6. 23
INoOvemibeneeccssce neers ae eae eee ane eee 17.14 | 18.35 19. 02 31 —0. 67 -++5. 56
December! 202s 2 ae ee See 25 |) 12572 10. 95 31 +1.77 +7. 33
Viearn 2 ee on ee cece state 105. 68 | 114. 42 10709) |2Se =a ees See eee +7. 33
IDry S@asons 2 3 So ane eo anac cen eae 5.84 | 10.78 (08. |Saceeesaslecoeeeeeeece +3. 25
Wet season.=.=-2222.25-5-222-8.-2.3 99. 84 | 103. 64 99) 564) eces coc cu | ee +4. 08

BUILDINGS, EQUIPMENT, AND IMPROVEMENTS

When the new laboratory building was constructed, the contractor
could not obtain United States lumber for the flooring, and lumber
cut and milled in Chiriqui, Panama, had to be used. During the year
dry-wood termite infestation was observed, and though the damage was
not extensive and appeared to be spreading slowly, immediate steps
were undertaken to correct this condition. All the floor paint was
scraped off and two very liberal brushings of Penta W-R were ap-
plied and allowed to soak in thoroughly. Since this treatment was
given, no further signs of termite activity have been seen.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 165

Water and electrical installations in this new building were com-
pleted, and the large darkroom is almost finished. It is expected that
the building will soon be used to its full capacity and effectiveness.

All the screening on the original large laboratory was replaced with
plastic screening, as expert advice had indicated this type was ex-
ceptionally good. Unfortunately, experience did not bear out that
recommendation as rats ate the plastic with gusto, and cigarettes
which accidently came into contact with the screen caused holes to
develop immediately. It is planned to replace all the plastic screen-
ing with the aluminum type.

Some of the lumber and other materials needed for rebuilding and
repairing the laborers’ quarters were purchased. This project in-
cludes the installation of indoor toilet facilities, a luxury to the labor-
ers, but an added health protection factor on the island.

The roof of the Haskins Library Building appeared to be in poor
condition, but a careful examination revealed that the damage was
superficial, and the only repair needed was scraping and painting the
existing covering. These projects were carried out thoroughly, and
the roof is now in excellent condition. The runoff from the roof of
this building is not used as a means of water supply, and so painting
it presents no problem in this respect.

The new electric water heater furnishes hot water for the kitchen
and shower baths and is proving to be a valuable addition. Though
hot water cannot be used too freely when a large number of scientists
are on the island, it has been a welcome convenience for all.

The 110-120-volt, 60-cycle, overhead electrical installation, com-
pleted in 1955, is giving satisfactory service. Excellent arrangements
were made during the year for the maintenance and repair of the Diesel
generators. A Caterpillar generator was obtained on transfer, and
when this third unit is installed it is expected that no interruptions
in the electric supply will be experienced.

Materials were purchased for building dry closets, electrically
heated, in the various buildings. Some dehumidifiers have been in-
stalled, and they are doing an excellent job of drawing incredible
amounts of water from each room.

The large wooden water tank north of the old laboratory was in
danger of collapsing, and so some temporary, emergency repairs had
to be made until the water-supply problem can be resolved. During
the year it was discovered that a spring on the Snyder-Molino trail may
bethesolution. Before this can be determined, possible contamination
from rain drainage during the wet season will have to be eliminated
in order to obtain a good sample of water for analysis.

Minor necessary repairs were made to the launch Afoon. Local reg-
ulations make it necessary to equip the speedboat with life preservers.

166 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Further safety measures were taken by obtaining spotlights for the
launch and by having all the fire extinguishers recharged by the Fire
Division.

The dock proper is joined to a large platform covered with corru-
gated roofing and used for storage purposes. A portion of the roofing
caved in because of rot-infested roof timbers. This damage was
quickly repaired, and the new lumber was treated with preservatives
to retard decay.

URGENT REQUIREMENTS

The most urgent requirement of the island, which has been referred
to in the preceding section, is a safe and permanent supply of drinking
water. This problem is expected to be resolved during the coming
fiscal year.

The island dock still presents a perennial problem, but funds have
been made available to provide for its relocation. Engineering studies
will be made to determine the most suitable location for rebuilding
the dock so that the silting of the channel will not present an annual
problem.

The construction of the dry rooms referred to earlier in this report
is urgently required so that scientists may store in safety such property
as suitcases, cameras and their carrying cases, winter clothing, and
shoes.

Since the termite infestation of the floor in the new building has
been eliminated, the floors must be repainted soon.

The engine and hoist, which provide the only means of lifting heavy
shipments of supplies and equipment from the dock to the laboratory
level, must be replaced as soon as possible. Though the existing equip-
ment has given many years of fine service, it is now worn out, break-
downs are frequent, and repairs are more and more difficult to make.

Only two of the trail-end houses, the Drayton and the Fuertes, are
in usable condition, the others being in a very bad state of disrepair
and so cannot be used.

Now that better facilities are available for preserving books, much
work has to be done on the existing library, such as the rebinding and
repair of old, valuable, and irreplaceable publications and the binding
of series of scientific journals. Essential scientific reference texts and
publications which are not included in the existing collection should
be procured. Provision must be made to accommodate library mate-
rial being transferred from the Balboa office to the island. Some of
this is property of the bureau, but a large portion of it represents the
personal collection of Mr. Zetek who has indicated that he plans to
donate these fine publications to the island library. His generosity
is greatly appreciated.

The laboratory in the new building and its related storerooms have
to be equipped and properly organized. Funds have been provided

SECRETARY’S REPORT 167

to obtain some of the required equipment and supplies, but more will
be required.

An annual requirement, and one which is always a pressing problem
in any tropical environment, is the constant need of painting all
exterior and interior surfaces regularly to prevent wood rot.

FINANCES

The following institutions again contributed their table subscrip-
tions, which were received with sincere appreciation inasmuch as
without them the uninterrupted operation of the laboratory could
not be accomplished :

aN tMAnelcod a Kio oe = Ee ei eee ele ee ase 3 oa eee Fe $1, 000. 00
INeWRYOrks ZO0lOfICAl SOCLOLY = = ee Ss SE eee 300. 00
SHIH SOn LATE ONSET UL OMe ee ee ee ee eee ee eee 300. 00

Donations are also gratefully acknowledged from the following:
Eugene Eisenmann, C. M. Goethe, D. S. Lee, and Harry C. Nichols.

A concerted effort must soon be made to interest additional groups
in supporting atable subscription. Though the needs of the laboratory
are great, its improved facilities are such that any participating group
would find that an outlay of $300 or $400 would reap unforeseen
dividends in the form of sound tropical research accomplishments.

The rate for one-day visits to the island is $3 per person. Such
visitors are met by launch at Frijoles and taken to the island and back
again in time to board the evening train home. The fee also covers
the noon meal and a guided trip into the forest.

Scientists from institutions which contribute to the support of the
island through an annual table subscription are charged $4 per person
per day. For others the fee is $5 per person per day. These rates
provide for the two launch trips to and from the island, three con-
secutive meals, and lodging.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks are due the Canal Zone Government, its executive secretary
and staff, the Customs and Immigration officials, the officials and
employees of the Panama Railroad, and also the Police Division, for
their excellent cooperation. The Panama Canal Company, particu-
larly Mr. P. Alton White, chief of the Dredging Division, and his
technical staff were also of great assistance.

Particular mention is made also of Dr. Cleveland C. Soper, director
of the Eastman Kodak Company’s Tropical Research Laboratory, and
his efficient technical and clerical staff who despite their heavy re-
search program found time to help with the problems of the CZBA,
especially when emergencies arose. Without such kind and unfailing
assistance the Area could not function as it does.

412575—57——12

168 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Special appreciation must be expressed for the constant cooperation
and efficiency of Mrs. Adela Gomez, particularly when Mr. Zetek was
hospitalized on February 23, 1956, and the burden of managing and
operating the bureau fell on her shoulders.

Respectfully submitted.
J. K. GraF,

Assistant Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.

Dr. Lronarp CARMICHAEL,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.

Report on the International Exchange
Service

Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on the activi-
ties of the International Exchange Service for the fiscal year ended
June 30, 1956:

The Smithsonian Institution is the official United States agency
for the exchange with other nations of governmental, scientific, and
literary publications. The International Exchange Service, initiated
by the Smithsonian Institution in the early years of its existence for
the interchange of scientific publications between learned societies
and individuals in the United States and those of foreign countries,
serves as a means of developing and executing in part the broad and
comprehensive objective, “the diffusion of knowledge.” It was later
designated by the United States Government as the agency for the
transmission of official documents to selected depositories throughout
the world, and it continues to execute the exchanges pursuant to con-
ventions, treaties, and other international agreements.

The number of packages of publications received for transmission
during the year increased by 14,983 to the yearly total of 1,161,855
but the weight of the packages decreased by 9,904 to the yearly total
of 803,056 pounds. The average weight of the individual package
decreased to 11.14 ounces, as compared to the 11.34-ounce average for
the fiscal year of 1955.

The publications received from foreign sources for addressees in
the United States and from domestic sources for shipment abroad are
classified as shown in the following table:

Classification Packages Weight
Number | Number | Pounds | Pounds
United States parliamentary documents sent abroad __-_-------- 668; 968" ]-- esac Ste SOC Senseo
Publications received in return for parliamentary documents-_-_|-------_-- G6: 9684 | = 5825 ae, 11, 579
United States departmental documents sent abroad___-_-_-___-- 2005166) |e aa oe 24S TGs ese se =
Publications received in return for departmental documents____|-----_-__- hel L | See Se 17, 132
Miscellaneous scientific and literary publications sent abroad___| 165,769 |_____-____ 1915-655)|---
Miscellaneous scientific and literary publications received from
abroad for distribution in the United States__....-....-_--___|---------- 62),765"|2=2- 2&3. 83, 539
EN Gea te ee ee one eon eS ee 1 ee ea) eh 1, 084, 903 76,952 | 690, 806 112, 250
rsiniGl LOGAN sone ee een oe ee ee ee 1, 161, 855 803, 056

The packages of publications are forwarded to the exchange bureaus
of foreign countries by freight or, where shipment by such means is

169

170 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

impractical, to the foreign addressees by direct mail. Distribution in
the United States of the publications received through the foreign ex-
change bureaus is accomplished primarily by mail, but by other means
when more economical. The number of boxes shipped to the foreign
exchange bureaus was 3,064, or 228 more than for the previous year. Of
these boxes 986 were for depositories of full sets of United States
Government documents, these publications being furnished in exchange
for the official publications of foreign governments which are received
for deposit in the Library of Congress. The number of packages for-
warded by mail and by means other than freight was 228,394.

There was allocated to the International Exchange Service for
transportation $45,040. With this amount it was possible to effect the
shipment of 837,188 pounds, which was 37,188 pounds more than was
shipped the previous year. However, approximately 11,000 pounds of
the full sets of United States Government documents accumulated
during the year because the Library of Congress had requested suspen-
sion of shipment to certain foreign depositories.

Ocean freight rates to the Mediterranean ports were increased by
10 percent in June and the freight rates to and from the New York
piers were increased by a 10-cent arbitrary in April.

The total outgoing correspondence was 2,497 letters, exclusive of
information copies.

With the exception of Taiwan, no shipments are being made to
China, North Korea, Outer Mongolia, Communist-controlled area of
Viet-Nam, Communist-controlled area of Laos, or the Haiphong En-
clave.

On May 14 the International Exchange Service received from the
Kast German Exchange Service a shipment of 179 packages. This was
the first shipment received from East Germany since 1939. On June 7
an announcement was received that another shipment containing 181
packages was in transit.

With certain exceptions the regulations of the Bureau of Foreign
Commerce, Department of Commerce, provide that each package of
publications exported bear a general license symbol and legend, “Ex-
port License Not Required.” The International Exchange Service
accepts for transmission to foreign destinations only those packages
of publications that fall within the exception and those packages of
publications to which the general license symbol and legend have been
applied by the consignor.

FOREIGN DEPOSITORIES OF GOVERNMENTAL DOCUMENTS

The number of sets of United States official publications received
by the Exchange Service for transmission abroad in return for the offi-
cial publications sent by foreign governments for deposit in the Library

SECRETARY’S REPORT 17Al

of Congress is now 104 (62 full and 42 partial sets), listed below.
Changes that occurred during the year are shown in the footnotes.

DEPOSITORIES OF FULL SETS

ARGENTINA: Divisién Biblioteca, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto,
Buenos Aires.

AUSTRALIA: Commonwealth Parliament and National Library, Canberra.
New South WALES: Public Library of New South Wales, Sydney.
QUEENSLAND: Parliamentary Library, Brisbane.

SoutH AUSTRALIA: Public Library of South Australia, Adelaide.

TASMANIA: Parliamentary Library, Hobart.

Vicrorta: Publie Library of Victoria, Melbourne.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Public Library of Western Australia, Perth.
AvustTriIA: Administrative Library, Federal Chancellery, Vienna.
BeteiuM: Bibliothéque Royale, Bruxelles.

Brazi.: Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro.

Burearia: Bulgarian Bibliographical Institute, Sofia?

BueMa: Government Book Depot, Rangoon.

CanaDA: Library of Parliament, Ottawa.

Mantirospa: Provincial Library, Winnipeg.

Ontario: Legislative Library, Toronto.

QvueEsBEC: Library of the Legislature of the Province of Quebec.
CEYLON: Department of Information, Government of Ceylon, Colombo.
CuuE: Biblioteca Nacional, Santiago.

Cuina: National Central Library, Taipei, Taiwan.

National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan.”

Cotomsta: Biblicteca Nacional, Bogota.

Costa Rica: Biblioteca Nacional, San José.

Cusa: Ministerio de Estado, Canje Internacional, Habana.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA: National and University Library, Prague.

DENMARK: Institut Danios des Exchanges Internationaux, Copenhagen.

Eeyrt: Bureau des Publications, Ministére des Finances, Cairo.

FINLAND: Parliamentary Library, Helsinki.

FRANCE: Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris.

GERMANY: Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin.

Free University of Berlin, Berlin.

Parliamentary Library, Bonn.

GREAT BRITAIN:

ENGLAND: British Museum, London.

Lonpon: London School of Economics and Political Scienee. (Depository

of the London County Council.)

Huneary: Library of Parliament, Budapest.”

Inp1A: National Library, Calcutta.

Central Secretariat Library, New Delhi.

INDONESIA: Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Djakarta.

IRELAND: National Library of Ireland, Dublin.

IskAEL: Government Archives and Library, Hakirya.

Iraty: Ministerio della Publica Istruzione, Rome.

JAPAN: National Diet Library, Tokyo.*

1 Shipment suspended.
2Changed from National Library of Peiping, Peiping, China.
* Receives two sets.

172 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Mexico: Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores, Departmento de Informacién para
el Extranjero, México, D. I.

NETHERLANDS: Royal Library, The Hague.

New ZEALAND: General ASsembly Library, Wellington.

Norway: Utenriksdepartmentets Bibliothek, Oslo.

PERU: Seccidn de Propaganda y Publicaciones, Ministerio de Relaciones Ex-
teriores, Lima.

PHILIPPINES: Bureau of Public Libraries, Department of Hducation, Manila.

PoLaNnpD: Bibliothéque Nacionale, Warsaw."

PorTUGAL: Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon.

SPAIN: Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid.

SWEDEN: Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm.

SWITZERLAND: Bibliothéque Centrale Fédérale, Berne.

TuRKEY: Department of Printing and Engraving, Ministry of Education, Is-
tanbul.

Union or SoutH Arrica: State Library, Pretoria, Transvaal.

UNION oF Soviet SocraLtist ReEPusLics: All-Union Lenin Library, Moscow, 115.

UNITED NATIONS: Library of the United Nations, Geneva, Switzerland.

Uruauay: Oficina de Canje Internacional de Publicaciones, Montevideo.

VENEZUELA: Biblioteca Nacional, Caracas.

YuceostaviA: Bibliografski Institut, Belgrade.®

DEPOSITORIES OF PARTIAL SETS

AFGHANISTAN: Library of the Afghan Academy, Kabul.

ANGLO-HGYPTIAN SuDAN : Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum.

Boutv1A: Biblioteca del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto, La Paz.
BRAZIL:

Minas Gerais: Directoria Geral de Estatistica em Minas, Belo Horizonte,
BRITISH GUIANA: Government Secretary’s Office, Georgetown, Demerara.
CANADA:

ALBERTA: Provincial Library, Edmonton.

BRITISH CoLUMBIA : Provincial Library, Victoria.

New Brunswick: Legislative Library, Fredericton.

NEWFOUNDLAND: Department of Provincial Affairs, St. John’s.

Nova Scotia : Provincial Secretary of Nova Scotia, Halifax.

SASKATCHEWAN: Legislative Library, Regina.

DOMINICAN ReEpustic: Biblioteca de la Universidad de Santo Domingo, Ciudad
Trujillo.

Ecuapor: Biblioteca Nacional, Quito.

HL SALVADOR:

Biblioteca Nacional, San Salvador.

Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, San Salvador.
GREECE: National Library, Athens.

GUATEMALA: Biblioteca Nacional, Guatemala.
Harri: Bibliothéque Nationale, Port-au-Prince.
HONDURAS:

Biblioteca y Archivo Nacionales, Tegucigalpa.

Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Tegucigalpa.
ICELAND: National Library, Reykjavik.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 173

Inp1A: Secretary to the Government of India, Bombay.‘
BIHAR AND ORISSA: Revenue Department, Patna.
UNITED PROVINCES OF AGRA AND OUDH:
University of Allahabad, Allahabad.
Secretariat Library, Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow.
West BENGAL: Library, West Bengal Legislative Secretariat, Assembly
House, Calcutta.
IrnaN: Imperial Ministry of Education, Tehran.
TRAQ: Public Library, Baghdad.
JAMAICA:
Colonial Secretary, Kingston.
University College of the West Indies, St. Andrew.
LreBANON: American University of Beirut, Beirut.
Lizerta: Department of State, Monrovia.
MaayA: Federal Secretariat, Federation of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.
Matta: Minister for the Treasury, Valleta.
NicaRAGuA: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Managua.
PAKISTAN: Central Secretariat Library, Karachi.
PANAMA: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Panama.
ParaGuay: Ministerio de Relaciones Hxteriores, Seccién Biblioteca, Asuncion.
ScorLanp: National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.
Sram: National Library, Bangkok.
Singapore: Chief Secretary, Government Offices, Singapore.
Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City, Italy.

INTERPARLIAMENTARY EXCHANGE OF THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL

There are now being sent abroad 76 copies of the Federal Register
and 88 copies of the Congressional Record. This is a decrease from
the preceding year of 16 copies of the Federal Register and of 6 copies
of the Congressional Record. The countries to which these journals
are being forwarded are given in the following list.

DEPOSITORIES OF CONGRESSIONAL RECORD AND FEDERAL REGISTER

ARGENTINA:

Biblioteca del Poder Judicial, Mendoza.*

Boletin Oficial de la Reptiblica Argentina, Ministerio de Justica e Instruc-

cidn Piblica, Buenos Aires.

Camara de Disputados Oficina de Informacién Parlamentaria, Buenos Aires.
AUSTRALIA:

Commonwealth Parliament and National Library, Canberra.

New SourH WateEsS: Library of Parliament of New South Wales, Sydney.

QUEENSLAND: Chief Secretary’s Office, Brisbane.

Victor1A: Public Library of Victoria, Melbourne.®

WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Library of Parliament of Western Australia, Perth.
BRAZIL:

Biblioteca da Camera dos Deputados, Rio de Janeiro.

Secretaria de Presidencia, Rio de Janeiro.®

* Changed from Undersecretary to the Government of Bombay.
5 Federal Register only.
6 Congressional Record only.

174 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

BritisH HonpurAs: Colonial Secretary, Belize.
CANADA:
Library of Parliament, Ottawa.
Clerk of the Senate, Houses of Parliament, Ottawa.
Cryton: Ceylon Ministry of Defense and External Affairs, Colombo.®
CHINA:
Legislative Yuan, Taipei, Taiwan.°
Taiwan Provincial Government, Taipei, Taiwan.
CUBA:
Biblioteca del Capitolio, Habana.
Biblioteca PGblica Panamericana, Habana.*
Eeyrt: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Egyptian Government, Cairo.
FRANCE:
Bibliothéque Assemblée Nationale, Paris.
Bibliothéque Conseil de la République, Paris.
Library, Organization for European Economic Cooperation, Paris.°
Research Department, Council of Europe, Strasbourg.°
Service de la Documentation Etrangére, Assemblée Nationale, Paris.°
GERMANY:
Amerika-Institut der Universitit Miinchen, Miinchen.°
Archiv, Deutscher Bundesrat, Bonn.
Bibliothek der Instituts fiir Weltwirtschaft an der Universitit Kiel, Kiel-
Wik.
Bibliothek Hessischer Landtag, Wiesbaden.®
Der Bayrische Landtag, Munich.°*
Deutscher Bundesrat, Bonn.°®
Deutscher Bundestag, Bonn.°
Hamburgisches Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv, Hamburg.
Gop Coast: Chief Secretary’s Office, Accra.®
GREAT BRITAIN:
Department of Printed Books, British Museum, London.’
House of Commons Library, London.®
Printed Library of the Foreign Office, London.
Royal Institute of International Affairs, London.°
GREECE: Bibliothéque, Chambre des Députés Hellénique, Athens.
GUATEMALA: Biblioteca de la Asamblea Legislativa, Guatemala.
Hatt: Bibliothéque Nationale, Port-au-Prince.
Honpuras: Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional, Tegucigalpa.
Huneary: National Library, Budapest.’
INDIA:
Civil Secretariat Library, Lucknow, United Provinces.‘
Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi.®
Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly, Srinagar.°®
Legislative Assembly, Government of Assam, Shillong.®
Legislative Assembly Library, Lucknow, United Provinces.
Legislative Assembly Library, Trivandrum.®
Madras State Legislature, Madras.°
Parliament Library, New Delhi.®
Servants of India Society, Poona.’

7 Three copies.
® Added during year.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 175

IRELAND: Dail Hireann, Dublin.
IsrRAEL: Library of the Knesset, Jerusalem.
PPA: 2
Biblioteca Camera dei Deputati, Rome.
Biblioteca del Senato della Republica, Rome.
European Office, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,
Rome.5
International Institute for the Unification of Private Law, Rome.*
JAPAN:
Library of the National Diet, Tokyo.
Ministry of Finance, Tokyo.*
JoRDAN: Parliament of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Amman.®
Korea: Secretary General, National Assembly, Pusan.
LuxeMBoure: Assemblée Commune de la C. E. C. A., Luxembourg.
MExIco:
Direcci6n General Informacién, Secretaria de Gobernacién, México, D. F.
Biblioteca Benjamin Franklin, México, D. F.
AGUASCALIENTES: Gobernador del Estado de Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes.
Baga CALIFORNIA: Gobernador del Distrito Norte, Mexicali.
CAMPECHE: Gobernador del Estado de Campeche, Campeche.
CHIAPAS: Gobernador del Estado de Chiapas, Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
CHIHUAHUA: Gobernador del Estado de Chihuahua, Chihuahua.
CoAHUILA: Periddico Oficial del Estado de Coahuila, Palacio de Gobierno,
Saltillo.
Cotrma: Gobernador del Estado de Colima, Colima.
GUANAJUATO: Secretaria General de Gobierno del Estado, Guanajuato.
JALISCO: Biblioteca del Estado, Guadalajara.
México: Gaceta del Gobierno, Toluca.
MicuoaoAn: Secretaria General de Gobierno del Estado de Michoacan,
Morelia.
Moretos: Palacio de Gobierno, Cuernavaca.
Nayarit: Gobernador de Nayarit, Tepic.
Nuevo Lre6n: Biblioteca del Estado, Monterrey.
Oaxaca: Periddico Oficial, Palacia de Gobierno, Oaxaca.®
PueEsta : Secretaria General de Gobierno, Puebla.
QUERETARO: Secretaria General de Gobierno, Seccién de Archivo, Querétaro.
SrnALoa: Gobernador del Estado de Sinaloa, Culiacan.
Sonora : Gobernador del Estado de Sonora, Hermosillo.
TAMAULIPAS: Secretaria General de Gobierno, Victoria.
VERACRUZ: Gobernador del Estado de Veracruz, Departamento de Gober-
nacién y Justicia, Jalapa.
YucatTAn: Gobernador del Estado de Yucatan, Mérida.
NETHERLANDS: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague.*
New ZEALAND: General Assembly Library, Wellington.
Norway: Library of the Norwegian Parliament, Oslo.
PanaMA: Biblioteca Nacional, Panama City.°
PortTUuGuUESE T1MoR: Reparticiio Central de Administracio Civil, Dili.‘
SwitzERLAND: Bibliothéque, Bureau International du Travail, Geneva.®
International Labor Office, Geneva.” °
Library, United Nations, Geneva.
UNION oF SouTH AFRICA:
CAPE or Goop Hope: Library of Parliament, Cape Town.
TRANSVAAL: State Library, Pretoria.

®°Two copies.

176 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Union or Sovier Socratist Repustics: Fundamental’niia Biblioteka Obschest-
vennykh Nauk, Moscow.®
Urvuauay: Diario Oficial, Calle Florida 1178, Montevideo.

FOREIGN EXCHANGE SERVICES

Exchange publications for addresses in the countries listed below
are forwarded by freight to the exchange services of those countries.
Exchange publications for addresses in other countries are forwarded
directly by mail.

LIST OF EXCHANGE SERVICES

AustTrIA: Austrian National Library, Vienna.

BeLGIuM: Service des Echanges Internationaux, Bibliothéque Royale de Bel-
gique, Bruxelles.

CuinaA: National Central Library, Taipei, Taiwan.

CzECHOSLOVAKIA: Bureau of International Exchanges, National and University
Library, Prague.

DENMARK: Institut Danois des changes, Internationaux, Bibliothéque Royale,
Copenhagen K.

Eeyet: Government Press, Publications Office, Bulaq, Cairo.

FINLAND: Delegation of the Scientific Societies, Snellmaninkatu 9-11, Helsinki.

FRANCE: Service des Echanges Internationaux, Bibliothéque Nationale, 58 Rue
de Richelieu, Paris.

GERMANY (Eastern) : Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin.

GERMANY (Western): Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft, Bad
Godesberg.

GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND: Wheldon & Wesley, 83/84 Berwick Street, London,
Weed

Huneary: National Library, Széchényi, Budapest.

Inp1A: Government Printing and Stationery, Bombay.

INDONESIA: Minister of Education, Djakarta.

IsRAEL: Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem.

IraLy: Ufficio degli Scambi Internazionali, Ministero della Publica Istruzione,
Rome.

JAPAN: Division of International Affairs, National Diet Library, Tokyo.

NETHERLANDS: International Exchange Bureau of the Netherlands, Royal Li-
brary, The Hague.

New SoutH WALES: Public Library of New South Wales, Sydney.

New ZEALAND: General Assembly Library, Wellington.

Norway: Service Norvégien des Echanges Internationaux, Bibliothéque de
l’Université Royale, Oslo.

Puirprines: Bureau of Public Libraries, Department of Education, Manila,

PoLAND: Service Polonais des Echanges Internationaux, Bibliothéque Nationale,
Warsaw.

PortuGcaL: Seccio de Trocas Internacionais, Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon.

QUEENSLAND: Bureau of Exchanges of International Publications, Chief Secre-
tary’s Office, Brisbane.

10 Between the United States and England only.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 77

SoutH AusTRALIA: South Australian Government Exchanges Bureau, Govern-
ment Printing and Stationery Office, Adelaide.

Spain: Junta de Intercambio y Adquisicién de Libros y Revistas para Bibliote-
cas Publicas, Ministerio de Educacién Nacional, Avenida Calvo Sotelo 20,
Madrid.

SWEDEN: Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm.

SwWITzeERLAND: Service Suisse des Echanges Internationaux, Bibliothéque Cen-
trale Fédérale, Palais Fédéral, Berne.

TASMANIA: Secretary of the Premier, Hobart.

TuRKEY: Ministry of Education, Department of Printing and Engraving, Istan-
bul.

UnNIon oF SouTH ArFrica: Government Printing and Stationery Office, Cape Town,
Cape of Good Hope.

UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS: Bureau of Book Exchange, State Lenin
Library, Moscow 19.

Victor1A: Public Library of Victoria, Melbourne.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Public Library of Western Australia, Perth.

YuGosutaviA: Bibliografski Institut FNRJ, Belgrade.

Respectfully submitted.
D. G. Wuu1aMs, Chief.

Dr. Lronarp CarMICHAEL,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.

Report on the National Gallery of Art

Str: I have the honor to submit, on behalf of the Board of Trustees,
the nineteenth annual report of the National Gallery of Art, for the
fiscal year ended June 30, 1956. This report is made pursuant to the
provisions of section 5 (d) of Public Resolution No. 14, Seventy-fifth
Congress, first session, approved March 24, 1937 (50 Stat. 51).

ORGANIZATION

The statutory members of the Board of Trustees of the National
Gallery of Art are the Chief Justice of the United States, the Secre-
tary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution, ex officio. On September 22, 1955, Samuel
H. Kress, trustee and President of the Gallery, died, and Rush H.
Kress was elected a general trustee to succeed him. Chester Dale was
elected President of the Gallery. The four other general trustees
continuing in office during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1956, were
Ferdinand Lammot Belin, Duncan Phillips, Chester Dale, and Paul
Mellon. The Board of Trustees held its annual meeting on May 1,
1956. Chester Dale was reelected President and Ferdinand Lammot
Belin Vice President, to serve for the ensuing year.

David EK. Finley retired as Director of the Gallery on June 30, 1956,
and John Walker, Chief Curator of the Gallery, was elected by the
Board of Trustees as Director to succeed Dr. Finley effective July 1,
1956. The other executive officers of the Gallery continuing in office
as of June 30, 1956 are:

Huntington Cairns, Secretary-Trea- Huntington Cairns, General Counsel.
surer. Macgill James, Assistant Director.
Ernest R. Feidler, Administrator.

The three standing committees of the Board, as constituted at the
annual meeting May 1, 1956, were as follows:
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Chief Justice of the United States, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institu-
Earl Warren, Chairman. tion, Dr. Leonard Carmichael.

Chester Dale, Vice Chairman. Paul Mellon.

Ferdinand Lammot Belin.

FINANCE COMMITTEE

Secretary of the Treasury, George M. Secretary of the Smithsonian Institu-

Humphrey, Chairman. tion, Dr. Leonard Carmichael.
Chester Dale, Vice Chairman. Ferdinand Lammot Belin.
Paul Mellon.

178

SECRETARY'S REPORT 179

ACQUISITIONS COMMITTEE

Ferdinand Lammot Belin, Chairman. Paul Mellon.
Dunean Phillips. David EK. Finley.
Chester Dale.

PERSONNEL

On June 30, 1956, full-time Government employees on the staff of
the National Gallery of Art numbered 312, as compared with 301
employees as of June 30, 1955. The United States Civil Service
Regulations govern the appointment of employees paid from appro-
priated public funds.

APPROPRIATIONS

For the fiscal year ended June 30, 1956, the Congress of the United
States appropriated for the National Gallery of Art $1,436,000, to be
used for salaries and expenses in the operation and upkeep of the
Gallery, the protection and care of works of art acquired by the Board
of Trustees, and all administrative expenses incident thereto, as author-
ized by Joint Resolution of Congress approved March 24, 1937 (20
U.S. C. 71-75; 50 Stat.51). The following obligations were incurred :

Personal services (including $409,143 for guard protection) ______ $1, 265, 700. 00

Othersthan personal’ servicesal oo 21s Pes tes ed oe) a es 170, 268. 65

Wnebligatedsbalanceies 2250209 abe ES Se eta eee at $1. 35

EIDE ETD eee i e E eee es A $1, 436, 000. 00
ATTENDANCE

There were 1,013,246 visitors to the Gallery during the fiscal year
1956—an increase of 198,314 over the attendance for the fiscal year
1955. The average daily number of visitors was 2,791.

FIFTEENTH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

March 17, 1956, was the fifteenth anniversary of the opening of the
National Gallery of Art. On that date a special night opening was
held from 9:00 p. m. until midnight. As part of the celebration a
special exhibition was arranged of important paintings and sculpture
acquired in the last five years by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
The Samuel H. Kress Collection of Renaissance Bronzes, installed in
three specially prepared rooms, was also opened to the public. The
number of guests attending the special evening exhibition was 11,690.

ACCESSIONS

There were 477 accessions by the National Gallery of Art as gifts,
loans, or deposits during the fiscal year 1956.

180 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

GIFTS

A total of 112 paintings and 22 sculptures of the highest quality,
which had been given to the National Gallery of Art by the Samuel
H. Kress Foundation in 1952, were placed on permanent exhibition,
some of them in galleries newly finished for them. Especially notable
in this generous gift were the following:

Artist Title
Botticelli 2. 222 eee ee ee Giuliano de’ Medici.
Master of Heiligenkreuz_________-__-_-. The Death of St. Clare.
AN TCOTTe Tene eee eee Eee ee The Fall of Man.
Memilin ose s See ee eee St. Veronica.
Desiderio=- sa =e Tabernacle.
Verrocchio, Circle of (possibly Madonna and Child with a Pomegranate.
Leonardo).
IB OSCN? Ui Eras Shee ee ieee ee A ee ae Death and the Miser.
Giorgione Ake ea ee The Holy Family.
TANI ty earns rea AS Ranuccio Farnese.
ID b=) ee ee ee Portrait of a Clergyman.
Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi___. The Adoration of the Magi.
TMHEDOLO 22. Se se nee aren ee eee Apollo Pursuing Daphne.
Chardin’s2 2332 sa Selreo ie eee The Kitchen Maid.
Bruegel, Pieter the Elder______-___-_~- The Temptation of St. Anthony.

In exchange for these 134 outstanding masterpieces, the National
Gallery of Art returned to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 266
paintings and 2 sculptures which had previously been given to the
Gallery by the Foundation and which had become less suitable for the
Gallery’s collection.

During the year, the following gifts or bequests were also accepted
by the Board of Trustees:

PAINTINGS
Donor Artist Title
Mrs. A. J. Beveridge_-_-__-_- DrOUaTS ese ee Marquis d’Ossun.
Count ©. ©. Pecci-Bluntls, ‘Coftot 22-2022 222228 L’Ktang de Ville d’Avray.
Dr. and Mrs. Walter Rembrandt. 22-252 — 5 Old Woman Plucking a
Timme. Fowl.
Howard Sturges_____-___- Mie polowsy= 4s se= tes Small oval ceiling design.
Col. and Mrs. EK. W. Gar- A. E. Zeliff......-_.. The Barnyard.
bisch.
Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- IL. Sachs___..___._.__. The Herbert Children.
bisch.
Col. and Mrs: E. W. Gar- \ Unknown2_-....-_=-:- Mounting of the Guard.
bisch.
Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Unknown______-.---- Allegory of Freedom.
bisch.
Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Unknown___...------ Miss Arnold Holding an
bisch. Apple.
Col. and Mrs. EH. W. Gar- Unknown._._...--.-+- Miss Arnold Knitting.

bisch.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 181

Donor Artist Title

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Unknown___________- Henry Wells.
bisch.

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Susane Walters____-___ Memorial to Nicholas Cat-
bisch. lin,

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Samuel Jordan__-_____ Eaton Family Memorial.
bisch.

@ol."and Mrs. E. W. Gar- A.A. Tamb_2. So. Kmancipation Proclama-
bisch. tion.

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- A. R. Stanley________ Eliza Wells.
bisch.

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Unknown_____._-___- New England Village.
bisch.

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- J.C. Robinson____-__- Portrait of an Old Man.
bisch.

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- J.C. Robinson______- Portrait of an Old Lady.
bisch.

Col. and Mrs. E. -W. Gar- C. Hofmann____—<__- View of Benjamin Reber’s
bisch. Farm,

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Attributed to Stet- Wellington.
bisch. tinius.

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Samuel Enredy_______ Van Reid.
bisch.

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Samuel Enredy_______ Jane L. Van Reid.
bisch.

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Erastus 8. Field_____- Portrait of a Man.
bisch,

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Erastus 8. Field______ Portrait of a Lady.
bisch.

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Unknown___________- Columbia.
bisch.

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Unknown_________-_- Dr. Alva Cook.
bisch.

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Unknown__________- General Washington on
bisch. White Charger.

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Unknown____--_____- The Hobby Horse.
bisch.

Col. and Mrs. E. W. Gar- Unknown_-_____---_-- Portrait of a Young Man
bisch. Wearing White Stock.
SCULPTURE

Winston Guest. ....2" 2222 Benin style, Nigeria__ Bronze Cock.
Mrs. Herbert N. Straus-._._ Attributed to Verroc- Alexander the Great.
chio.
PRINTS AND DRAWINGS
Howard Sturges_________- Gabriel de St. Aubin_. ‘‘La Parade Chez Nicollet.”
Howard Sturges__________ Watteaus 2220s! The Violin Player.
Howard Sturges____.--__- Gainsborough-_----_-_-_- Cart and Horse.
Howard Sturges_____.____ WOsway <2 a2 sbes se Lady’s Portrait.
Howard Sturges_________- Miepolons sa ee Mother, Child and Angel.

Howard Sturges_________- Miepol@eaa= 2 Ss = Ceiling design.

182 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Donor Artist Title
Howard Sturges.2 52-3 Chardint <6.) st coos Baby’s Portrait.
Howard Sturges. ..---.--- ELE FPS an a Classic Ruins.
Howard Sturges_-.------- STS Te | ee ed Classic Ruins.
Howard Sturges_._-..---. EU EST ii a fo Venice.
Howard Sturges__...----- Guards ols aus Venice.
Howard Sturges_-.---.--- Grands Gree: 2. oe French Soldier and Child.
Howard. Sturges.-.-..-2< Canaslettos= 2 2-22 e— Grand Canal, Venice.
W. G. Russell Allen_.-__- Rembrandt... 222 2— 6 19 etchings.
George Matthew Adams... Legros__--..-------- 51 prints.

EXCHANGE OF WORKS OF ART

The Board of Trustees accepted the offer of Lessing J. Rosenwald
to exchange a Gauguin woodcut entitled “Interior de Case” for a finer
impression of the same work.

WORKS OF ART ON LOAN

In connection with the fifteenth anniversary of the opening of the
National Gallery of Art, 96 works of art from the Samuel H. Kress
Collection were lent to the Gallery. Notable among these were the

following:

Artist Title
AndreardelsatiO === aanes= aaa Charity.
Bellini Giovanna a ee ee The Infant Bacchus.
CaTpaCClO =e =e eee Madonna and Child.
@lovuetyhrancoissa- es 2 -= == eee Diane de Poitiers.
David, Jacques-Louis____-_--------- Napoleon in His Study.
Ma SON ATO eee ees Blindman’s Buff.
Nraconand =a ee nee The Swing.
Ghirlandaio, Domenico___--------~--. Madonna and Child.
TOL (GR RO0 ee Christ Cleansing the Temple.
Griinewald222235 222 = oe The Small Crucifixion.
IMemiling 222s" 52 ae eae The Presentation in the Temple.
Pontormo=}=-—- oe ene eee eee Monsignor della Casa.
ubens2 2224 a ee ae ee eee Deciug Mus Addressing the Legions.
Sienredamns == see eee Cathedral of St. John at

’S-Hertogenbosch.

Sub O ae ee The Conversion of St. Paul.
Gtian2 Saco 3 oeee Soe a eee Doge Andrea Gritti.
WMtlane = 9s 22 Se ee ea ae St. John the Hvangelist on Patmos.
Benedetto da Maiano__------------~ Madonna and Child.
Bernini; Gian Torenzo--—-_-- Cardinal Francesco Barberini.
Nino Pisano. 22-222 eee The Archangel Gabriel.
Nino: Pisanos2oe ee ee ee The Virgin Annunciate.

During the fiscal year 1956 the following works of art were also
received on loan by the Gallery:

SECRETARY’S REPORT 183

From: Artist
Chester Dale, New York, N. Y.:
Tisnac; devheysteritn ot So bb 2o See eeet sae F. V. Doornick.
‘Anne; de Peysters- 22222 S= 22 See oes 2 ee ee, F. V. Doornick.
The Sacrament of the Last Supper_-____________ Salvador Dali.
Claiborne Pell, Washington, D. C.:
‘The Jolly ihiatboatmens assem 2s ee ee ee Bingham.
Mr. and Mrs. C. B. Wrightsman, Palm Beach, Fla.:
ae OAUSe ubeae ieee Bee ie a ee ee Pissarro.
Portraitrorcaovoune. Girl! 222-52 2 eee See Vermeer.
Sketch for staircase ceiling in Wiirzburg________ Tiepolo.

Robert Woods Bliss, Washington, D. C.:
Thirty-seven objects of Pre-Columbian art.

WORKS OF ART ON LOAN RETURNED

The following works of art on loan were returned during the fiscal
year:

To:
J. H. Whittemore Co., Naugatuck, Conn.: Artist
Three Ballet Girls Behind the Scenes____________ Degas.
Chester Dale, New York, N. Y.:
TSAaAClOCME CY Stereo eos ee F. V. Doornick.
PANINI CCV CV StCleN eu: Sian 2 BeINL TNL Silene teed, F. V. Doornick.
Portrait of a Young Woman in Riding Dress______ David d’Avignon.

Col. and Mrs. Edgar W. Garbisch, New York, N. Y.:
Fourteen American primitive paintings.

Robert Woods Bliss, Washington, D. C.:
Nine objects of Pre-Columbian art.

Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York, N. Y.:

Sacritice Ofsiphigenia= 4.6L cet ete hers Pee Tiepolo.

PALO Tie Gi O iy eee Os aera EEE 2 eve le a eh Titian.

Siem CHPISCO DM Cress eh ea ee a Massys.

SBE XD) aerate SV EVE TTS CG ee ee ee ee Mabuse.

MGCiyee SETI CLO = he eer eee ee ee ee ee Mabuse.
HaAnNdSCape ase Se ee eek Ys et eh Ruysdael, Salomon.

WORKS OF ART LENT

During the fiscal year the Gallery lent the following works of art
for exhibition purposes:

To: Artist
Boston Museum of Fine Art, Boston, Mass. :
ERC OSG ie eee oe ee ee gi eS See se Sargent.
Mrsi Walliams indicott 222 S22) 2 ee eae Sargent.
Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pa.:
axa, SCULCHINGY IDC Oi = seek ma. So ee Linton Park.

Traveling Exhibition Service, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D. C.:

lax Scutching eels 22 ae se Le I EO a Linton Park.
Peale Museum, Baltimore, Md.:
Portrait of Richardson Stuart_2——-—----- === Rembrandt Peale.

412575—57——13

184 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Hos Artist
Woodlawn Plantation, Virginia:
General Washington at Princeton-___________---~- C. P. Polk.
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio:
TheJReturmofiRip Van Winkles—- ieee tan eee Quidor.
Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Ala.:
Portrait of a Young Man Wearing White Stock_-_-_ Unknown.
Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Tex.:
Vermont ma wiyiel sas ae ee Horace Bundy.
View of Benjamin’ Reber’s) Marm_—_---_-_ 22. = C. Hofmann.
The SargentiMamily—__ eee ese at oi ieee a Unknown.
Kruit and Wlowers2.2222 22422 eee ates Unknown.
Columbia 22 ee etal ae Bey Unknown.
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Va.:
Méte-a-Tete: thus Gee A Bee kA ee Ao A ee Boucher.
RasPetiie (i0get ce ee Le eee ee ees Moreau le Jeune.

Washington County Museum, Hagerstown, Md.:
Twenty-five American portraits.

EXHIBITIONS

The following exhibitions were held at the National Gallery of Art
during the fiscal year 1956:

American Primitive Paintings. From the Collection of Edgar
William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch. Continued from previous
fiscal year, through August 1, 1955.

Miniatures and Prints. From the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection.
Continued from previous fiscal year, through August 1, 1955.

American Paintings. From the Collection of the National Gallery
of Art. August 7 through September 18, 1955.

German Drawings—Masterpieces from Five Centuries. Through
the cooperation of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Staatliche
Graphische Sammlung in Munich, and the German Embassy in Wash-
ington. October 10 through October 31, 1955.

A Collection of Contemporary German Prints. Presented by the
people of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United States of
America. November 9, 1955, through January 4, 1956.

Asian Artists in Crystal. From Steuben Glass. In addition to the
Asian crystal, designs by contemporary American glassmakers were
exhibited by the Corning Museum of Glass. January 18 through
February 19, 1956.

Masterpieces of Graphic Art. From the Lessing J. Rosenwald Col-
lection. January 21 through April 9, 1956. Reopened May 23, 1956.

Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture Acquired by the Samuel H.
Kress Foundation, 1951-1956. Opened on the occasion of the Fifteenth
Anniversary of the Opening of the National Gallery of Art. Evening
celebration March 17,1956. Public opening March 18, 1956, to continue
on indefinite loan.

SECRETARY'S REPORT 185

The Sacrament of the Last Supper. By Salvador Dali. First ex-
hibition. Placed on view March 31, 1956, on indefinite loan.

A Century and a Half of Painting in Argentina. Exhibition assem-
bled under the direction of a committee including the Counselor in
charge of Cultural Affairs of the Argentine Embassy in Washington.
April 17 through May 17, 1956.

TRAVELING EXHIBITIONS

Rosenwald Collection.—Special exhibitions of prints from the Ro-
senwald Collection were circulated to the following places during the
fiscal year 1956:

Michigan State University, Mich.:
Ten German prints.
October—November 19955.

Marion Koogler MeNay Art Institute, San Antonio, Tex. :
Thirteen Degas prints.

October-November 1955.

University of Nebraska Art Galleries, Lincoln, Nebr. :
Exhibition of work of Ernst Barlach.
October—November 1955.

Norfolk Museum, Norfolk, Va.:

Two illuminations, Anonymous Flemish, XV Century.
November 1955.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, N. Y.:
Nolde, “The Prophet.”
November 1955—January 1956.

Lowe Gallery, Coral Gables, Fla. :

Vifty-seven prints and drawings for prints.
December 1955.

Henry Gallery, University of Washington, Seattie, Wash. :
Exhibition of work of Ernst Barlach.

December 1955—January 1956.

American Federation of Arts—Traveling Exhibition :
Exhibition of Abraham Bosse.

1956.

Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio:

Exhibition of work of Ernst Barlach.
January—February 1956.

Michigan State College, Mich. :

Thirty-three Italian prints, XV Century—XVIII Century.
Japuary—February 1956.

Four Arts Society, Palm Beach, Fla.:
Exhibition of Gauguin prints.
February 1956.

Smith College, Northampton, Mass. :
Exhibition of Abraham Bosse.
February—March 1956.

Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colo. :
Prints by Bosse, Callot, Hollar.
Spring, 1956.

186 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Atlanta Art Association, Atlanta, Ga.:
Ninety-three Toulouse-Lautrec prints.
March-April 1956.
Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. :
Exhibition of work of Ernst Barlach.
March-April 1956.
Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Tex. :
Exhibition of Steinlen and Munch.
March-April 1956.
Watkins Gallery, American University, Washington, D. C.:
Exhibition “Art and Theatre.”
March-April 1956.
Citizens’ Committee for Children of N. Y. C., Inc., New York, N. Y.:
Gaugin exhibition.
April-May 1956.
City Art Museum of St. Louis, St. Louis, Mo.:
Sixty XV-Century woodcuts and engravings.
April-May 1956.
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.:
Meryon, “Malingre Cryptogramme.”
April—May 1956.
Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oreg.:
Hxhibition of “Music.”
April—May 1956.
Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia, Pa.:
Klee, Lautree, and Biddle.
May-June 1956.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Holland:
Three Rembrandt drawings.
Opened May 1956.

Index of American Design.—During the fiscal year 1956, 28 travel-
ing exhibitions of original watercolor renderings of this collection,
with 42 bookings, were sent to the following States:

Number of Number of
State exhibitions State exhibitions
Arkansas qcsc ose oll ete Belnsts AMichigan) 22322. _. 52. lane ad Be 4
California; 222220 2s 2 eet 2 Minnesota 222 ee oe ee 1
Districh of sColumpia=====——— DING WoONOnIKs oo oo a Ee 1
Wloridaqes sae ene se eee S| North) Carolin aes eee ees 5
ino sio 26 a a AME CTINS Vly Tl oy eee ee ee 2
MO wWaly sae ee lee. sees tere ee ete te SouthmC@arolinas = esas se eens 3
IGANS8 Sg fo he Se SS a ee SS is “ennessees 2. 2 ewe at a ae 1
IeEnGUCK Yo sae ate Se St | OMS geese ee ee ee ae ens 4
Maine pe ses = = eee ee NT WWASGONSGIN Ca oot = os ee ee eee 1
Maryland @22- 22 2=- S20 oe MG VLISE URL cesses So eee ee aren ee 6
Massachusetts) 2225202") ..—5— 2

CURATORIAL ACTIVITIES

The Curatorial Department accessioned 118 gifts to the Gallery
during the fiscal year 1956. Advice was given regarding 324 works
of art brought to the Gallery for expert opinion and 61 visits to

SECRETARY'S REPORT 187

collections were made by members of the staff in connection with of-
fers of gift or for expert opinion. About 1,550 inquiries requiring
research were answered verbally and by letter. John Walker, Chief
Curator of the Gallery, gave a lecture at the Newark, N. J.. Museum
before the opening of an exhibition of Old Masters from American
Collections. He also lectured to Miss Porter’s School in Farming-
ton, Conn., on the Kress paintings which were placed on exhibition
on March 17. Miss Elizabeth Mongan assisted with seminar courses
on prints at Beaver College, Bryn Mawr College, and Swarthmore
College. She also lectured to school and adult groups in and around
Philadelphia. Erwin O. Christensen gave a lecture on the decorative
arts in the National Gallery to an adult women’s group at the Uni-
versity of Maryland. He also delivered one of the Sunday afternoon
Gallery lectures on the decorative arts. John Pancoast gave one of
the regular weekly tours on the Italian Sculpture in the Samuel H.
Kress Collection. Hereward Lester Cooke lectured at Washington
University in St. Louis on “Picasso in the Chester Dale Collection.”

Mr. Cooke assisted in the judging of seven art exhibitions during
the course of the year in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of
Columbia.

Mr. Walker served as trustee of the American Federation of Arts,
the American Academy in Rome, and the Bureau of University Travel.
He also served on the following committees: Dumbarton Oaks Visit-
ing Committee; Harvard University Press Visiting Committee;
Advisory Council, University of Notre Dame. Mr. Walker is also a
member of the United States National Commission for UNESCO.
Perry B. Cott served as a member of the Board of Governors of the
Archaeological Institute of America, Washington Society. Katharine
Shepard served as secretary of this organization and was official
delegate to its General Meeting in Chicago.

For the first half of the year members of the curatorial staff were
intensively engaged in the preparation of new installations and re-
hanging of the Samuel H. Kress Collection, which was opened to the
public on March 18. These included 26 galleries containing paintings,
6 galleries containing sculpture, and 3 rooms especially designed for
the exhibition of Renaissance bronzes. These installations were under
the supervision of the Director, Dr. Finley; the Chief Curator, Mr.
Walker; and Mr. Cott.

RESTORATION

Francis Sullivan, Resident Restorer of the Gallery, made regular
and systematic inspection of all works of art in the Gallery’s collec-
tions and on loan at the Gallery, and periodically removed dust and
bloom as required. Mr. Sullivan relined 12 paintings, cleaned and

188 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

restored 21 paintings, and gave special treatment as required on 10
paintings. Fourteen paintings were X-rayed as an aid in research.
The X-ray developing baths were redesigned, and experiments were
continued with the application of 27H and other synthetic varnishes
developed by the National Gallery of Art Fellowship at the Mellon
Institute of Industrial Research, Pittsburgh, Pa. Proofs of all color
reproductions of Gallery paintings were checked and approved, and
technical advice on the conservation of paintings was furnished to
the public upon request.

Mr. Sullivan also gave advice on and special treatment to works of
art belonging to other Government agencies including The White
House, the Freer Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian Institution.

PUBLICATIONS

John Walker wrote the text for a portfolio of paintings which was
published by the Harry N. Abrams Co. in the spring. Mr. Cott con-
tributed an article to the Orange Disc, published by the Gulf Oil Co.
Mrs. Fern R. Shapley was coauthor with Dr. William Suida of the
painting section of the catalog, “Paintings and Sculpture from the
Kress Collection acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1951-
1956.” Mr. Pancoast compiled the text of the sculpture section of the
same catalog. An article by Mrs. Shapley on “The Holy Family” by
Giorgione appeared in the winter issue of the Art Quarterly. She
also wrote an article on the Gallery acquisitions 1945-54 which was
published in The Studio. Mr. Christensen’s book entitled “Primitive
Art” was published by Crowell-Studio in the fall. He also revised the
Gallery handbook on Chinese porcelains. Mr. Cooke contributed an
article to the College Art Journal on “The Exhibition of German
Drawings at the National Gallery of Art.”

Mr. Cooke wrote an article for the Burlington Magazine entitled
“Three Unknown Drawings by G. L. Bernini.” He also prepared a
series of ten short articles for publication in the Ladies Home Journal.
Three of these articles have appeared this year. An article by Mr.
Cooke entitled, “Il Museo e gli Artisti” appeared in Atti del convegno
di Museologia, Ministry of Public Instruction, Rome. Mr. Cooke
prepared the texts for 20 brief articles which were published to ac-
company reproductions of paintings in the Samuel H. Kress Collec-
tion, which are on sale in Kress stores throughout the country.

During the past fiscal year the Publications Fund published 44 new
11-x-14’’ color reproductions and a new color postcard, and made
plates of two prints for new Christmas folders; four additional new
color postcards were also on order. Three more large collotype re-
productions of paintings on exhibition, distributed by a New York
publisher, were placed on sale.

SECRETARY'S REPORT 189

Portfolio No. 5 entitled “Masterpieces of the Samuel H. Kress
Collection, 1956” was published, as well as a catalog of the 1956
exhibition of paintings acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
A fourth printing of Handbook No. 1, “How to Look at Works of
Art; the Search for Line,” was on order, and a bock entitled “A Gallery
of Children” covering paintings of children in the Nationa! Gallery
was placed on sale.

Exhibition catalogs of the Asian Artists in Crystal, German
Drawings, and A Century and a Half of Painting in Argentina ex-
hibitions were distributed.

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM

The attendance for the general tours, Congressional tours, “Tours
for the Week,” and “Pictures of the Week,” totaled 45,797, while that
for the 42 auditorium lectures on Sunday afternoons was approxi-
mately 9,470 during the fiscal year 1956.

Tours, lectures, and conferences arranged by appointment were
given to 299 groups and individuals. The total number of people
served in this manner was 7,290. ‘This is an increase of 43 groups and
1,248 people served over last year. These special appointments were
made for such groups as representatives from leading high schools,
universities, museums, other governmental agencies, and distinguished
visitors.

Three separate training programs for selected members of the
Junior League and the American Association of University Women
of Arlington County and Montgomery County were carried forward
during the year in connection with the programs of those organizations
to assist school children in tours of the Gallery. This training was
under the general supervision of the Curator in Charge of Education
and the specific supervision of members of the Education Department
staff.

Lecture programs on “American Cultural Life” were prepared for
librarian members of the USLA and for members of the State Depart-
ment, who may act as cultural attachés on overseas duty. The lectures
for these are given by three members of the Education Department,
joined by the Curator of the Index of American Design and a repre-
sentative from the National Trust for Historic Preservation in
America.

The staff of the Education Office delivered 9 lectures in the audi-
torium on Sunday afternoons, while 33 were given by guest speakers.
During April and May, Prof. Ernst H. Gombrich, lecturer at the
Warburg Institute in London and Slade Professor of Fine Arts at
Oxford, delivered the Fifth Annual Series of seven A. W. Mellon
Lectures in the Fine Arts, on the theme “The Visible World and the
Language of Art.”

190 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

During the past year 184 persons borrowed 4,996 slides from the
lending collection. The centers throughout the country which dis-
tribute the National Gallery of Art film, report that approximately
55,538 viewers throughout the country saw the film in 298 bookings.

Members of the Education Department prepared and recorded 34
broadcasts for use during intermission periods of the National Gallery
concerts.

The printed Calendar of Events announcing all Gallery activities
and publications is distributed monthly to a mailing list of approxi-
mately 5,100 names.

LIBRARY

The most important acquisitions to the Library this year were 2,140
books, pamphlets, periodicals, subscriptions and photographs pur-
chased from private funds made available for this purpose. Gifts
included 296 books, pamphlets, and periodicals, while 663 books, pam-
phlets, periodicals, and bulletins were received on exchange from other
institutions. More than 400 persons other than Gallery staff spent time
in the Library for study or research during this fiscal year. More than
600 reference requests were answered by telephone.

The Library is the depository for photographs of the works of art
in the collections of the National Gallery of Art. <A stock of repro-
ductions is maintained for use in research occupations by the curatorial
staff and other departments of the Gallery; for the dissemination of
knowledge to qualified sources; for exchange with other institutions;
for reproduction in scholarly works; and for sale at the request of
any interested individual.

INDEX OF AMERICAN DESIGN

The Curator in Charge of the Index of American Design continued
to take part in the orientation program for United States Information
Agency personnel with a series of eleven 50-minute illustrated lectures
given in the National Gallery auditorium.

A new project of lecture notes for 20 loan sets of 2-x-2’’ color slides
was begun, for the purpose of making the slide sets more useful to
students and lecturers. Arrangements have been made to offer Index
slide sets for sale to individuals and institutions.

Approximately 668 persons (566 of whom were new users) studied
Index material during the fiscal year for the purpose of special
research, exhibition, gathering material for publication and design,
and by those wanting to become familiar with the collection.

There were 37 sets of 2-x-2’’ color slides (consisting of 1,444 slides
in all) circulated in 84 bookings in 18 States and Alaska.

SECRETARY'S REPORT 191

Mr. Christensen contributed two articles to historical bulletins and
delivered seven lectures to art and museum groups throughout the
country.

MAINTENANCE OF BUILDING AND GROUNDS

The building, its mechanical equipment, and the grounds were main-
tained at the established standard throughout the year.

Rolling screens in art storage room G-35 were installed by contract
in June 1956. A cold house was constructed by the Gallery staff in
the southwest moat area to control the development of plants propa-
gated in the greenhouse, thereby making available a wider variety of
flower and plant decorations for the Garden Courts and special events.

Gallery 25 was altered so that the Titian painting “Saint John on
Patmos” could be exhibited on the ceiling with special lighting.

Two additional gallery rooms, galleries 49 and 50, were completed
in March 1956.

A portion of the Library area was remodeled, and the space divided
into three rooms in which the Samuel H. Kress collection of Renais-
sance bronzes has been installed.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

Forty Sunday evening concerts were given during the fiscal year
1956 in the East Garden Court. The National Gallery Orchestra,
conducted by Richard Bales, played 11 concerts at the Gallery. Two
of the orchestral concerts were made possible by the Music Perform-
ance Trust Fund of the American Federation of Musicians. Between
May 13 and June 10, 1956, five Sunday evenings were devoted to the
Gallery’s Thirteenth American Music Festival. All the concerts were
broadcast in their entirety by Station WGMS-AM and FM, Wash-
ington, and the Good Music Network. The National Gallery concert
on June 10, 1956, featured the premiere performance of Richard Bales’
“The Union,” a cantata on music of the North during the years 1861-
1865. During the fiscal year 16 works by American composers were
given their first Washington performance; and 4 were given world
premieres.

The Photographic Laboratory of the Gallery produced 11,148 prints,
300 black-and-white slides, 1,131 color slides, 170 color transparencies,
in addition to 1,868 negatives, color-separation negatives, infrared
and ultraviolet photographs, and X-ray shadowgraphs; also 1,705
lantern slides were bound.

During the fiscal year 4,246 copies of 16 press releases were issued
in connection with Gallery activities, while 190 permits to copy, and
171 permits to photograph in the Gallery were also issued.

192 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

OTHER GIFTS

Gifts of money were made during the fiscal year 1956 by the Old
Dominion Foundation, the Avalon Foundation, Lessing J. Rosenwald,
Douglas Dillon, Mrs. George M. Humphrey, and Louis B. Fleming.

AUDIT OF PRIVATE FUNDS OF THE GALLERY

An audit of the private funds of the Gallery has been made for the
fiscal year ended June 30, 1956, by Price Waterhouse & Co., public
accountants, and the certificate of that company on its examination
of the accounting records maintained for such funds will be forwarded
to the Gallery.

Respectfully submitted.

Hontineron Cairns, Secretary.

Dr. Lronarp CARMICHAEL,

Secretary, Sinithsonian Institution.

Report on the Library

Sm: I have the honor to submit the following report on the activi-
ties of the Smithsonian library for the fiscal year ended June 30,
1956:

The acquisitions section recorded the receipt of 78,715 publications
during the year, the larger number of which came, as usual, from
scientific, technical, and cultural organizations all over the world,
in exchange for Smithsonian publications. There were 237 new ex-
changes arranged, and issuing agencies, new and old, were generous in
supplying 3,124 publications, mostly parts of periodicals and other
serials, needed to fill gaps in the collections.

In moving its quarters from the Arts and Industries Building, the
American Association of Museums generously turned over to the
library more than 30,000 books, periodicals, and pamphlets which had
served their purpose in the offices of the Association. Many items
from this rich collection have already been added to the library, some
12,000 pieces found to be duplicates or otherwise not needed were
sent to the United States Book Exchange for exchange credit, and
the checking and processing of the remainder of the material are still
in progress.

The library is greatly indebted to other organizations and to the
many individual donors who sent multiple or single gifts of books
and papers. Many members of the staff of the Institution were
thoughtful and generous in making gifts of books and papers fre-
quently throughout the year.

From the estate of the late Gerrit S. Miller, Jr., came 537 volumes
selected from Mr. Miller’s large personal library. The majority of
them were works on mammals and other zoological subjects, but the
others reflected the catholic interests and cultivated tastes of this dis-
tinguished former member of the Smithsonian staff.

Mrs. John P. Marble’s gift of 157 handsomely bound volumes of
journals and individual works on geochemistry, from the library of
her late husband, was also a noteworthy addition.

Probably no library ever has enough money for the purchase of
books, and the Smithsonian library is certainly no exception. Faced
with the responsibility of serving the whole Institution with the litera-
ture needed by the curators and other specialists working in many
different subject fields, books and journals that cannot be obtained in
exchange or as gifts must be selected with great care for purchase from

193

194 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

limited funds. The general principle of selection is that priority shall
be given to important works of reference for the common use of all,
and to primary sources of special information. After buying 575
books and subscribing to 426 periodicals, funds for the year were
exhausted, leaving large numbers of requisitions still unprocessed in
the acquisitions section.

There was little opportunity to reduce the library’s continuing file
of desiderata among the out-of-print source books so important in
museum work. Far too seldom are there funds available when one
or another of these works appears, unpredictably, in the old-book
market. The library has no interest in acquiring collectors’ items, per
se, but a good many of the most-needed older books, especially in the
fields of natural history and the fine arts, fall into that category and
are likely to be prohibitively costly. One of the library’s continually
recurring problems is how to get the use of rare books not in its own
collections. Rare books seldom can be borrowed from other libraries,
microfilms are not very satisfactory, especially when they must be
read and referred to in comparison with specimens, and photostats of
more than a few pages are likely to be almost as expensive as the
original works.

The library added 5,918 publications to the Smithsonian Deposit,
and sent more than 20,000 other publications to the Library of Con-
gress without recording them individually. These included doctoral
dissertations, foreign and state documents, and miscellaneous books,
papers, and periodicals on subjects not pertinent to the work of the
Institution. ‘There were 657 medical dissertations sent to the Armed
Forces Medical Library.

The catalog section classified and cataloged 4,748 volumes, entered
20,534 periodicals, and filed 29,553 catalog cards. In the latter part
of the year, the staff of the section, after an initial survey of the very
large accumulation of wholly or incompletely cataloged material in
the library of the Bureau of American Ethnology, made a very good
beginning in sorting and arranging it for processing or other disposi-
tion. With the advice of the Director of the Bureau, 2,675 of the
pieces so far handled were discarded. The work will be continued,
as time permits, during the coming year.

The library recorded the loan of 9,276 volumes, 1,127 of which were
interlibrary loans to 88 different libraries throughout the United
States. The record of intramural loans never represents more than
a fractional part of the circulation of books and periodicals among
members of the staff of the Institution. Publications assigned to the
different sectional libraries for filing circulate freely within the sec-
tion, without being counted, except in the Division of Insects where

SECRETARY'S REPORT 195

there is a member of the library staff in charge of the sectional library.
Most of the 4,247 currently acquired publications assigned to sectional
libraries during the year probably circulated within the respective
sections, in addition to the circulation of the books and periodicals
previously assigned. No reasonably accurate numerical estimate of
the actual use of books throughout the Institution can be made.

The reference service of the library is the most difficult to measure
statistically. To say that more than 13,000 reference questions were
answered is to give no idea of the time, ingenuity, and imagination
required to find the answers to many of the more perplexing questions
asked. There was a time, not too long ago, when little was expected
of librarians except to be custodians of books. The prime require-
ment of the library nowadays is service from and through books.
Many years ago, Lord Rayleigh said, “By a fiction as remarkable as
any to be found in law, what has once been published . . . is usually
spoken of as ‘known’ and it is often forgotten that the rediscovery in
the library may be a more difficult and uncertain process than the first
discovery in the laboratory.” All the modern refinements of cata-
loging and the invention of fabulous fact-finding push-button ma-
chines are directed toward making “rediscovery” easy, but in the last
analysis the ultimate dependence is still upon human brains and
skills,

For the first time in many years, a much-increased allotment for
library binding made it possible not only to send current periodicals
to the bindery as soon as each volume was completed, but to reduce the
arrearage of binding or rebinding of older periodicals and books to
a very considerable extent. It is gratifying to report that 8,016 vol-
umes were sent to the bindery, and that 1,386 worn and fragile volumes
requiring special handling were expertly repaired in the library.

There were several major changes in the staff during the year.
The death of Mrs. Hope Hanna Simmons, chief of the acquisitions
section, on June 16, 1956, was a sad loss. Mrs. Simmons had served
the library most efficiently since 1927.

Miss Minna Gill, chief of the catalog section, resigned on November
30, 1955, and Mrs. Ruth W. Dawson, also of the catalog section, retired
on December 31, after more than 30 years of service. Miss Ruth
Blanchard was appointed chief of the catalog section on January 23,
1956.

The most serious handicaps to good library service continue to be
the scattered and inefficiently arranged housing of the library, over-
crowding of the shelves, the need for a larger staff of trained assist-
ants, and for more money to buy books.

196 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

SUMMARIZED STATISTICS

ACCESSIONS
Total
Volumes | recorded
volumes,
1956
Smithsonian Deposit at the Library of Congress--_-___- 855 586, 447
Smithsonian main library (including former Office and
Miuseumslibranicg it {os yee a ee eee 3, 106 300, 383
Astrophysical Observatory (including Madiation and
Organisms)2 -6bil ss2oe oerh sal et ee Sree! 2 141 14, 842
BureauvotAmericanybwhnolor yee == ee ee 387 30, 977
National sare Mase ae es Se ee ee eee 98 433
National Collection of Fine Arts._._...._.-------+2s--- 161 13, 870
NationalyZoological Park 2602) os. o2s 8 ae ot oe 0 4, 205
Total, <2 feadotld vee wegerd sais aie lee arn 4, 748 956, 157

Unbound volumes of periodicals, and reprints and separates from serial publi-
cations, of which there are many thousands, have not been included in these totals.

EXCHANGES
New ~exchances’ tarringed’2 Cee 2. elke AE RE See Le 237
Specially requested publications received---------_---------_-_-_----_- 8, 124
CATALOGING
Volumes catalogedls. fees Ot sites Hare ie Oma) Biv aye oer rere 4, 748
Gatalog cards Wiled £22). fospe ns sees beet se i ee ae se ee oS 29, 553
PERIODICALS
Periodical, pants jentered<222 3208 f s202) To eee ed nk ee ee 20, 534
5,089 were sent to the Smithsonian Deposit.
CIRCULATION
loans, of books and: periodicals = 2. #24 22 22 os ee 9, 276

Circulation in sectional libraries is not counted except in the Division
of Insects.

BINDING AND REPAIR

Volumes sent, to theubindery === 3622 ee a en eee ee 8, 016
Volumesrepaired*in’ the: library22 24t4 24 3 ee ee Se eee 1, 386

Respectfully submitted.
Leina F. Cuarn, Librarian.

Dr. LEonarp CARMICHAEL,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.

Report on Publications

Sm: I have the honor to submit the following report on the pub-
lications of the Smithsonian and its branches for the year ended June
50, 1956:

The publications of the Smithsonian Institution are issued partly
from federally appropriated funds (Smithsonian Reports and pub-
lications of the National Museum, the Bureau of American Ethnology,
the National Collection of Fine Arts, and the Astrophysical Obser-
vatory) and partly from private endowment funds (Smithsonian
Miscellaneous Collections, publications of the Freer Gallery of Art,
and some special publications). The Institution also edits and pub-
lishes under the auspices of the Freer Gallery of Art the series Ars
Orientalis, which appears under the joint imprint of the University
of Michigan and the Smithsonian Institution. The second volume
in this series was ready to go to the printer at the end of the year. In
addition, the Smithsonian publishes a guide book, a picture pamphlet,
postcards and a postcard folder, a color-picture album, color slides,
and popular publications on scientific and historical subjects related
to its important exhibits and collections for sale to visitors. Through
its publication program the Smithsonian endeavors to carry out its
founder’s expressed desire for the diffusion of knowledge.

During the year the Institution published 13 papers and title page
and contents of 3 volumes in the Miscellaneous Collections; 1 Annual
Report of the Board of Regents and separates of 18 articles in the
Report Appendix; 1 Annual Report of the Secretary; reprints of 3
papers in the Miscellaneous Collections and 1 Report separate; and
1 special publication.

The United States National Museum issued 1 Annual Report, 24
Proceedings papers, 1 Bulletin, and 1 paper in the series Contributions
from the United States National Herbarium.

The Bureau of American Ethnology issued 1 Annual Report and
1 Bulletin.

The Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, under
the National Collection of Fine Arts, published special catalogs for
6 of its circulating exhibits, and a catalog of its available exhibits
for 1956-1957.

The Freer Gallery of Art issued title page and contents of volume
2 of its Occasional Papers series, and 4 special publications.

197

198 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

There were distributed 424,389 copies of publications and miscel-
Janeous items. Publications: 58 Contributions to knowledge, 32,131
Miscellaneous Collections, 9,126 Annual Reports and 16,561 pamphlet
copies of Report separates, 629 War Background Studies, 19,463
special publications, 231 reports of the Harriman Alaska Expedition,
61,060 publications of the National Museum, 17,018 publications of the
Bureau of American Ethnology, 30,351 publications of the National
Collection of Fine Arts, 37 publications of the Astrophysical Observa-
tory, 19 publications of the Freer Gallery of Art, 4,187 reports of the
American Historical Association, and 1,906 publications not issued
by the Smithsonian Institution. Miscellaneous: 202 sets and 10,013
prints of North American Wildflowers and 1 Pitcher Plant volume,
44,933 Guide Books, 19,713 picture pamphlets, 74,571 postcards and
12,180 postcard folders, 4,260 photo sets, 8,482 color slides, 10,621
color picture albums, 47,765 information leaflets, 23 New Museum of
History and Technology pamphlets, and 98 statuettes.

The 1956 allotment from Government funds of $162,000 for printing
and binding was entirely obligated at the close of the year.

The Astrophysical Observatory during the year inaugurated a new
series entitled Smithsonian Contributions to Astrophysics, which will
publish the results of the research of the Observatory and its col-
laborators, with particular emphasis on problems of the study of the
sun, the earth, and the solar system. At the close of the year the
first number of the new series was in press, consisting of a group of
papers under the general title “New Horizons in Astronomy” and sup-
ported jointly by the National Science Foundation.

SMITHSONIAN PUBLICATIONS
SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS

VOLUME 126
No. 1. The Bromeliaceae of Brazil, by Lyman B. Smith. 290 pp., 129 figs.
(Publ. 4184.) September 7,1955. ($3.50.)

VOLUME 127
Chazyan and related brachiopods, by G. Arthur Cooper. Pt. I, text, pp. i-xvi+
1-1024; Pt. II, plates (269), with legends, pp. 1025-1245. (Publ. 4253.) June
12,1956. ($20.00.)
VOLUME 128
No. 5. Revision of some Recent foraminiferal genera, by Alfred R. Loeblich, Jr.,
and Helen Tappan. 37 pp., 4 figs. (Publ. 4214.) July 21, 1955. (45 cents.)
No.7. Lower Cambrian ptychopariid trilobites from the conglomerates of Quebec,
by Franco Rasetti. 35 pp., 6 pls. (Publ. 4216.) Aug. 11, 1955. (60 cents.)
No. 8. A review of the upper Eocene Artiodactyla of North America, by C. Lewis
Gazin. 96 pp., 18 pls., 2 figs. (Publ. 4217.) September 28, 1955. ($1.60.)
No. 9. Distribution and ecology of the marine invertebrates of Point Barrow,
Alaska, by G. E. MacGinitie. 201 pp., 8 pls., 3 figs. (Publ. 4221.) November
30,1955. ($2.25.)

SECRETARY'S REPORT 199

VOLUME 131

No. 1. Leading operations of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, 1895-
1955, by C. G. Abbot. 8 pp. (Publ. 4222.) September 22, 1955. (15 cents.)

No. 2. The last cruise of H. M. S. Loo, by Mendel L. Peterson. 55 pp., 17 pls.,
8 figs. (Publ. 4224.) November 23,1955. ($1.00.)

No.3. Synonymical notes on neotropical flies of the family Tabanidae (Diptera),
by G. B. Fairchild. 38 pp. (Publ. 4225.) January 11, 1955. (60 cents.)

No. 4. New Cretaceous Brachiopoda from Arizona, by G. Arthur Cooper. 18 pp.,
4pls. (Publ. 4227.) December 21,1955. (45 cents.)

No. 5. A checklist of fossil and prehistoric birds of North America and the West
Indies, by Alexander Wetmore. 105 pp. (Publ. 4228.) January 25, 1956. (70
cents.)

No. 6. Paleocene mammalian faunas of the Bison Basin in south-central
Wyoming, by C. Lewis Gazin. 57 pp., 16 pls., 2 figs. (Publ. 4229.) February
28, 1956. ($1.00)

VOLUME 132

An index to the genera and species of the Foraminifera, Parts 1 and 2, by Charles
Davies Sherborn, with foreword by Alfred R. Loeblich. (Reprint of Smith-
sonian Miscellaneous Collections Publs. 856 and 1031.) 485 pp. (Publ. 4226.)
August 18, 1955. ($3.50.)

ANNUAL REPORTS

Report for 1954.—The complete volume of the Annual Report of
the Board of Regents for 1954 was received from the printer October
17, 1955:

Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution showing
the operations, expenditures, and condition of the Institution for the year
ended June 30, 1954. ix+455 pp., 77 pls., 29 figs. (Publ. 4190.)

The general appendix contained the following papers (Publs. 4191-
4208) :

The nature of the upper atmosphere, by H. S. W. Massey.
Solar influence on the earth, by John W. Evans.
Fifty years of flying progress, by Grover Loening.
Tektites and the lost planet, by Ralph Stair.
On comparing the brain with machines, by D. M. MacKay.
A glimpse of incomprehensibles, by George W. Corner.
The electron microscope in biology, by Ralph W. G. Wyckoff.
The spread of the cattle egret, by Alexander Sprunt, Jr.
The migration of mammals, by L. Harrison Matthews.
The flight of animals, by James Gray.
Botanical studies in Fiji, by Albert C. Smith.
The romance of domesticated plants, by Glenn W. Blaydes.
The scientific detection of crime, by Charles Sannié.
The great Piltdown hoax, by William L. Straus, Jr.
Qur State names, by John P. Harrington.
Shanidar cave, a Paleolithic site in northern Iraq, by Ralph S. Solecki.
Medicine, warfare, and history, by John F. Fulton.
Harriet Lane Johnston and the National Collection of Fine Arts, by Thomas M.
Beggs.
412575—57——_14

200 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Report for 1955.—The Report of the Secretary, which will form
part of the Annual Report of the Board of Regents to Congress, was
issued January 18, 1956:

Report of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and financial report of
the Executive Committee of the Board of Regents for the year ended June 30,
1955. ix+173 pp., 7 pls. (Publ. 4230.)

REPRINTS

Utilizing heat from the sun, by C. G. Abbot. Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 98,
No. 5, 11 pp., 4 pls., 1 fig. (Publ. 3530.) (80 cents.)

Smithsonian Physical Tables, compiled by W. E. Forsythe. Smithsonian Misc.
Coll., vol. 120 (whole vol.). (Publ. 4169.) ($10.00.)

Solar variation a leading weather element, by C. G. Abbot. Smithsonian Mise.
Coll., vol. 122, No. 4, 35 pp., 22 figs. (Publ. 4185). (60 cents.)

Solar radiation as a power source, by C. G. Abbot. Smithsonian Ann. Rep. 1943,
9 pp., 3 pis., 3 figs. (Publ. 3742.)

The Smithsonian Institution. 35 pp., 15 pls. (Publ. 4145.) 1956. (50 cents.)

PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM

REPORT

The United States National Museum annual report for the year ended June 30,
1955. v-+102 pp., illustr. [1956.]

PROCEEDINGS
VOLUME 102
Title page, table of contents, and index. Pp. i-iv, 529-549. February 13, 1956.

VOLUME 103
Title page, table of contents, and index. Pp. i-v, 633-667. March 12, 1956.

VOLUME 104

No. 3342. Biology and taxonomy of North American beetles of the subfamily
Geotrupinae, with revisions of the genera Bolbocerosoma, Eucanthus, Geo-
trupes, and Peltotrupes (Scarabaeidae), by Henry F. Howden. Pp. 151-519,
pls. 1-18. November 28, 1955.

No. 3348. Fruit flies of the genus Tomoplagia Coquillett (Diptera, Terphritidae),
by Martin L. Aczél. Pp. 321-411, figs. 90-102, pls. 19-26. September 28, 1955.

No. 3344. Scarab beetles of the genus Psammodius in the Western Hemisphere,
by O. L. Cartwright. Pp. 418-462. August 24, 1955.

No. 8345. A further contribution to the ornithology of northeastern Venezuela,
by Herbert Friedmann and Foster D. Smith, Jr. Pp. 463-524, figs. 103-107,
pls. 27-30. December 2, 1955.

No. 3346. Modifications of pattern in the aortie arch system of birds and their
phylogenetic significance, by Fred H. Glenny. Pp. 525-621, figs. 108-119.
December 16, 1955.

No. 3347. Fishes of the family Percophididae from the coasts of eastern United
States and the West Indies, with descriptions of four new species, by Isaac
Ginsburg. Pp. 623-6389, figs. 120-122. October 13, 1955.

No. 3348. Neotropical Miridae, LXV : New genera and species of bugs of the tribe
Termatophylini (Hemiptera: Deraeocorinae), by José C. M. Carvalho. Pp.
641-649, fig. 123, pl. 31. October 27, 1955.

SECRETARY'S REPORT 201

VOLUME 105

No. 3349. Notes on shrimps from the Marshall Islands, by Fenner A. Chace, Jr.
Pp. 1-22, 8 figs. August 12, 1955.

No. 3350. Lanternflies of the family Issidae of the Lesser Antilles (Homoptera:
Fulgoroidea), by R. G. Fennah. Pp. 23-47, 5 figs. November 23, 1955.

No. 8351. An anatomical study of the peregrine megascolecid earthworm
Pheretima hupeiensis in the eastern United States, by William C. Grant, Jr.
Pp. 49-63, 4 figs. October 17, 1955.

No. 3352. Some polyciad flatworms from Polynesia and Micronesia, by Libbie H.
Hyman. Pp. 65-82, 5 figs. September 6, 1955.

No. 3353. Biting lice of the genus Saemundssonia (Mallophaga: Philopteridae)
occurring on terns, by Ronald A. Ward. Pp. 83-100, 1 fig. September 8, 1955.

No. 3354. Three Miocene porpoises from the Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, by
Remington Kellogg. Pp. 101-154, 1 fig., 21 pls. December 14, 1955.

No. 3355. A review of the New World flies of the genus Conops and allies
(Diptera: Conopidae), by Sidney Camras. Pp. 155-187. September 28, 1955.

No. 3356. Populations of the berycoid fish family Polymixiidae, by Ernest A.
Lachner. Pp. 189-206, 1 pl. October 21, 1955.

No. 3357. Contributions to the nomenclature, systematics, and morphology of
the Octocorallia, by Frederick M. Bayer. Pp. 207-220, 8 pls. December 21,
1955.

No. 3358. Bryozoa of the United States Navy’s 1947-1948 Antarctic Expedition,
I-IV, by Mary D. Rogick. Pp. 221-317, 35 pls. March 13, 1956.

No. 3359. Type species of the genera and subgenera of parasitic wasps com-
prising the superfamily Proctotrupoidea (order Hymenoptera), by C. F. W.
Muesebeck and Luella M. Walkley. Pp. 319-419. February 16, 1956.

No. 3360. The Spongilla-flies, with special reference to those of the Western
Hemisphere (Sisyridae, Neuroptera), by Sophy I. Parfin and Ashley B. Gurney.
Pp. 421-529, 24 figs.,3 pls. May 16, 1956.

No. 3361. Marine polychaete worms from Labrador, by Marian H. Pettibone.
Pp. 531-584, 1 fig. March 29, 1956.

VOLUME 106

No. 8362. Revision of the milliped genus Dizioria (Polydesmida: Xystodes-
midae), by Richard L. Hoffman. Pp. 1-19, 4 figs. March 29, 1956.

No. 3363. A revision of the flies of the genus Rivellia (Otitidae, Diptera) of
America north of México, by Ryoji Namba. Pp. 21-84, 10 figs. June 5, 1956.

BULLETINS

208. The honey-guides, by Herbert Friedmann. vii+292 pp., 6 figs., 25 pls.

October 20, 1955.
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE U. S. Nationa Hersartum

VOLUME 32
Part 1. The American species of Aeschynomene, by Velva E. Rudd. iii+172 pp.,

10 figs. October 18, 1955.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
ANNUAL REPORT

Seventy-second Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1954-1955.
ii+24 pp. 1956.

202 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

BULLETIN

Bulletin 163. The Diné: Origin myths of the Navaho Indians, by Aileen O’Bryan.
vii+187 pp., 1 pl., 24 figs. June 27, 1956.

PUBLICATIONS OF THE NATIONAL COLLECTION OF FINE ARTS

Contemporary Finnish architecture. (Smithsonian Institution Traveling Ex-
hibition Service catalog.) 20 pp., illustr. [October 1955.]

German drawings. Masterpieces from five centuries. (Smithsonian Institution
Traveling Exhibition Service catalog.) 59 pp., illustr. [November 1955.]

Tapestries by Hannah Ryggen. (Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition
Service catalog.) 8 pp., illustr. [November 1955.]

Photographs of Venetian villas. (Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition
catalog.) 138 pp., illustr. [November 1955.]

Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibitions. 1956-1957 catalog. (Smith-
sonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service catalog.) [1956.]

Italian arts and crafts. (Smithsonian Institution Traveling Hxhibition catalog.)
15 pp., illustr. [Iebruary 1956.]

Finnish crafts. Tapio Wirkkala and Rut Bryk. (Smithsonian Institution
Traveling Exhibition catalog.) 138 pp., illustr. [April 1956.]

PUBLICATIONS OF THE FREER GALLERY OF ART

Title page and table of contents, Occasional Papers, vol. 2. (Publ. 4223.) [Sep-
tember] 1955.

The Charles Lang Freer Medal (first presentation). Booklet containing a partial
bibliography by Prof. Osvald Sirén.

Charles Lang Freer Centennial Exhibition (1856-1956). Booklet listing objects
on exhibition in galleries.

First presentation of the Charles Lang Freer Medal. 27 pp., 3 pls. February 25,
1956.

Chinese porcelains from the Ardebil Shrine, by John Alexander Pope. 194 pp.,
142 pls., 19 figs. [June] 1956. (Publ. 4231.)

REPORT OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

The annual reports of the American Historical Association are trans-
mitted by the Association to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institu-
tion and are by him communicated to Congress, as provided in the act
of incorporation of the Association. The following reports were issued
during the year:

Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the year 1953. Vol. 2.

Writings on American History, 1951. 544 pp. 1956.

Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the year 1954. Vol. 1.
Proceedings and list of members. 179 pp. 1956.

SECRETARY’S REPORT 203

REPORT OF THE NATIONAL SOCIETY, DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN
REVOLUTION

The manuscript of the Fifty-eighth Report of the National Society,
Daughters of the American Revolution, was transmitted to Congress,
in accordance with law, on April 4, 1956.

Respectfully submitted.

Paut H. Oruser,
Chief, Editorial and Publications Division.

Dr. Lronarp CARMICHAEL,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.

Report of the Executive Committee of the
Board of Regents of the Smithsonian

Institution
For the Year Ended June 30, 1956
To the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution:

Your executive committee respectfully submits the following report
in relation to the funds of the Smithsonian Institution, together with
a statement of the appropriations by Congress for the Government
bureaus in the administrative charge of the Institution.

SMITHSONIAN ENDOWMENT FUND

The original bequest of James Smithson was £104,960 8s, 6d.—
$508,318.46. Refunds of money expended in prosecution of the claim,
freight, insurance, and other incidental expenses, together with pay-
ment into the fund of the sum of £5,015, which had been withheld
during the lifetime of Madame de la Batut, brought the fund to the
amount of $550,000.

Since the original bequest, the Institution has received gifts from
various sources, the income from which may be used for the general
work of the Institution. These, plus accretions, are listed below,
together with a statement showing the income for the present year.

ENDOWMENT FUNDS
(Income for the unrestricted use of the Institution)

Partly deposited in the United States Treasury at 6 percent and partly invested
in stocks, bonds, and other holdings

Fund Investment 1956 | Income 1956

Parent fund (original Smithson bequest, plus accumulated savings) - - - $729, 190. 53 $43, 739. 96

Subsequent bequests, gifts, and other funds, partly deposited in the
U.S. Treasury and partly invested in the consolidated fund:

‘Abbott; Wie dus, Speciale. 22) 2. 220 te ee ee eee se ee 18, 922. 27 967. 93
AVery. RODELE Ss anGihy dldss ones seen ee sean ee ee 64, 167. 58 3, 478. 68
(Hin GO WIDer tase tS ss ee ee ee 448, 899. 22 23, 449. 59
EL ADO DPSS sees eee ee ae ae ee es ee ee Dee 500. 00 30. 00
Hachenbere, Georgeve: sand Oaroling sees 2.28 aeee ne eee eee eee 5, 107. 95 268. 66
Hamilton, James) 22-222 sta cn sane uteeen = steena= a eet eete neces 3, 012. 70 176. 97
Henrys Oaroline ts cee. see een es ae at Oe ies SR Se 1, 536. 06 80. 79
Hodgkins Thomas CG: ssa 2 ee ee eee eS 154, 474. 02 8, 983. 63
Olmsted! HelentAt sss 220 1 eee boss eee eee ee 1, 017. 56 18. 44
Porter Henry har ke ss cccce ewe ceae ea ee eee ree Ue ees 363, 745, 33 19, 132, 12
Rhees) William Ones t2s----scsas- een oe aan ee ene eee ee 1, 190. 89 67.02
Sanford, George: Hes ease sack ots n se ccaa~ so sas es seen nee 2, 230. 62 125. 47
Witherspoon; "Thomas- Ae .2 22222 - = 2 oie a) eee eee 163, 905. 23 8, 621.03

Total: <2 -2asese St en cee wea See eee ne eee ee 1, 228, 709. 43 65, 400. 33

Grand itotal's:o-2 eee ee ne a ene eee ee eee 1, 957, 899. 96 109, 140. 29

204

REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 205

The Institution holds also a number of endowment gifts, the income
of each being restricted to specific use. These, plus accretions to date,
are listed below, together with income for the present year.

Fund Investment 1956 | Income 1956
Abbott, William L., for investigations in blology.--------------------- $132, 709. 55 $6, 952. 38
Arthur, James, for investigations and study of the sun and annual

NBGA OT SHO see eee ee eee ee en a a ee ee 50, 795. 15 2, 671. 68
Bacon, Virginia Purdy, for traveling scholarship to investigate fauna

of countries other than the United States___-...-.------------------- 63, 632. 50 3, 346. 93
Baird, Lucy H.., for creating a memorial to Secretary Baird-_----------- 30, 579. 78 1, 608. 40
Barney, Alice Pike, for collection of paintings and pastels and for en-

couragement of American artistic endeavor--.--_-------------------- 36, 428, 22 1, 916. 04
Barstow, Frederick D., for purchase of animals for Zoological Park--_-- 1, 269. 78 66. 72
Canfield Collection, for increase and care of the Canfield collection of

AWN aC ESS = a aE ee a ee ee eee ee 48, 577. 20 2, 555. 02
Casey, Thomas L., for maintenance of the Casey collection and pro-

motion of researches relating to Coleoptera__-.----------------------- 15, 919. 92 837. 37
Chamberlain, Francis Lea, for increase and promotion of Isaac Lea

eollectionolems: and! mollusks: --2-2-2 ui- 4s 52 sees 2 eos n ose 35, 766. 35 1, 881. 21
Dykes, Charles, for support in financial research__..-.----------------- 54, 687. 82 2, 876. 11
Eickemeyer, Florence Brevoort, for preservation and exhibition of the

photographic collection of Rudolph Eickemeyer, Jr__---------------- 13, 805. 60 726. 13
Hillyer, Virgil, for increase and care of Virgil Hillyer collection of light-

MUACIODIGCLS = wre ee eee eee eee oe ane ee hace ee ows ceeteesesssseeeoe 8, 347. 27 439, 03
Hitchcock, Albert S., for care of the Hitchcock Agrostological Library_- 2, 004. 11 105. 43
Hodgkins, specific, for increase and diffusion of more exact knowledge

in regard to nature and properties of atmospheric air__-_------------- 100, 000. 00 6, 000. 00
Hrdlitka, Ale and Marie, to further researches in physical anthropol-

ogy and publication in connection therewith-_-__-..--_--------.----- 47, 170. 96 2, 358. 30
Hughes; 5ruce, to found Hughes alcove. ..=-..---2_----------_---=-=- 24, 311. 23 1, 278. 73
Loeb, Morris, for furtherance of knowledge in the exact sclences- ------ 110, 691. 94 5, 822. 10
Long, Annette and Edith C., for upkeep and preservation cf Long col-

lection of embroideries, laces, and textiles_____....------------------- 689. 64 36. 27
Maxwell, Mary E., for care and exhibition cf Maxwell collection_-_---- 24, 912. 29 1, 310. 34
Myer, Catherine Walden, for purchase of first-class works of art for
- use and benefit of the National Collection of Fine Arts_.-.---------- 25, 654. 56 1, 349. 38
Nelson, Edward W.., for support of biological studies__-_-------------- 21, 121. 66 987. 37

Noyes, Frank B., for use in connection with the collection of dolls
placed in the U. S. National Museum through the interest of Mr.

TICVIPS IN OV OSe ates ere ee ee WEN ge ed ae 1, 220. 25 64. 18
Pell, Cornelia Livingston, for maintenance of Alfred Duane Pell col-

NG Ct ONE ate as ee tee 2 es et Seat Se 9, 414, 49 495. 18
Poore, Lucy T. and George W.., for general use of the Institution when

prinelpalamonunts tO S200 O0Uke = 26 oe oe en ee 206, 261. 18 10, 498. 81
Rathbun, Richard, for use of division of U. 8. National Museum con-

tAtningv@riistaces wks k le Serle eee ok ea eee ei a eve 13, 508. 64 710. 52
Reid, Addison T., for founding chair in biology, in memory of Asher

ETE TNS eee et ey eR EReO pe OR Be ee ie ee oe 33, 983. 01 1, 857. 14
Roebling Collection, for care, improvement, and increase of Roebling

epllechioniomminersls! sete eee See as eee eee eae 153, 284, 82 8, 062. 39
new unos olan Research cos 22 ss eo ase ee Lee oe eee te ee 43, 539. 32 2, 290. 07
Rollins, Miriam and William, for investigations in physics and chem-

HE se TS Ee ee ene ees ee ee Se eee 119, 258, 21 6, 272. 71
Smithsonianiemployees’ retirement_.........-.-.----.---------=-----=-- 32, 571. 49 1, 744. 56
Springer, Frank, for care and increase of the Springer collection and

INTER AS Sea aaa ae BS I ea et ee ea Oe Ge Ur 22, 776. 34 1, 198. 00
Strong, Julia D., for benefit of the National Collection of Fine Arts--- 12, 698. 95 667. 93
Walcott, Charles D. and Mary Vaux, for development of geological

and paleontological studies and publishing results of same-_---------- 606, 998. 14 31, 980. 87
Walcott, Mary Vaux, for publications in botany___-------------------- 73, 519. 36 3, 866. 91
Mounrer, Helen Walcott, held intrust:.---.-2-----2-2-----s--------6- 82, 899. 00 4, 382. 46
Zerbee, Frances Brinckle, for endowment of aquaria_..---------------- 1, 204. 74 63. 34

AMG) TY bag Se gn eee ere ee 2, 262, 213. 47 119, 280. 01

206 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956
FREER GALLERY OF ART FUND

Early in 1906, by deed of gift, Charles L. Freer, of Detroit, gave
to the Institution his collection of Chinese and other Oriental objects
of art, as well as paintings, etchings, and other works of art by Whist-
ler, Thayer, Dewing, and other artists. Later he also gave funds for
construction of a building to house the collection, and finally in his
will, probated November 6, 1919, he provided stocks and securities
to the estimated value of $1,958,591.42, as an endowment fund
for the operation of the Gallery. The fund now amounts to
$7,422,474.98.

SUMMARY OF ENDOWMENTS

Investment endowment for general purposes__-___-.___-------- $1, 957, 899. 96
Investment endowment for specific purposes other than Freer

EMCO wanemt eres ae i pe ee a ci aha a pe 2, 262, 213. 47

Total invested endowment other than Freer___________-_ 4, 220, 113. 43

Freer invested endowment for specific purposes___-__----_---- 7, 422, 474. 98

Total invested endowment for all purposes_____-__------ 11, 642, 588. 41

CLASSIFICATION OF INVESTMENTS

Deposited in the U. 8. Treasury at 6 percent per annum, as au-

thorized in the U. 8S. Revised Statutes, sec. 5591____________ $1, 000, 000. 00
Investments other than Freer endowment (cost or market value

at date acquired):

Bonds 24 Sree Ss Beer ae eee. $1, 163, 133. 61
Stocks2 42222 Jee Saat See eee eet 1, 982, 829. 93
Real estate and mortgages__....--_..---- 5, 891. 00

Uninvested capital... 4) sa Se ee 68, 258. 89
3, 220, 113. 43

Total investments other than Freer en-
dowment2 22222). Sie oes ae thay Leeks at VT an 4, 220, 113. 43
Investments of Freer endowment (cost or mar-
ket value at date acquired):

Bods baie ies a wld el Dh eee eh meal $4, 242, 034. 31
SEO KS EL SOAP ie Ba aha eae teal ete 2, 973, 956. 30
Uninvestedicapital< sve sfeee ese ee 206, 484. 37

7, 422, 474. 98

‘Rotalhmvestments= ssa se mane one Fe ener 11, 642, 588. 41

REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 207

CASH BALANCES, RECEIPTS, AND DISBURSEMENTS DURING
FISCAL YEAR 19561

Sean balance oniwhand dune’ 30, 1955.2 — = oro n eG Oo $586, 853. 38
Receipts, other than Freer endowment:

Income from investments__..-.....+.-....- $247, 422. 84

Cits-and contributions... . UL 282 220 12.2 646, 732. 82

Rooks and) publications... 2) co 49, 433. 13

Miscellaneouss 2— 2. 2-2 2 2 PO ee 27, 910. 05

Employees’ payroll withholdings and refund

Olexdvancesn (Met) er = hon eee ee ees 8, 562. 04
Proceeds from real estate... 2.22222 220222 45. 00
Proceeds from sale of securities (net)________ 224, 658. 71

Proceeds from sale of cash securities (net)___ (98, 798. 14)

Total receipts other than Freer endowment. ___________-_ 1, 105, 966. 45

Receipts from Freer endowment:
IicormefromMmvestments =e. ee sue Pees eee es 357, 880. 32
LT EI ay gD nc ak ec asta eee MeN LS Le Le tt 2, 050, 700. 15

Disbursements other than Freer endowment:

ANGI St ratlOn ess ioe ae See $103, 989. 88
CA tO Gee ena ee te ye ee ee a tee 32, 349. 47
iL oy esi gee ee ee, eae Re earn” Oe nr ae ee 1, 210. 42
Custodian fees and servicing securities _ _ _-_-_- 4, 623. 26
IMascellaneousse me. © ey 5 ests eye se ois 2, 941. 63
Researches and explorations. __________-_-- 521, 537. 58
me a etirement oysteni-- 2... kL 7. By Ve
Total disbursements other than Freer endowment------ 668, 975. 56
Disbursements from Freer endowment:
RS SLED CS Peele 2 esd te ft era ccrppete | me arn rh $130, 906. 22
Rurchasesitor collection- == 242) — oe eee 164, 325. 00
Custodian fees and servicing securities_ - - --- 10, 889. 23
Miscellancous=-2S-. TOON Te Olas eee oe 41, 248. 55
Total disbursements from Freer endowment____-------- 347, 369. 00
Ra taledisbursements see ute eae Pe ea ee 1, 016, 344. 56
rrrmialaice June a0) 1950. 22. one ee ae eee al 1, 034, 355. 59
TRLOF a ba ahaa al lot IB er hd anh ll nll A Le oe Oe eee a 2, 050, 700. 15

1 This statement does not include Government appropriations under the administrative charge of the
Institution.

208 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

ASSETS
Cash:
United States Treasury cur-
rele accounts =e ea == $434, 750. 25
In banks and on hand___-_- 599, 605. 34
1, 034, 355. 59
Less uninvested endowment
PUN GS eat oe Pee ea ee 274, 743. 26
————_————__ $759, 612. 33
Lraveliandlouhern; sa wancCes:o =) = eee eee a 2, 603. 00
Cash invested (U. 8S. Treasury

JOO ECEYS) Ne SE 2 AO OO EY es Sag ae en ee 823, 986. 48
——_—__———— $1, 586, 201. 81
Investments—at book value:
Endowment funds:
Freer Gallery of Art:
Stocks and bonds_ $7, 215, 990. 61
Uninvested cash__ 206, 484. 37
—_—____———_ 7, 422, 474. 98

Investments at book value other

than Freer:
Stocks and bonds______-_- 3, 061, 535. 03
Uninvested cash___..___-- 68, 258. 89

Special deposit in U. S.
Treasury at 6 percent

INCCLES CHa ee eee 1, 000, 000. 00
Other stocks and bonds_-- 84, 428. 51

Real estate and mortgages_ 5, 891. 00
—_—_—_—_—_——— 4, 220, 113. 43
11, 642, 588. 41

13, 228, 790. 22

UNEXPENDED FUNDS AND ENDOWMENTS

Unexpended funds:

Income from Freer Gallery of Art endowment___-_------- $557, 709. 90
Income from other endowments:
Riestrictede sas settee Sie ee $350, 815. 28
Generale Uae Ses ser be ee ee ees 276, 104. 13
— 626, 919. 41
(GETS ENG 2 eGR ee eee ee eee See eee = eens 401, 572. 50
1, 586, 201. 81
Endowment funds:
PrecrGallenysof Arte. 2 00 ocuOuc cece o. $7, 422, 474. 98
Other:
ReStEI Cte seas fer em nn seer tne omer 2, 262; 213: 47

Generales eee ee ye wy ee 1, 957, 899. 96
—___—_—_————._ 1], 642, 588. 41

Totals. cos S252 Sel ese DSse se eee ee eee 13, 228, 790. 22

REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 209

The practice of maintaining savings accounts in several of the Wash-
ington banks and trust companies has been continued during the past
year, and interest on these deposits amounted to $4,759.33.

Deposits are made in banks for convenience in collection of checks,
and later such funds are withdrawn and deposited in the United
States Treasury. Disbursement of funds is made by check signed by
the Secretary of the Institution and drawn on the United States
Treasury.

The Institution gratefully acknowledges gifts and grants from
the following:

American Philosophical Society, gift for hybridization studies of stink bugs.

American Philosophical Society, grant to further research on the color prints
of John Baptist Jackson.

Atomic Energy Commission, additional gift for the studies on the regulation of
plant growth by radiation.

Atomic Energy Commission, additional gift for mechanism of action of ionizing
radiation.

Mr. and Mrs. J. Bruce Bredin, gift to establish “The Bredin Expedition Fund
1955-1956.”

Mrs. Agnes Chase, additional gift for copying the index to grass names.

Department of the Army, Chemical Corps, additional gift for research studies to
determine the influence of plant regulators.

Entomological Society of America, gift to aid in printing of manuscript entitled
“History of Entomology in World War II.”

Edward P. Henderson, gift for research on meteorites.

Humble Oil & Refining Co. and California Research Corp., grants-in-aid to the
Planktonie Foraminifera Project.

Idaho Power Company, grant for Snake River Archeological Project.

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, additional grant for the wax
metabolism fund.

Edwin A. Link, additional gift for historical research (marine archeology).

National Academy of Sciences, grant for preparing a manuscript translation of
a “Flora of Japan” by Jisaburo Ohwi.

National Academy of Sciences, grant for support of research on U. S. National
Museum collection of ascidians.

National Geographie Society, grant to complete the excavations and related
work at the archeological site in Jackson County, Ala.

National Science Foundation, grant for taxonomic study of the phanerogams
of Colombia.

National Science Foundation, additional grant to make possible the continuation
of work of the Canal Zone Biological Area on Barro Colorado Island.

National Science Foundation, grant for the support of research entitled ‘“Mono-
graph of Fresh-water Calanoid Copepods.”

National Science Founéation, grant for an optical tracking and scientific analysis
program for the U. 8S. Earth Satellite Program.

National Science Foundation, grant for research on recent Foraminifera from
Ifaluk Atoll.

National Science Foundation, grant for study of physical changes in the Indian
population of Hacienda Vicos.

National Science Foundation, grant for botanical studies in southeastern Brazil.

210 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

National Science Foundation, additional grant for research on “Taxonomy of
the Bamboos.”

National Science Foundation, grant for publication of manuscript entitled “New
Horizons in Astronomy.”

Nelson & Goldman Orchard Co., additional gift for the support of biological
studies.

Office of Naval Research, gift for research on mammalian hosts and their
parasites.

Office of Naval Research, additional gift to perform psychological research
studies.

Office of Naval Research, gift to assist work in progress on the preparation of
a synoptic catalog of the mosquitoes of the world.

Helen A. Olmsted, bequest, to be added to the Smithsonian Institution endow-
ment fund.

Research Corp., gift to be used in partially defraying the cost of publishing a
current edition of the Smithsonian Geographical Tables.

Research Corp., grant for the support of a project entitled “Application of X-ray
Techniques to the Study of the Osteology and Relationships of Fishes in Sys-
tematic Ichthyology.”

The Chicago Zoological Society, San Diego Zoo, and New York Zoological Society,
gifts for the Penguin Fund.

Gene M. Stirling, additional gift for the study of the archeology and ethnology
of Florida.

The Link Foundation, gift for guided-tour materials and service.

The Museum of Natural History of Houston, gift for improvement of the U. S.
National Herbarium collection.

The Rockefeller Foundation, grant for continued research by J. J. Murayama on

scolytid and scarabaeid beetles.

United States Air Force, grant for study of atmospheric entry and impact of
high-velocity meteorites.

United States Air Force, grant for research directed toward the study of the rate
of aceretion of interplanetary matter by the earth.

United States Information Agency, additional grant for exhibition “American
Primitive Paintings.”

Wenner-Gren Foundation and American Philosophical Society, grants to aid
archeological research in Shanidar cave, northern Iraq.

Miss Madeline Wilkinson, gift for cleaning and repairing historic dresses or
linens.

For support of the Bio-Sciences Information Exchange:

Atomic Energy Commission
Department of the Air Force
Department of the Army
Department of the Navy
National Science Foundation
Public Health Service
Veterans Administration

Included in the above list of gifts and contributions are reimbursable
contracts.

The foregoing report relates only to the private funds of the
Institution.

REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Zit

The following appropriations were made by Congress for the
Government bureaus under the administrative charge of the Smithson-
ian Institution for the fiscal year 1956:

NalaniesT and vexpenses sa arse oa a ee ee $4, 166, 000
Nationale ZO 0locical Parkas sss eae Le Oe i a 690, 900
Museum or History, and: -Lechnology==.2— ==) 22S ee 2, 288, 000

In addition, funds were transferred from other Government agencies
for expenditure under the direction of the Smithsonian Institution
as follows:

Working funds, transferred from the National Park Service, Interior
Department, for archeological investigations in river basins through-
UTI CSU HO RODE CG CNS CEL UCS ens eee tak ee ee Sn Sn ee ere $92, 360

The Institution also administers a trust fund for partial support of
the Canal Zone Biological Area, located on Barro Colorado Island

in the Canal Zone.
AUDIT

The report of the audit of the Smithsonian private funds follows:

WasuHineton, D. C. September 5, 1956.
THE BoArRD OF REGENTS,
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION,
Washington 25, D. C.

We have examined the financial statements and schedules, as listed in the
accompanying index, of the Smithsonian Institution relative to its private en-
dowment funds and gifts (but excluding the National Gallery of Art and other
departments, bureaus, or operations administered by the Institution under
Federal appropriations) for the year ended June 30, 1956. Our examination was
made in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards, and accord-
ingly included such tests of the accounting records and such other auditing
procedures as we considered necessary in the circumstances.

The Institution maintains its accounts on a cash basis and does not accrue
income and expenses. Land, buildings, furniture, equipment, works of art, living
and other specimens and certain sundry property are not included in the accounts
of the Institution.

In our opinion, the accompanying financial statements present fairly the posi-
tion of the private funds and the cash and investments thereof of the Smith-
sonian Institution at June 30, 1956 (excluding the National Gallery of Art and
other departments, bureaus, or operations administered by the Institution under
Federal appropriations), and the cash receipts and disbursements for the year
then ended, in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles applied
on a basis consistent with that of the preceding year.

PEAT, MARWICK, MITCHELL & Co.

Respectfully submitted

CLARENCE CANNON
CaryL P. Hasxins
Rosert B. FLEMING

Executive Committee.

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GENERAL APPENDIX

to the

SMITHSONIAN REPORT FOR 1956

213

ADVERTISEMENT

The object of the Grnrrat AprpeNnprx to the Annual Report of the
Smithsonian Institution is to furnish brief accounts of scientific dis-
covery in particular directions; reports of investigation and explora-
tions made by staff members and collaborators of the Institution; and
memoirs of a general character or on special topics that are of interest
or value to the numerous correspondents of the Institution.

It has been a prominent object of the Board of Regents of the Smith-
sonian Institution from a very early date to enrich the annual report
required of them by law with memoirs illustrating the more remark-
able and important developments in physical and biological discovery,
as well as showing the general character of the operations of the Insti-
tution; and, during the greater part of its history, this purpose has
been carried out largely by the publication of such papers as would
possess an interest to all attracted by scientific progress.

In 1880, induced in part by the discontinuance of an annual sum-
mary of progress which for 30 years previously had been issued by
well-known private publishing firms, the Secretary had a series of
abstracts prepared by competent collaborators, showing concisely the
prominent features of recent scientific progress in astronomy, geology,
meteorology, physics, chemistry, mineralogy, botany, zoology, and
anthropology. This latter plan was continued, though not altogether
satisfactory, down to and including the year 1888.

In the report of 1889, a return was made to the earlier method of
presenting a miscellaneous selection of papers (some of them original)
embracing a considerable range of scientific investigation and discus-
sion. ‘This method has been continued in the present report for 1956.

Reprints of the various papers in the General Appendix may be
obtained, as long as the supply lasts, on request addressed to the Edi-
torial and Publications Division, Smithsonian Institution, Washing-
ton 25, D.C.

214

The Edge of the Sun’

By Donatp H. MENZEL

Director, Harvard College Observatory
Paine Professor of Astronomy, Harvard University

[With 4 plates]

IF THE TITLE OF THIs LECTURE, “The Edge of the Sun,” perchance
suggests to you Rachel Carson’s delightful book, “The Edge of the
Sea,” the resemblance is not purely coincidental. I chose the title de-
liberately because of the many similarities that exist between the sun
and the sea. If any of you should quibble that I use the word “edge”
in a different sense than did Miss Carson, to indicate a boundary layer
rather than a boundary line, let me refer you to Webster, who approves
the double usage.

When I agreed almost nine months ago to give this lecture on the
subject of “What’s New on the Sun,” I had no idea that the sun would
be so cooperative. Asa result, much of what I would have told you
then has since been changed. Even in the several months that have
elapsed since the lecture and the preparation of the final manuscript,
solar activity has markedly increased. I have included some of the
latest illustrations and have employed the information derived from
them to help solve our basic problem: “What is the structure of the
sun’s outer layers and how does solar activity originate?”

Man’s interpretation of the sun has been undergoing a gradual evo-
lution for thousands of years. Weno longer look to the sun as a deity,
nor do we bring offerings to solar temples as a means of soliciting his
bounty.

We recognize that the sun is a sphere of hot gas, whose vast output
of light and heat comes from atomic energy, released deep in its core.
The process of atomic fusion that gives rise to the sun’s energy appears
to be similar to that employed in our great H bombs: fusion of protons,
the nuclei of hydrogen atoms. The energy so released in the sun’s
interior is equal to that from a billion or so hydrogen bombs exploded
every second. Tonight we shall largely concern ourselves with the
profound effect that this energy has upon the sun’s outer layers, just

*The twenty-third James Arthur Lecture, given under the auspices of the
Smithsonian Institution April 26, 1956.
412575—57 15 215

216 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

before it escapes from the surface and begins its long journey out into
the depths of interstellar space.

But if the journey ahead of the escaping radiation is long, its past
history is by no means negligible. The radiation takes some 50 million
years to worm its way slowly upward from its birthplace close to the
sun’s center to the outer edge. A snail’s pace, indeed, for light, which
could traverse that distance in two and a half seconds if an enormous
number of atoms did not bar its progress.

Inside the sun, atoms are so closely packed that a speeding packet
of light waves can travel only 50-millionths of an inch or so, before it
runs head-on into one of the waiting atoms, to be deflected into a new
track and run into still another atom a quadrillionth of a second later.
In the face of so dense a traffic jam, one wonders how the radiation
could ever escape. But the outer layers of the sun are less dense than
the inner layers. The radiation inevitably, if slowly, finds a path
through the atomic maze, eventually to escape completely. And so
the sunlight that warms us today was born in atomic explosions that
took place when dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals roamed the
earth. These facts enable us to draw one basic conclusion: the sun is
highly opaque to its radiation.

Some scientists have speculated that the sun’s well-known 11-year
cycle, most clearly depicted by the variation in numbers of sunspots,
may in some way be due to a periodic fluctuation of heat production
deep in the center. A pulsation of the entire sun every 11 years, for
example, could change the output of energy. Compression would heat
the sun, increase the rate of atomic fusion, and result in the generation
of more energy. However, the radiation takes 50,000,000 years to es-
cape and if only 11 years separate each pulse we must find almost
5,000,000 pulses still underneath the surface, separated by only 200
yards or so on the average. A structure something like an onion with
alternate layers of warmer and cooler gases might conceivably ensue.

Such a structure could persist, however, only if the radiation flowed
directly outward. But we have already noted the roundabout path
that the energy must pursue in order to reach the surface. The radia-
tion mills around and around, as if performing a dance whose rules
require one to take 999,999 billion steps backward for each million
billion steps forward. With such slow progress, the hypothetical
onionlike layers completely disappear. The sun’s interior must be
drably uniform, except for the progressive decrease in temperature
and density from core to edge. And if this argument applies to the
sun, it also applies to stars in general. Stellar variability, except for
the rare extreme when a star suffers complete destruction in a super-
explosion, can scarcely be more than skin deep.

We know that energy flows from one place to another by one of
three fundamental processes: Conduction through a solid, as when

THE EDGE OF THE SUN—MENZEL 2N2.

the spoon in a coffee cup gets hot; convection, the circulation of warm
and cool layers of gas; and radiation, the flow of light waves or heat
waves through space that may or may not contain matter.

Prior to about 1900, astronomers generally supposed that convec-
tion was the major process controlling flow of energy, with heated gas
rising and cool gas descending, as in the earth’s atmosphere. For
convection to occur, however, some very special conditions must be
fulfilled.

Imagine a balloon—a weightless balloon—filled with air. I hold
one here in my hands, though you cannot see it, of course, because
it is invisible. The temperature and pressure are the same as in the
surrounding air. If I release the balloon, therefore, it shows no tend-
ency to rise or fall.

But let me lift this balloon a few feet. Air pressure up here
is somewhat less than where the balloon was originally. And so the
balloon must expand slightly to equalize the external pressure. The
invisible, weightless skin of the balloon holds the gas together. As
the balloon expands, the air inside it must cool. We now measure the
outside temperature to see if it is higher than, equal to, or less than
that inside the balloon. If the balloon is colder than its surroundings,
the air inside is denser and heavier. The balloon tends to fall back to
its original position. If the two temperatures are equal, the balloon,
with its weightless skin, tends to stay in its new position. However,
if the balloon is hotter than its surroundings, the air inside will be
lighter than the air outside. The balloon will tend to rise faster and
faster, as long as this condition persists. A true hot-air balloon!

On earth, the air around us is usually full of these rising and
falling invisible balloons. Of course I use the word “balloons” in a
figurative sense, because the gas really does not possess the “invisible,
weightless skin” I postulated, But this absence of an envelope does
not significantly change the picture. Volumes of gas will rise or fall,
whether they are enclosed or not. The rising masses are the “thermals”
used by birds or human pilots of gliders to soar to great heights. The
vast sea of air can be very bumpy—as many air travelers realize when
a rising or falling blast of air may tip even a large plane.

Although we do not see the thermals in the lower atmosphere, we
often can see their upper boundaries, where the rising gas has cooled
so much that water vapor begins to condense and form a cloud. As
a matter of fact, the condensation process supplies new heat to the
rising gas—lights a fire in the balloon, figuratively speaking. And so
the gas ascends even more violently than before, like the Chinese “Fire
Balloons” that used to climax our Fourth of July celebrations.
Clouds, therefore, can be violently turbulent, which is why pilots,
especially of small planes, try to avoid them in flight. And you will

218 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

note that the atmosphere above the clouds tends to be smooth. No
more balloons or thermals. No more “convection,” as we term the
rising and falling of air. The “balloons” have reached a ceiling where
the air above is quiet and stable.

I ask you to bear with me a moment longer, while I discuss the
horizontal flow of air masses. The sun heats the earth’s atmosphere,
as the earth turns on its axis, like a roast on a spit. The heating is
greatest near the equator and the gas will rise in that area, allowing
the cooler air from the poles to flow in and take its place. The phe-
nomena of weather and atmospheric circulation are very complex.
But the basic flow comes from absorbed solar heat, with forces of the
earth’s rotation playing an important part.

And so, in the vast sea of air, we find not only violent streams of
vertical turbulence, but also streams and patterns of horizontal flow.
These include tornadoes and hurricanes and the over-all pattern of
cyclonic weather.

But what has this sea of terrestrial air to do with the solar
atmosphere? Ever since man started to observe the sun, astronomers
have employed analogy with the earth’s atmosphere as a means of
interpreting solar phenomena. Galileo himself, discoverer of sun-
spots, suggested that the dark areas were clouds of a sort, floating in
the sun’s atmosphere and carried across the disk by simple rotation.
In this view, elementary as it was, Galileo was far nearer the truth
than were many of his successors. He at least recognized the atmos-
pheric nature of the phenomena. Lalande, for example, suggested
that spots were cold mountain peaks, towering above the luminous
surface. And even the great William Herschel, again influenced by
analogy and his preconceptions, regarded spots as holes in the fiery,
luminous clouds, through which we could glimpse the cool surface
beneath.

In 1794 Herschel wrote:

The sun... appears to be nothing else than a very eminent, large, and lurid
planet, evidently the first or, in strictness of speaking, the only primary one of
our system; all others being secondary to it. Its similarity to the other globes
of the solar system with regard to its solidity, its atmosphere, and its diversified
surface; the rotation upon its axis, and the fall of heavy bodies, lead us on to
suppose that it is also most probably inhabited, like the rest of the planets, by
beings whose organs are adapted to the peculiar circumstances of that vast globe.

Peculiar indeed, in the light of modern knowledge! Even in the
relatively cool solar atmosphere, the temperature is so high that all
chemical substances are vaporized.

But even if Herschel proposed a view that we cannot accept today,
he did recognize the importance of circulation in maintaining the
physical state of the solar atmosphere. His theory was not idle specu-
lation. He visualized the presence of violent winds and suggested

THE EDGE OF THE SUN—-MENZEL 219

that the “luminous decompositions” responsible for the light “must
unavoidably be attended with great agitations, such as with us mignt
even be called hurricanes.” Herschel postulated the existence of
“empyreal gas,” an unstable substance whose decomposition produced
the solar radiation. Excess generation of this substance would lead
to instabilities of the sun’s atmosphere. The gas would burst violently
through the intermediate regions, causing openings and sunspots and
generally promoting “maintenance of the general iuminous
phenomena.”

Many years later, John Herschel proposed an alternative theory of
sunspots in terms of a general circulation of the solar atmosphere. He
knew that terrestrial hurricanes and cylones owe their existence to
temperature differences between pole and equator, as I have already
noted. He argued that the centrifugal force of rotation would cause
the sun to bulge at the equator and thicken the atmosphere. Since
Herschel believed that solar radiation originated in the outer layers,
his argument indicated an atmosphere hotter at the equator than at
the poles. Thus one would expect strong horizontal driving forces, as
in the terrestrial atmosphere. ‘The sunspots were to be hurricanes,
holes cut by the whirlwind that exposed the cooler layers below.

C. A. Young, of Princeton, noted that any existing temperature
difference should in reality occur in the reverse sense. The poles
should be hotter than the equator because they are nearer the center
of the sun. He pointed out that the effect must be insensible, how-
ever, since there is no detectable difference in brightness between the
polar and equatorial limbs of the sun. The spots showed no “system-
atic drift north or south as solar trade-winds would necessarily
produce.”

Faye and Secchi rejected the horizontal-circulation theory and inde-
pendently suggested that spots resulted from gases flowing outward
under internal pressure. ‘The proponents of this hypothesis withdrew
it when they became convinced that the spectrum of superheated gas
should show emission lines rather than the absorption spectrum charac-
teristic of spots. The argument is actually fallacious, though it ap-
peared to be sound at the time.

Hale’s discovery in 1914 that sunspots possess powerful magnetic
fields played an important part in the formulation of our theories. It
was immediately apparent that this magnetism must arise from circu-
lating electric currents. And, for some obscure reason, scientists con-
cluded that these currents could come into being only if the matter
itself were circulating. In other words, astronomers revived the
concept of sunspots as vortices. Practically every book on the sun
written since that time and every textbook on astronomy refers to
sunspots as “stormy areas,” in every sense analogous to terrestrial

220 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

cyclones. On earth, a cyclone is a region of low pressure into which
the surrounding gases are expanding, subject to adiabatic cooling.
Also, cyclones are vortices, which derive their motion from the Coriolis
force of the earth’s rotation. Thus, astronomers were in effect going
back to the “trade-wind” hypothesis for sunspot origin, despite the
lack of evidence for differential temperature between pole and equator
to serve as a driving mechanism. There was, perhaps, the pious hope
that the sun’s well-known equatorial acceleration might in some way
achieve the desired result.

The vortex hypothesis ran into a good many obstacles and Hale
himself was well aware of them. The discovery that sunspot groups
in the northern and southern hemispheres switched their polarities
from one cycle to the next was a serious complication. On earth,
cyclonic motion is counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and
clockwise in the Southern. Since the direction of the earth’s rotation
fixes the sign of the Coriolis force we could not possibly get a reversal
of directions in the terrestrial atmosphere. Hence, if the same forces
were responsible for the solar vortices, and if the vortex were respon-
sible in turn for the magnetism, why should we expect the reversal ?
Hale sought to show that the directions of the whirls in the upper
atmosphere were invariant, but neither the observations nor the argu-
ment were convincing.

Bjkernes proposed an ad hoc model, in which the sun contained
four doughnut-shaped vortices below the surface, two in each hemi-
sphere. Each pair of vortices rotated in a different direction and also
rotated around each other, the outermost vortex moving toward the
equator while the other sank and moved poleward through the hole
in the outer doughnut. This picture accounted satisfactorily for the
reversal if the direction of vortex rotation determined the polarity.

Application of the relatively new science magnetohydrodynamics
casts new light on the nature of highly ionized gases in the presence
of a magnetic field. A gas, sufficiently hot so that the electrons have
been torn from most of its component atoms, is highly conductive to
electricity. The magnetic fields associated with any electric currents
that may be present impart to the gas a certain amount of rigidity, as
if the material were semisolid. Biermann has pointed out that con-
vection has a hard time getting started in such a gas. The atoms can
fiow up and down, to a certain extent, parallel to the lines of force.
But we cannot expect the violent turbulence ordinarily associated with
strong convection. We must, therefore, completely revise our ideas
about sunspots. They are not storm areas. They are, in fact, quite
the reverse: islands of intense calm floating in the otherwise turbulent
sea of the sun’s entire convective atmosphere.

I discussed earlier the general nature of convective motion and
pointed out, in particular, that the presence of water vapor in the

THE EDGE OF THE SUN—MENZEL 221

earth’s atmosphere enhances convection because the condensation of
water vapor heats the gas, putting back into it the calories that went
to cool the air when the water evaporated.

No water exists in the sun’s atmosphere, of course. But Unsdéld
showed some time ago that a completely analogous process takes place
there—ionization of hydrogen. Since hydrogen is by far the most
abundant constituent of the sun’s atmosphere, and since most of this
gas is completely ionized at the lower levels, a large bubble, cooling
as it rises, would eventually become neutral. As the electrons recom-
bine with their ions, they release a large quantity of energy which
can be used for heating the rising gas. The convection can be extreme.

The shining surface of the sun, the part not affected by sunspots, is
by no means uniformly bright. It contains many bright flecks on a
slightly darker background, spots that look like foam-capped waves
on a stormy sea. We have generally referred to this structure as
“oranulation.” The granules are 300 miles or so across on the average,
with considerable variation in size. In the neighborhood of sunspots
they are much coarser, if indeed the bright structure we can see can
properly be called granules. Near the limb of the sun, where we are
looking tangentially down to the solar atmosphere and hence see the
higher layers, large brightened patches with a veined structure take
the place of the relatively simple granulation. These are the so-called
faculae.

Astronomers were first inclined to regard this granuiar pattern as
arising in some sort of convection. But this theory gradually gave
way to the idea that the white spots were clouds of a solid material,
floating in the gas and appearing more luminous because of their
higher emissivity, like a gas mantle heated to incandescence. We
had to abandon this second hypothesis and revert to the earlier view
when we found that the solar temperature was too high to permit
the presence of either liquid or solid matter.

Astronomers have long discussed the mode employed by the sun
for the escape of energy from the deep interior. Initially, they took
for granted that convection was the whole mechanism and the early
theories of stellar constitution were devised on that hypothesis. But
around the turn of the century, Schuster, K. Schwarzchild, and others
showed that radiative processes would dominate, with the atmosphere
in stable equilibrium. But they reckoned without knowledge of the
effect that hydrogen ionization would have on the equilibrium, and
it remained for Unséld to demonstrate the importance of the hydro-
gen convective zone in stellar structure. The turbulent convection
serves to bring the hotter layers closer to the surface than they would
have been in simple radiative equilibrium. We do not know pre-
cisely how deep the outer convective layer extends, because small
changes in the initial assumptions can lead to great differences far

222 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

below the solar surface. The turbulent layers may involve as much
as the outer 10 percent of the solar radius.

We are now in a position to understand the darkness of the spot
relative to the surrounding photosphere. The answer is extremely
simple. In a region where magnetism has not inhibited convection,
the outer layers are hotter than they would be otherwise. They are,
consequently, more luminous than the spots, where convection does
not occur. In the region immediately surrounding the spots, the
convective layer must rise higher and indeed may even penetrate the
photosphere, since rising currents of hot gas must carry outward the
extra energy that the cooler spot cannot transport from the solar
interior by radiative transfer.

One may speculate what the physical state of the sun would be if
a magnetic field strong enough to inhibit convection through the
entire solar atmosphere should suddenly come into existence. In the
absence of convection, energy transport would have to depend on
the less efficient radiative processes. The temperature of the photo-
spheric layer of the sun would cool by at least 2,000 degrees, to a
value approximating that of a sunspot. Indeed, under such condi-
tions, we could describe the solar surface as consisting of a single
spot. With the effective solar temperature reduced to about two-
thirds of its normal value, the total amount of energy radiated, which
varies as the fourth power of the temperature, would decline to about
20 percent of its present value.

We have previously noted that radiation takes some 50,000,000 years
te leak out from the core. By the same argument, a change in the
sun’s external layers could not have any immediate effect on the solar
interior, which would continue to generate energy at its present rate.
The accumulated radiation inside the sun would cause it to swell
gradually until, some tens of millions of years hence, the increased
surface area could compensate for the lowered radiation flux. Even
a small expansion, however, would cause marked changes in the rate
of energy production and we cannot foretell whether equilibrium will
occur or not.

The greatest immediate effect would occur in the sun’s outer layers,
especially those now in convective equilibrium. Since these layers
contain only a relatively small amount of heat we should expect their
configuration to change in tens of years rather than in millions. The
solar atmosphere would expand and alter the temperature distribution
simultaneously to values consistent with the sun’s present total output
of energy. Although such a model is extreme for the sun, it might
apply with some changes to certain types of stars, notably the long-
period and Cepheid variables. Possibly no static state will exist and
the distended atmosphere will oscillate between maximum and mini-

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—MENZEL

Sunspot area with large coronagraph and narrow-band H-a filter. The structure is largely
chromospheric, with prominences. Note the patches of bright hydrogen emission and
the long, curved filaments of absorbing hydrogen, probably oriented in part by the
magnetic fields of the region. (Sacramento Peak Observatory.)

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—MENZEL PEATE 2

Hydrogen flare near maximum. (Sacramento Peak Observatory.)

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—MENZEL

1. Typical ascending prominence. ‘The helical structure of the luminous region suggests
that electric currents are partly responsible for the formation. (Sacramento Peak
Observatory.)

2. Hedgerow prominence, photographed in hydrogen light with large coronagraph. Note
detailed filamentary structure. (Sacramento Peak Observatory.)

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—MENZEL PLATE 4

Five successive photographs showing downward growth of loops. Note the simultaneous
formation of two independent loops. (High Altitude Observatory.)

THE EDGE OF THE SUN—MENZEL 223

mum positions to make the average flux equal to the rate of energy
generation deep in the interior.

In the photospheric and subphotospheric layers, the solar atmos-
phere may be quite turbulent, though the convective flow is not par-
ticularly rapid. The rising hot gas alters the temperature distribution,
but kinetic energy of the convective matter does not appreciably
affect the atmosphere. At higher levels, however, marked changes
occur in the character of the convection. The speed of flow increases
as the bubbles expand into regions of lower density, until the gas
moves with a speed equal to or even greater than that of sound in
the medium. Intense shock waves may then occur. The gas becomes
hot as the kinetic energy of the moving clouds gradually dissipates
into random motions of individual atoms. This enhancement of con-
vection explains why the chromosphere, the layer immediately over-
lying the photosphere, is so jagged and rough, consisting of rapidly
changing jets and spicules. Motion pictures, taken by Richard Dunn
at Sacramento Peak Observatory, clearly demonstrate the violence of
activity in these outer layers, and Richard Thomas has studied the
heating effect of the jets.

The chromosphere, which until recently could be studied only at
the time of total solar eclipse, presented the astronomer with many
interesting problems. Of particular significance was the appearance
of lines of ionized helium in the spectrum, radiation requiring ex-
tremely high excitation. At the same time the intensity of radiation
from neutral and ionized metals suggested a somewhat lower tem-
perature. ‘The answer now becomes clear. We actually encounter a
wide range of excitation which varies according to the amount of
heating provided by the shock wave. The fact that the excitation
appears to increase upward is thus consistent with this new view. As-
tronomers were originally very much concerned to find that the upper
chromosphere had temperatures ranging up to 25,000° C. or more
when the effective surface temperature of the sun was only 6,000°.
Astronomers contributing to these recent advances include Athay,
Pecker, Thomas, Zirin, and Menzel.

The concept of a dynamic solar atmosphere now extends to the
corona as well as the chromosphere. There are a few unsolved prob-
lems, however, chiefly the observed fact that motions of coronal gas
appear to be slower than those in neighboring prominences. Ap-
parently the corona derives some of its support from the sun’s general
magnetic field. To derive such support, material must be shot out
from the sun at very high speeds. The observed coronal tempera-
tures, derived from widths of the coronal lines, are at least 1,000,000°
and in some regions as high as 5,000,000°.

The idea recently suggested by S. Chapman, that the corona may
extend even beyond the earth, is particularly appealing after one

224 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

accepts the startling concept that we lie below the edge of the sun.
But Chapman goes even further and suggests that the conduction of
heat from the solar surface through the corona cannot be neglected and
that perhaps our ionosphere derives some of its high temperature from
direct thermal contact with the corona through which the earth is
moving. Shock waves may even be able to traverse the entire distance
between the sun and the corona. On contact with the earth, the wave
could distort the earth’s magnetic field, producing ionospheric and
magnetic storms, as well as certain types of auroral phenomena.

But let us return to the more important “edge” of the sun, defined
by the photosphere and chromosphere and other visible appendages
of the solar neighborhood. Around sunspots and also around other
areas that presumably have intense magnetic fields associated with
them, we observe increased activity. Wesometimes see matter ejected,
usually in the form of surges. In all probability additional surges
occur that are invisible to us in the hydrogen radiations we ordinarily
employ for observation. The mere fact that we observe more matter
falling back toward the solar surface than we do leaving the sun
clearly indicates that some of the material must go up invisibly, prob-
ably in a stage of high temperature and high excitation.

Several different processes are undoubtedly responsible for the ejec-
tion of the material as well as for the form and structure of down-
falling masses. As I have already indicated, the hydrogen convec-
tive zone, especially with the activity enhanced in the neighborhood
of magnetic fields, isa major force. But the electric currents responsi-
ble for such fields probably give a marked assist. Although the mag-
netohydrodynamics of the situation are too complicated for detailed
calculation, argument based on simple engineering models reveals
that the electromagnetic forces are ample to eject material. The forces
acting on the simplest of all configurations, a single loop of current,
are well known. The loop tends to expand indefinitely in radius, and
the diameter of the current-carrying wire tends to diminish, if the
wire should happen to be compressible.

In the solar atmosphere, of course, no solid wires exist. The cur-
rents are free to move and change their position. However, as Cowling
pointed out long ago, the strength of the currents and the size of
the current-carrying elements indicate that magnetic fields will not
change rapidly in the solar atmosphere. A sunspot, for example, must
have an electric current of 10'7-10** amperes circulating about it. We
cannot break such a current arbitrarily in less than thousands of years.
A magnetic field may be transported from one place to another in the
highly conductive volume, but it can scarcely arise spontaneously
except in rare instances.

The physical nature of certain forms of prominences presents an in-
teresting puzzle. Downward-moving gas may suddenly become visible

THE EDGE OF THE SUN—MENZEL 225

at a certain height and break up into knots or streamers, as it flows
toward the solar surface. Such an observation implies that the hot,
coronal matter suddenly became cooler or at least denser, so that the
hydrogen ions could recombine with the electrons and thus radiate the
characteristic spectrum of neutral hydrogen. In the hot, tenuous
corona, recombination goes on at a negligible rate.

The so-called loop prominences, which constitute a distinctive class,
present a very special problem. Employing motion-picture photog-
raphy, we have frequently recorded the life history of the loops. A1-
though some variations occur, they generally start as an exceptionally
brilliant point well above the solar surface and then grow downward
on both sides, often attaining the dazzling brilliance of a solar flare.
On occasion, several loops may form and grow almost simultaneously.
The total development is generally rapid, of the order of two or three
minutes. As the loop fades in brightness, knots or lumps form and
tend to flow downward along both sides. Although the loop maintains
its shape, the lumps continue to form mysteriously and descend in
regular procession. The downward flow may last for an hour or
longer. The surprising thing is that we do not see material flowing
into the loop.

I have devised an ad hoc explanation of the phenomenon. Suppose
that convection, turbulence, or some associated activity has blown into
the corona not only material from the rim of a sunspot but also some
of the associated electric currents. We expect the pinch effect to
operate as previously described, sweeping material in toward the axis
of the current. Increased pressure causes ions and electrons to recom-
bine. The simple pinch is unstable, however. As it develops, the
central core tends to break into separate lumps, something like a
string of sausages. Gravitation probably has little or no effect. The
force of the pinch squeezes the material downward toward the sun,
where the pinch is weakest. The pinch continues until finally all the
current in the region has united, sweeping up the involved ionized
gas.

It is significant, I think, that fuzzy loops show up in the hot corona,
associated with the sharp loops of the cooler hydrogen emissions.

A magnetic field can also act as a mechanism for ejecting matter
under certain conditions. It is well known that any conductor, such
as aluminum or copper, introduced into a magnetic field, experiences
a resistance. The force originates because the field does not pene-
trate the conductor, wherein surface currents must be induced. If the
piece of metal, so introduced, is later released, it will fly out. In cer-
tain regions of the sun’s atmosphere, perhaps near the poles or in the
borders of spots, where a weak field cannot completely inhibit convec-
tion, lumps of ionized gas may become separated from the field, whose

226 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

lines of magnetic force will squeeze the mass and eject it into space. I
have called this type of action the “watermelon-seed effect,” because
the ejected lump is something like a slippery watermelon seed held
between the fingers and squeezed. Note especially that the imparted
velocity may be many times greater than that of the moving fingers.
In the case of the sun, the resultant jet may very well be supersonic.

The magnetic fields of the sun must exert a profound effect on the
flow of gas through the corona and prominences. In regions of low
density and strong field, the material will generally be constrained to
move along the lines of force. But in regions where the density is
higher, the ionized gas will sweep the lines of force along with it.
Thus the contention made by some astronomers that the flow patterns
of prominences provide a map of the sclar magnetic field is not gener-
ally true. Often, as for the loop prominences described above, the
flow is along the lines of current rather than of magnetic force.

From time to time we observe, usually near sunspots, areas that
shine particularly brilliantly in the light of hydrogen. The physical
nature of such eruptions has been the subject of discussion for a long
time. Observation shows that the flares usually start as one or more
brilliant points of light, growing rapidly to delineate a veined net-
work, which is apparently merely an enhancement of the characteristic
reticular structure that existed before the outburst. Although con-
vection may have been responsible for the initial ejection of heated
gases, the growth from bright points into linear structures strongly
suggests that flares seen against the disk are loop prominences seen
at the limb. In fact, the most famous of all flares, which occurred on
September 1, 1859, clearly suggests such an association.

Two independent observers, Carrington and Hodgson, simultane-
ously saw two brilliant points of light appear within an active sunspot
group they were sketching. According to the former observer, the
spots rapidly developed into the shape of a crescent. These observa-
tions were in white light, not in Ha. Hence the flares must have been
extremely intense. ‘Their surface brightness, according to estimates,
was at least five or six times that of the neighboring photosphere.
Within five minutes the outburst had disappeared. There is no doubt
in my mind that the “crescents” reported were loop prominences seen
from above. However, even though the flare itself represents a rela-
tively stationary phenomenon in the solar atmosphere, extending its
growth by propagation along definite paths, observation indicates
that some material may be ejected. Dark absorbing clouds, often
moving at high speeds, have been seen to accompany flares. It is too
early to say, however, whether this represents an effect of the flare as
such or is merely an outlying portion of the ejected matter that was
later condensed to form the flare. In certain instances we have iden-

THE EDGE OF THE SUN—MENZEL 227

tified surges seen at the limb as true flares, so that the flare is by no
means restricted to the loop form.

I wish to point out that a new technique is rapidly contributing
knowledge about the sun and solar activity: the so-called field of radio
astronomy. Time and space do not permit detailed discussion of the
phenomenon. However, it is certain that simultaneous optical and
radio observations will give important information about solar ac-
tivity at various levels in the sun’s atmosphere, especially since the
lower frequencies can escape only from the higher, more tenuous
coronal regions. We are still finding out important facts and con-
clude that the edge of the sun well deserves the attention that scien-
tists are currently devoting to this subject.

Reprints of the various articles in this Report may be obtained, as long as
the supply lasts, on request addressed to the Editorial and Publications
Division, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 25, D. C.

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The Mystery of Mars’

By H. P. Witxins, F. R. A. S.

President, International Lunar Society
London

[With 2 plates]

Mars is preeminently the planet of mystery. Because it is farther
from the sun than the earth, it takes longer to complete a revolution,
and every two years we overtake it, when it shines in the sky as a
bright red star. The red color, suggestive of war and carnage, was
~ the reason why the name of Mars, the Roman god of war, was attached
to this planet. The red color of Mars contrasts strangely with the pure
white of Venus or the silvery luster of Jupiter and is too pronounced
for anybody to mistake it.

Although to the unaided eye Mars seems merely a bright star,
a good telescope reveals it as a small full moon, that is to say, we can
see the face or disk of this little world. We say “little” because Mars
is much smaller than the earth, being in fact only 4,200 miles in diam-
eter. A telescope shows certain markings on the disk, and they move
in the course of an hour or two, which proves that Mars turns on its
axis and has days and nights just as we do, although they are longer.
Instead of turning around once every 24 hours as the earth does, Mars
requires an extra 37 minutes 22.654 seconds, so that although a smaller
world it does not spin round so quickly.

Mars has seasons similar to those of the earth but much longer.
They are also more pronounced, because the mean or average distance
of Mars is 48.6 millions of miles farther from the sun than that of the
earth. From Mars the sun must look smaller, and gives out a pro -
portionally smaller amount of light and heat; we would expect Mars
to be a colder world. Mars has an atmosphere, but it is much more
rarefied than ours, and it seems safe to say that we would not be able
to breathe it because of the deficiency of oxygen, most of which seems
to have been absorbed in chemical combination with the surface rocks.

When Mars is comparatively near to us it makes a beautiful picture
in a really good telescope. At such times we see a yellowish-red disk,

* Chapter 4 of “Mysteries of Space and Time.” Reprinted by permission of
the publishers, Frederick Muller Ltd., London.

229

230 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

generally with a gleaming white spot at the top and sometimes at the
bottom as well, while on the otherwise red background are grayish
patches. If the telescope is a very large one, we may also see two
specks of light, like small stars, moving rapidly around the planet;
these are its two moons or satellites.

But what makes Mars the most interesting of all the planets is not
its appearance as seen at any time with a telescope, but the changes
which often take place there. The white spots at the top and the
bottom mark the north and south poles of Mars. We know that our
polar regions are distinguished for their low temperatures and de-
posits of ice and snow. Seen from space, from the moon, or from
Mars, the earth would have gleaming white spots at the top and at
the bottom, just as we see on Mars. It is generally believed that these
white patches at the poles of Mars are deposits of ice and snow, but
they also partly consist of high cirrus clouds. We know this because
in photographs of Mars taken in infrared light, which penetrates to
the surface, these patches are smaller than as seen in the telescope or
on photographs taken in ultraviolet light, which show only the higher-
level features.

Confirmation of the belief that Mars has true polar caps is given
by the fact that they are largest in the winter time on Mars, begin
to dwindle as spring comes on, and are smallest in summer. The cap
at the south pole has even been known to disappear altogether, which
never happens with the northern one. This is easily understood be-
cause when it is summer in the southern hemisphere Mars is nearest
to the sun, and therefore receives the maximum amount of heat. It is,
however, strange that while the pole is at the center of the northern
cap, the south pole is 180 miles away from the center of the southern
cap.

The grayish patches on the disk are permanent features, and for
a long time were believed to be seas, because water reflects the sunlight
less strongly than the land. It is now known that these patches are
not seas, although they may once have been so. They are faint in
the winter time, but darken as spring gives way to summer, that is to
say, as the polar caps melt and the ice and snow are converted into
water. This suggests that water has something to do with the darken-
ing, and the consensus is that the dark areas are tracts of vegetation.
What this is, whether the vegetation consists of plants, shrubs, or
trees, we cannot say; we only know that it is vegetation of some sort.

These grayish patches are more numerous in the southern than in
the northern hemisphere, and encircle the south pole. Many of them
run into or join up with each other, but there are isolated patches.

The remaining parts of the disk are uniform yellowish-red and are
almost certainly sandy deserts. Indeed Mars appears to ha a world

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—WILKINS PEATE 1

Mars as observed by H. P. Wilkins on June 17, 1954, with the 60-inch Mount Wilson
reflector.

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PLATE 2

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—WILKINS

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THE MYSTERY OF MARS—WILKINS onl

on which there is very little water, most of it being locked up in the
polar caps. But how does the water released by the melting of the
polar caps reach the grayish patches, as it to all appearances does?

It was in 1877 that Mars made one of its close approaches to the
earth, and modern study of the planet dates from that year. One
spectacular discovery was that of its two satellites by Asaph Hall
with what was then the largest refracting telescope in the world, of 26
inches in aperture. While this discovery came from America, another
came from Italy, where Signor Schiaparelli, using a telescope of 834
inches in aperture, found a number of straight and narrow lines which
he called canali, the Italian word for channels. This was translated
into English as canals, and for the first time the world heard of the
famous canals on Mars.

For many years nobody else succeeded in seeing the canals, and they
were put down to Schiaparelli’s imagination but gradually they were
confirmed by other observers with larger telescopes. In 1894 an
American amateur, Prof. Percival Lowell, built his own observa-
tory at Flagstaff in Arizona, and equipped it with a fine-quality 24-
inch refracting telescope for observing the planets, in particular Mars.
Professor Lowell’s results were of the highest interest, and some of
them were very startling, although scientific men have not accepted
them in their entirety.

Professor Lowell believed that Mars is a drying-up world, where
every drop of water is precious. The inhabitants were in a sore plight;
they had to cultivate crops, and the only water available was that in
the polar caps. There was only one thing to do. The inhabitants be-
came one community, and constructed a vast network of channels for
the water to be conveyed from the polar caps to the regions where it
is needed, which are the patches of vegetation. Since open canals
would be wasteful and the loss by evaporation enormous, the canals
niust be covered, and it would be necessary for the water to be helped,
for instance, by pumping, in its world-wide journey. Finally certain
dark spots, occasionally found at the spots where one canal crosses
another, were considered by Professor Lowell as the centers of civili-
zation, the cities of Mars. Lowell implied that the Martians were
engineers, and that the canals were artificial waterways dug by them
in an attempt to preserve the race in its fight against the encroaching
desert.

This fascinating idea captures the imagination, for if true it means
that we see on Mars markings made by an alien but intelligent race.
In order to distinguish one spot from another, and to compare draw-
ings made by different observers, names have been given to the various
spots, the principal ones being shown on the chart, which is on a
cylindrical projection. A glance at the map (pl. 2) will show that zero

4125755716

232 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

longitude, the Greenwich meridian of Mars, passes through a dark
marking shaped like the open beak of a bird. To the left of this is a
large, dark and tapering marking, one of the most prominent of the
dark patches believed to be vegetation. This is called the Syrrts
Magor. From its tip there runs a wide canal, Nitus, which curves
round to a dark dot known as Coram Parus. Another canal
NEPENTHES, curves from the left side of Syrtis Major, passes a round
spot called Lacus Maris and ends in another spot, Trrron Lacus.
Although the Syrtis Major is always there, its shape varies from time
to time. Sometimes it has a long, pointed tip; at other times, as in
1922, the tip is missing, while white patches have been seen hiding a
good deal of the Syrtis for a few weeks. These temporary white
patches are certainly clouds, and they are often seen over those parts
of Mars on which the sun is just rising, as though they form during
the night. The canals from Syrtis also vary a good deal in tint, while
Lacus Meris, which on Lowell’s theory would be a Martian city, is
sometimes small and faint while at others it is large and dark, pre-
sumably according to the amount of water available.

The curved edge of Syrtis Major ends at a small round spot, Syrtts
Mrnor, about which is a dark streak called Marz Tyrruenum. On
its left is another but larger patch, Marz Crimmertium, to which many
canals run. The area to the left of Syrtis Major and north of
Tyrrhenum and Cimmerium is desert, a sandy waste, in the center of
which is another round and dark spot, called Trivrom CHarRonrTIS.
This spot is peculiar because occasionally it becomes two separate
spots, which after a time reunite. If Trivium is a Martian city it is
situated in a very queer place, right in the middle of the desert. Two
canals, one called Sryx and the other Hapzs, connect this desert spot
with other canals running up to the north pole, and the water appears
to travel along them all the way from the polar cap to Trivium in 12
degrees north latitude.

Still farther to the left, or east, is another dark streak, Marr
Strenum, on the opposite side of Mars to Syrtis Major, surrounded
by desert. East of this is a large light area, in the middle of which is
a dark patch from which canals radiate. This spot is sometimes called
the “Eye of Mars” because it looks just like an eye; its proper name
is Lacus Sous, or the “Lake of the Sun.” To the south of all these
dark areas is a large dusky spot, extending up to the snows around the
south pole and called Mare Auvstrate, or the “Southern Sea.” Here
and there are a kind of bright islands, such as Hetias and the Tuytes.
Between the zero meridian and the Eye of Mars is a pointed dark
streak, the Marcaritirer Srnus or “Pearl Bearing Gulf,” and this
runs into the track of vegetation known as the Marr ErytoHreum.

From these dark patches canals run across the northern deserts to
dark patches grouped around the north pole. Although there are few

THE MYSTERY OF MARS—WILKINS 236

of these in the northern hemisphere which, as we have already said,
is chiefly desert, one is very prominent and sometimes even more prom-
inent than the Syrtis Major. This dark spot is called the Marr
AcIpALium, and is connected with the Pearl Bearing Gulf by a wide
canal called Inpus. A little to the right, or west, of Acidalium is one
of the dark spots in the desert, called Lacus Lunaz or Lake of the
Moon. From this spot a wide canal, GAvueczs, crosses the desert to the
patch of vegetation Aurorar Stnus, near the Eye of Mars. The last
desert outpost is the Lucus Ascreus. Then comes the great desert
of Amazonta, which extends over 90° of longitude to Trivium
Charontis. This desert is crossed by a few canals of which Lycuvs,
Brontés and Oreus are the largest. Immediately to the west of
Trivium is a large white area called Exystum, bordered by canals and
with a network of them right up to the pole.

These are the chief permanent markings on Mars, but they are never
seen all together. During the winter the polar caps are large, while
the canals are then either invisible or can only be traced with diffi-
culty ; but as the cap melts, a dark girdle appears around it, probably
a temporary polar sea, and then the canals begin to appear. At first
only a little bit near the melting snow can be seen, but this gradually
gets longer and longer until the whole of the canal is marked out as
far as one of the patches of vegetation. Like the canals, these patches
are mere shades during the winter, but begin to darken as the canals
from the poles fill up, and are very prominent during the summer.
With the onset of autumn they change from a dark grayish-green to
brown, and then become mere shades in winter.

All this fits in beautifully with Lowell’s idea of artificial waterways,
but there are other opinions. With his 24-inch telescope Lowell saw
and drew the canals as narrow and continuous lines, but another emi-
nent observer, Antoniadi, using a larger telescope, the 33-inch at
Meudon, near Paris, declared that these narrow lines were illusions.
He said that the reason why Lowell saw and drew them as continuous
lines was due solely to his telescope being too small to show their
true nature. With the great telescope at Meudon, the canals were
seen not to be continuous but made up of a series of dots and dashes,
arranged one after the other in straight lines. Whether the canals are
continuous or not, whether they are natural or artificial, all observers
agree that what we see is not the actual ditch, assuming they are
ditches, but the vegetation to either side of them. An American ob-
server, John E. Mellish, declares that with the 40-inch refracting tele-
scope at the Yerkes Observatory, the largest instrument of its type in
the world, the canals appeared as cracks, wide and eroded down, com-
paratively shallow and filled with water. Some of the very wide
canals were distinctly seen to be darker in the center, and resembled
ditches filled with water and with marshes and vegetation along their

234 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

sides. The dark, round spots, which Lowell believed to be cities, oases
in the desert, were seen by Mellish as craters, presumably of volcanic
origin, and also filled with water. |

We have three opinions about these mysterious canals. The first
regards them as ditches dug by the Martians and indicative of an
advanced civilization, the work of superhuman intelligences. The
second does not attempt to decide whether they are natural or arti-
ficial, but denies that they are continuous features, declaring them
to be series of isolated and apparently quite separate spots. The third
regards them as natural features, in fact cracks in the surface and
therefore natural waterways.

The regular appearances of the isolated dark spots, Lowell’s cities,
were also to some extent broken down into collections of separate dots
with the Meudon telescope. On the other hand, Mellish regards them
as craters, and therefore regular. That there is life of some sort
on Mars is now generally admitted, but the question to be answered
is whether this consists merely of vegetation, possibly with some
elementary animal life, or whether there exist on Mars today, or
have existed in the past, creatures somewhat resembling man, beings
capable of reasoning and of constructing civil engineering projects
on a scale far exceeding anything which man has achieved on the
earth. |

This question of whether we have brothers in the sky, or at any
rate on Mars, is of the utmost importance. If there are intelligent
beings on Mars it is not impossible that they may seek to communicate
with us, or even to leave their drying-up planet and migrate to our
pleasantly watered and warmer world. Is it possible for highly
organized beings to exist on Mars?

We already know that the diameter of Mars is 4,200 miles, to which
we can add that this globe is not as closely packed as the earth, the
density being 3.94 times that of water, while the figure for the earth
is 5.52. The small diameter and the low density mean that the
mass of Mars, the amount of matter in it, is only slightly more than
one-tenth of that of the earth. The surface of Mars, or its area, is
not quite three-tenths and the intensity of gravity at its surface is
not quite four-tenths (more precisely 0.38) that of our globe.

The low surface gravity is just about sufficient to allow the planet
to retain an atmosphere composed of oxygen and nitrogen, with some
water vapor. The red color and the spectroscopic evidence that there
is little free oxygen in the atmosphere mean that much of the free
oxygen the atmosphere probably once possessed has entered into com-
bination with the surface rocks. The amount of water vapor is limited,
but still sufficient for the formation of polar caps and occasional
morning mists and clouds. The true water-vapor clouds can be dis-
tinguished from what appear to be dust or sand storms by their

THE MYSTERY OF MARS—WILKINS 235

white color. The yellowish clouds which have attracted the attention
of the best observers are thought to be sand storms, in which the sandy
surfaces of the deserts are whirled aloft by air currents. There must
be winds on Mars; but judging from the manner in which clouds of
any kind tend to rise and hang over the same region, without drifting
far, it seems that the atmospheric currents are usually ascending or
descending, probably associated with temperature variations.

The mean temperature on Mars must be much lower than that on
the earth, because the planet is so far from the sun and also on
account of its rarefied atmosphere. The best authorities believe that
the maximum temperature at noon on the equator is somewhere be-
tween 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit. From this maximum it must
fall rapidly as the poles are approached, and also both in the early
morning and the late afternoon for places on the equator. Mars is
certainly a cold world, but it is also a dry one; to this it may be
added that Mars is a smooth world.

Despite Mars being a small, dry, and cold world, there seems to
be some analogy between the conditions on Mars and some of the
more arid regions on the earth. A mysterious thing about the red
planet is the fact that although it is smaller than the earth but larger
than the moon, and thus fits in between them, it is much more smooth
than either. The moon clearly tells us that smallness of a planetary
globe is no bar to its having a rough and mountainous surface, but
on Mars it is doubtful whether there are any mountains higher than
the Welsh hills or the highlands of Scotland. Some authorities have
set the maximum height much lower, around 2,000 feet, and talk
about the featureless horizon on Mars and how, owing to the sharp
curvature of its surface, the ground must seem to rise up like a huge
convex shield, especially in the desert regions.

The great barrier to increasing our knowledge of Mars is an insur-
mountable one, namely distance. This, together with the limitations
imposed by our atmosphere, renders it certain that the largest tele-
scope man can ever construct will fail to solve the problem of the
type of Martian life. It is possible that we will eventually learn more
about this alien form of life by radar than by visual or photographic
means, unless such means are located somewhere comparatively close
to the planet, perhaps on one or either of its moons.

Every time that Mars comes to opposition, and is therefore most
favorably situated, enthusiastic and hopeful people “tune in” with
powerful radio sets in the hope that they may pick up signals from
the Martians. In 1924 and again in 1926 reports appeared in the
press of certain unidentified “pips” which might, but almost certainly
did not, originate from Mars. Assuming that intelligent beings exist
and attempt to contact us, the difficulty here would be to make any-

236 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

thing out of the sounds, as it is in the highest degree improbable that
they would make use of our terrestrial Morse code!

More nonsense has been written about Mars than about any other
planet. The only thing which science has established is the almost
certain existence of plant life on Mars, and the possibility that some
form of animal life may also exist. Beyond this we cannot go unless
the field is thrown open to speculation, when of course there is no
limit. There may be people on Mars and they may be anything you
like to imagine, but we know nothing about them, and up to the present
time nothing has been picked up which suggests that they are attempt-
ing to contact us.

It seems reasonable to conclude that if intelligences do exist, they
should most earnestly desire to leave their in many ways inhospitable
world, and visit ours. Even if they did succeed in the construction of
practical spaceships capable of traveling to the earth, our dense
atmosphere would prove a serious and possibly fatal barrier. Just a3
we would be asphyxiated if we attempted to breathe the thin atmos-
phere of Mars, so the Martians would be drowned by immersion in
our dense atmosphere. Only in the higher regions, near the summits
of our loftiest mountains, could they hope to survive, at least for
several generations and until they became acclimatized to their new
environment.

Mystery still surrounds the canals, bound up as they are with the
greater mystery of life. As a telescopic object, Mars is often rather
disappointing to casual observers. People imagine that we know more
than science admits, and expect a large telescope to show the planet
like a huge full moon with canals clearly revealed, and possibly even
see the canal boats which are imagined as passing to and fro along
these waterways. The actual view shows a small and not always
round disk of a yellowish-red color, on which the polar caps may be
plain enough, as are the darker markings, while the canals generally
appear as rather diffused streaks, Should the atmospheric condi-
tions be imperfect, as is usually the case, the view is even more disap-
pointing, as the whole thing is “fuzzy” and unsteady.

The proper place to solve the mystery of Mars is from one or another
of his satellites. ‘The nearer to the planet is the larger, and may have
a diameter of around 15 miles, while it is so close to the planet (only
3,900 miles from its surface) that it has to scamper around it in 7
hours 39 minutes 26.65 seconds. The outer moon is only 10 or 12 miles
in dimeter, and takes 1 day 6 hours 21 minutes 15.68 seconds to com-
plete a revolution at its distance of 12,900 miles from the surface.

The inner moon, PHozos, actually makes more than three revolu-
tions around Mars while the planet turns around once, so to the
Martians it must seem to rise in the west and set in the east. On
the other hand the outer moon, Drrmos, revolves around Mars in a

THE MYSTERY OF MARS—WILKINS 237

period which is less than 6 hours longer than that of Mars itself, and
to the Martians must seem to move very slowly across the sky. Deimos
rises in the east and sets in the west, in the same manner as the sun
and the stars. As seen from Mars it would look like a bright star;
its disk would be rather difficult to detect with the naked eye.

Both these moons are totally eclipsed at every “full moon,” and
also they frequently eclipse the sun. The solar eclipses are never total,
for even the nearer and larger moon, Phobos, can only appear about
a third of the diameter of the sun. There are no total eclipses of
the sun for the Martians; they are either partial or annular. The
shadow cones which the moons cast from the side turned away from
the sun never reach the surface of Mars. There are also eclipses of
Deimos by Phobos, but the latter moon moves so quickly that it only
eclipses the sun or occults Deimos for a short time, in both cases
measured in seconds. As luminaries they must cut a poor show, for
the total amount of light they afford during the night is far inferior
to that afforded by our single moon.

Owing to their small dimensions and their proximity to Mars, the
moons are difficult telescopic objects. The period of visibility is a
couple of months either side of the date of opposition, amounting to
three or four months at intervals of two years. Even the largest
telescopes fail to show any detail on their tiny disks; indeed, it
requires considerable attention to make out their disks and to dis-
tinguish them from stars.

In 1952 Mars was farther from the earth than in 1954, but higher
in the northern sky, and thus better placed for observers in Britain.
On May 17 the writer and Patrick Moore, observing together with
the writer’s 1514-inch reflector, saw Deimos clearly for more than half
an hour, following it until it had drawn so close to Mars as to be
lost in the glare. Moore has also caught Phobos with certainty with
his 1214-inch reflector, describing it on April 28, 1952, as “unmistakably
seen, but excessively faint even with Mars outside the telescopic field;
on the very limit of visibility with this instrument, at least to my
eyes.”

These moons add to the mystery of the red planet. Perhaps they
were two of the hundreds of minor planets which revolve around the
sun between Mars and Jupiter, captured by Mars during a close ap-
proach in the past. They are mere lumps of rock; we are not even
sure that they are globes, and it is not impossible that they may have
a somewhat irregular shape, as some of the minor planets seem to
have. Eros is an example of a small body, about the size of the
moons of Mars and perhaps slightly larger, which comes quite near
to the earth at certain times and varies greatly in brightness. It has
been suggested that this may be caused by Eros being a rough and
practically shapeless rocky mass.

9

238 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Owing to its proximity Phobos cannot be seen from the Martian
polar regions, as it is always hidden by the curvature of the surface of
Mars. In the equatorial zone it passes overhead, and must look con-
siderably larger when high up in the sky that when near the horizon.
A few moments’ thought will be sufficient to show that Phobos is
considerably nearer when overhead, and therefore looks as big as it
possibly can.

If Mars is inhabited by intelligent beings, and if they have tele-
scopes of equal power to ours, it would be easy to find out whether
these little moons also are inhabited. The rarefied atmosphere would
enable high powers to be used, bringing Phobos within a mile and
Deimos to within four miles. However, both moons are certainly
barren worlds, being devoid of atmospheres and appreciable surface
gravity. They would be admirably suitable for observatories, and
may be used as such during the coming era of space travel. What a
view of Mars could be obtained from Phobos! Seen from this little
world Mars would look over 80 times larger than the moon does to us,
and would go through all its phases in less than eight hours.

To ourselves Mars does not always look round, but may appear
gibbous, that is to say like the moon three days before or after full.
At such times we can see a little bit of the darkened or night side of
Mars. Along the line dividing the darkened from the sunlit portion
of the planet (the “terminator,” to use the correct and technical term),
the sun is either rising or setting. This line is generally smooth, but
occasionally is irregular owing to the presence of bright projections
or spots. When such are seen they can only be viewed for a short time
before being carried into the bright or the darkened portion, owing to
the rotation of Mars on its axis. Although fiction writers, for exam-
ple H. G. Wells in his fantasy The War of the Worlds, have ascribed
these bright spots to flashes from a stupendous gun which was being
used by the Martians to project cylinders to the earth, there is no doubt
that they are clouds floating in the Martian atmosphere at a consider-
able distance above the surface and thus catching the sun’s rays.

But there are other bright spots, not floating in the atmosphere but
on the surface. They appear in the equatorial regions during the
summer and autumn on Mars. Usually they lie on or close to the
borders of one or more of the patches of vegetation, such as Syrtis
Major or Margaritifer Sinus. These white spots develop markedly
during the hot season, and, although we are not sure what they are, the
plausible suggestion has been made that they may be cultivated areas
or, in other words, crops.

Certain canals occasionally show activity of another kind; they be-
come double! What was previously seen as a long, linear marking
now has a companion running parallel to it a short distance away.
They look exactly like a rail track, and may maintain their parallel

THE MYSTERY OF MARS—WILKINS 239

nature for hundreds of miles. They are somewhat rare, and the ma-
jority of the canals are always seen as single; moreover, they seem
to be confined to the desert regions. The appearance is exactly as
though the companion canal were a reserve channel which may be
brought into use if the circumstances warrant it. They have been
the subject of much discussion; some people regard this double aspect
as an illusion, without, however, explaining in a convincing manner
how the illusion could arise and why only some of the canals are
subject to it.

We have already seen that Antoniadi claimed to have resolved the
canals into a series of dots and dashes with the great telescope at
Meudon. On the moon there are certain dusky streaks on the slopes
of some of the craters which are approximately the same apparent
width as those of the Martian canals. By this is meant that they look
to us about the same size; in reality, the Martian canals are much
larger, and it is only distance which dwarfs them to the size of the
lunar streaks.

The writer has carefully examined these streaks with the same great
telescope which was used by Antoniadi, and actually used the same
eyepieces. In small or comparatively small telescopes the streaks on
the crater slopes look just like the canals of Mars, that is to say, simple
and uniform lines or bands. But with the giant telescope at Meudon
the streaks were clearly resolved into dots and dashes, presenting a
perfect analogy to what Antoniadi found on Mars.

It seems to be established that not only the ordinary and single
canals but also the double ones are in reality made up of discon-
tinuous fragments. It cannot be a mere accidental arrangement of
the dots in a straight line, but must be a real feature of the surface.
That is to say, the dots and dashes are either the widest portions of
continuous cracks, assuming that the canals are cracks, or they have
been deliberately placed in these positions, assuming Lowell’s ideas to
be true. In either case, we can safely assume that all parts of the
cracks or ditches are too narrow for us to see except where the en-
largements (the dots and dashes) happen to be. It must be remem-
bered that those astronomers who accept the conclusions of Antoniadi
draw the discontinuous fragments as arranged in lines. Unless there
is some underlying linear arrangement, no suggestion of continuous
streaks would be recorded.

Now it is contrary to scientific spirit to assume an artificial origin
unless a natural cause is proved inadequate. It is also very difficult
to distinguish between natural and artificial structures unless we have
a more or less complete knowledge of the regions in question. If the
earth could be observed with some supertelescope on the moon or
Venus, both natural and artificial features would be seen. The latter

240 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

would be such things as towns, cities, and perhaps some of the larger
canals. Unless observations were conducted during their actual con-
struction, it would be very difficult to decide whether the Panama and
Suez canals were natural or artificial. We know that these canals are
partly natural, in the existing lakes, and partly artificial, in the
cuttings executed by man; but without this knowledge, an observer
on another world could not decide. We are in the same position as
the imaginary observer, the canals came into being before telescopes
were invented. Although Lowell thought that he detected a few new
canals in previously undisturbed parts of the surface, this has not been
confirmed by others, and all the canals have an unknown antiquity.
Even if Lowell’s theory should be proved, it might still be found that
the artificial portions are extensions and adaptations of previously
existing natural features. The majority if not all of the markings on
Mars are natural features; and although they may seem strange to
us, owing to their unfamiliarity, they are the logical] result of the con-
ditions prevailing on the planet, in exactly the same manner that crater
mountains are the natural result of the forces which molded the lunar
surface. On any planet the works of its inhabitants must be mere
superficial scars in comparison with the operations of Nature—unless
the inhabitants deliberately adopt a policy of self-destruction, to
which rational beings are naturally averse.

Time enters into the discussion, although it is generally overlooked.
The present era is one of life-bearing for the earth, but on Mars might
be quite different. For all we can tell, the greatest life-bearing era on
Mars may now be long past; on the other hand, it way still le in the
future. The present desertlike appearance of Mars suggests that it is
more likely that maximum life existed in the past than that it should
still lie in the future. It looks as though the life which still exists on
Mars is but a feeble reflection of what once existed. Mars may well
prove to be a world in its old age and approaching extinction, for
owing to its small size it would run through its stages of planetary
evolution more rapidly than the earth.

The favorable opposition of Mars in 1924 was observed by profes-
sionals and amateurs alike. At the Jungfrau Observatory, in the
Alps, at an altitude of 11,600 feet, Professor Schaerer noted that the
canal Tartarus and part of the Mare Cimmerium were cloud covered.
According to some press reports, light flashes were also seen, appar-
ently of the same nature as lightning. At the Yerkes Observatory the
two moons “shone like chips of star dust.” At this opposition the first
attempts were made to “listen in to Mars.” A 24-valve wireless set
was set up in Dulwich Village, and it was stated that strange signals
were picked up in the early morning which were very clear and re-
sembled dots in the Morse code, arranged in groups of four and five.

THE MYSTERY OF MARS—WILKINS 241

It was stated that these sounds were not Morse and could not be
identified as coming from any station on this earth. They continued,
intermittently, for about three minutes. Nothing, however, came of
this, and it seems probable that the dots were a combination of atmos-
pherics and heterodyning or interference between various stations. In
1924 radio was in its early stages, and these signals almost certainly
had a terrestrial origin. Reports of the picking up of similar signals
were received from abroad; in America, for example, where it was
stated that they alternated between a long wave length of 25,000
meters and a short wave of 75 meters.

At the previous opposition, in 1922, Professor Slipher at Flagstaff
had photographed a large white cloud which hung for four days over
the edge of the Pearl Bearing Gulf.

A close approach took place in 1909, when Mars was observed by
Antoniadi and also by the French observer M. Jarry-Desloges. In
this year Syrtis Major had a pointed tip, while among the strange
changes noted were those in the cana] Phison, which appeared double
on September 14 and 16, but single on September 15. It seems possible
that it was partly veiled by clouds on the latter date. The Lake of
the Sun was elongated in 1909, and a complicated system of canals
was seen to radiate from it.

What appeared to be clouds projecting from the surface were seen
by Antoniadi on October 10, 11, and 12, 1924, while other clouds were
seen over Hellas. In 1924 most of the dark areas were very much
darker than usual, which suggests that the proximity of Mars to the
sun (it being summer in the southern hemisphere) may have favored
the development of vegetation. The polar cap soon showed dark rifts
within it, and began to break up into detached pieces which were
especially well seen on August 23.

The opposition of 1926 was remarkable in many ways. It was not
so close an approach as that of 1924, but the planet was higher up in
the sky for northern observers. A special feature of this year was
the large number of clouds which were seen to distort the terminator
of the planet. Two such clouds were seen to the southwest of Syrtis
Major on September 15 by Antoniadi, while on December 15 at least
three such clouds were noted to the east of the Lake of the Sun or the
Kye of Mars. At times the whole planet seemed to have masses of
clouds or mists drifting over it, now hiding this and then that feature
on the surface. The canal Nepenthenes and Lacus Moeris, to the left
or west of Syrtis Major, were very broad and dark in this year, while
the Mare Tyrrhenum was clearly resolved into separate patches which
in all probability were more intensive areas of vegetation.

A very large cloud apparently floating at a great height above the
surface was seen on March 16, 1929, by the same talented observer,

242 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Antoniadi. Very few of the canals were seen this year, when the
planet was farther from the earth than during the previous two
oppositions.

A vast yellow cloud was seen from August 23 to 27, 1909, by An-
toniadi covering much of the surface around the Trivium Charontis,
while in December 1911 another such cloud appeared to the south and
southeast of Syrtis Major and could be seen changing its shape and
size from November 3 to December 23. This cloud stayed for a long
time over this part of Mars, in contrast with the majority of such
clouds, which usually disappear fairly quickly. It is certain that the
yellow and the white clouds differ in their composition, and this has
an effect on the length of their visibility.

If we compare the drawings of the earlier observers, made before
the canals were recognized as such in 1877, we can still trace, although
faintly, some of the principal canals, which proves that these strange
features are not of recent development, but are permanent. We can
also find traces of clouds and other indications of variations among
the dark patches, showing that the weather conditions on Mars have
not altered appreciably during the last 100 years.

But in addition to the temporary changes introduced by clouds,
we also find others which affect the dark patches, such as changes in
their shapes, a growing-out more than usual at this point and a with-
drawal at another. These changes are more interesting than those
due to mere clouds, as they must mean some alterations in the patches
of vegetation themselves. It may be that they arise from the amount
of sunshine at the time, coupled with temperature changes, but it is
not impossible that some at least are due to the activities of some other
form of life—that is to say, to deliberate interference with the growth
at the places where the changes are noted. Perhaps the soil is ex-
hausted in these places, with the result that vegetation fails for a time,
and it is not impossible that the failing is due to the excessive “reap-
ing” in those areas. It must be remembered that what look to us like
small features are in reality objects covering many square miles of
the only fertile areas on this otherwise arid planet. It is even possible
that the changes are due to the failing of some new kind of vegetation
deliberately introduced as an experiment.

The last opposition of Mars took place in 1954, but the planet was
too low in the sky for successful observations in Britain. At one time
it rose only 10 degrees above the southern horizon, and under such
conditions no useful observations could be obtained. The writer was

* Since this was written, Mars came to opposition in 1956. The most striking
feature of this opposition was the excessive faintness of the markings. The
writer observed at Mendon but only succeeded in detecting a few of the
“canals.”—H. P. W.

THE MYSTERY OF MARS—WILKINS 243

then in the United States, where Mars was at a much greater altitude,
in the southern States over 27 degrees, and advantage was taken of
the great American telescopes. Among other instruments the planet
was observed with the 60-inch reflector at Mount Wilson Observatory
and also with the 40-inch refractor at the Yerkes Observatory; the
latter instrument is the largest refracting telescope in the world.

As seen from Mount Wilson in early June, the ice cap at the south
pole was very large and surrounded by a dark band. There is nothing
unusual in this, for the melting cap is always seen to be surrounded by
a dark band, and the cap was beginning to melt. But what was very
unusual was the intense blueness of the markings, more especially the
so-called “seas” in the southern hemisphere. Before the cap has appre-
ciably contracted these are normally of a grayish hue, and are not
pronounced. That this blue color was real was proved by observations
with filters of various tints; the blue came through clearly. There was
also a lot of cloud in the atmosphere of Mars, as shown on the drawing
on plate 1, which was made with the 60-inch Mount Wilson reflector
on June 17. That night only two of the canals could be seen, but it
was clear that they were continuous streaks and not made up of a
series of dots and dashes. Later on when Mars was examined with
the Yerkes 40-inch refractor, numerous canals were detected, and they
all appeared to be uniform streaks strongly suggestive of cracks in
the surface, while the oases, several of which were seen, suggested
craters, presumably filled up with some dark-colored matter. At
Yerkes the blue nature of the markings was again evident, almost vivid
when contrasted with the reddish regions. They prompted the remark
that perhaps Mars too was experiencing unusual weather. It will be
remembered that Britain and Europe had a very wet and unsettled
summer in 1954.

With the other and smaller telescopes, such as the 26-inch refractor
at the Naval Observatory, Washington, D. C., and the 1514-inch re-
fractor at the Washburn Observatory, Madison, the same general re-
sults were obtained. At Yerkes the outer moon of Mars, Deimos, was
seen close to the planet itself without requiring any shielding of the
planet. Even in the great Yerkes telescope this tiny moon appeared
as a point of light and not as a disk. Phobos, the inner moon, was
always either behind or in front of the planet on the particular occa-
sions when I was observing with these magnificent instruments. The
clouds persisted, and with the Yerkes instrument a large white one
was clearly seen projecting beyond the limb of Mars.

There have been other attempted explanations of the dark and per-
manent markings on Mars. One of the most recent is that of Dr. D. B.
McLaughlin, of the University of Michigan, U.S. A. A summary
of this new theory was given in the American astronomical journal

244 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Sky and Telescope, vol. 13, No. 11. According to this account Dr.
McLaughlin believes that the dark areas are not caused by vegetation,
as most astronomers think, but are due to drifts of volcanic ash. The
volcanic dust originates in active volcanoes, which are supposed to be
at the tips of fan-shaped markings. It is suggested that the general
wind circulation of the planet causes the dust and ash to be deposited
in the places where we see the dark markings. The green color is
ascribed to the reaction of carbon dioxide and the scanty moisture
with the ferromagnesian minerals to form chlorite and epidote, which
are green in color. The canals Dr. McLaughlin believes to be partly
ash and partly voleanic rifts; this idea was, however, suggested long
ago by the late Alfred Russel Wallace.

The objection to this theory is the presumed existence of volcanoes
on Mars. There may be volcanoes on Mars, but that the ash or dust
from them would always be blown by winds to the same points on the
planet is a weak point unless we assume that there are certain irregu-
larities in the surface which also enter into the shaping of the dark
areas. Also, this theory does not take into account the seasonal changes
which affect both the dark areas and the visibility of the canal system.

We have considered the evidence which observations have given as
to the presence of water on Mars, even although the indications are
that the amount is smal]. Also, the seasonal changes in the dark mark-
ings, their altered colors and the way in which the canals begin to
make their appearance as the polar caps melt, the certain if occa-
sional presence of clouds or at least mists on Mars, and the general
appearance of this most fascinating planet all combine to suggest that
Mars is largely a waterless desert and that the dark areas are really
tracks of vegetation that owes its life to what water can be conveyed
along the natural waterways or canals. Perhaps the future will show
that Lowell, with his imaginative but magnificent idea of their having
been dug in the past by a race of intelligent beings in a vain effort to
ward off the inevitable drying-up of their world, was right after all;
but this is not likely to happen until the first spaceship has touched
down on the alien and strange landscape of the red and green planet.
Then will come the time when men may settle on the planet; then,
perhaps, the name will be changed from that of the god of war to that
of the god of peace, and men will live freely in their new environment.

The Story of Cosmic Rays’

By W. F. G. Swann

Director, Bartol Research Foundation of The Franklin Institute

[With 2 plates]

THE ATMOSPHERE is, to an extremely small extent, a conductor of
electricity, and we know that such a condition results from the presence
of charged atoms called ions, with positive and negative charges.
These occur in practically equal numbers. The positive ions are those
atoms that have lost a negatively charged particle—an electron—and
the negative ions are those that have acquired the negative charges lost
by other atoms. Asa result of mutual attraction, the negative ions are
continually returning their negative charges to atoms that have lost
such charges, so that if the continued existence of a “state of ioniza-
tion” is to be maintained, there must be present some agency that
continually detaches electrons from atoms. Such agencies are, in
part, the radiations that are emitted by the normal radioactive con-
tamination of the atmosphere. However, such agencies are confined to
low altitudes, so that to account for ionization at high altitudes, where,
indeed, it is greater than at low altitudes, we must invoke some other
agency. This agency is the cosmic radiation which, at first, was as-
sumed to be a single kind of radiation coming into our atmosphere
from above.

The simple concept of a single type of radiation entering the atmos-
phere and being responsible for the phenomena observed had to be
modified as time progressed. The situation, as we have it today, is
much more complicated. We have been led to believe that there is
a “primary radiation” consisting for the most part of positively
charged hydrogen atoms, and that the radiation, on entering our
atmosphere, bombards the atoms of the atmosphere with the resulting
emission of all sorts of other atomic particles which, in their totality,
constitute what we observe as the cosmic radiation.

ATOMS AND ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
Atoms and their parts—An atom of matter consists, essentially,
of two parts—an inner core, composed of positively charged particles

* Reprinted by permission from Sky and Telescope, published at Harvard Col-

lege Observatory, Cambridge, Mass.
245

246 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

called protons, and uncharged particles called neutrons. Around
this core we have a cloud of negative electrons.

Hydrogen, the lightest of the atoms, has in its normal state only one
proton in its core or nucleus, and attendant upon this is a single
electron. Helium has two protons and two neutrons in its core.
Uranium, until recently the heaviest element known, has, in its
nucleus, 92 protons. In the case of one kind of radium there are
143 neutrons, while in another kind there are 146 neutrons. It is
the number of protons that determines the chemical nature of the
element. Atoms having the same number of protons but different
numbers of neutrons are called isotopes of one another.

Subsidiary elementary particles—Al\though neutrons, protons, and
negative electrons form the only permanent constituents of the atom,
other particles come into existence during periods of drastic perturba-
tion such as occur when a primary cosmic ray or one of its descendants
strikes an atom of air.

First, we have a particle called the positron, which is the counter-
part of the negative electron, having the same mass, but carrying an
electric charge equal and opposite to that of the negative electron.
Sometimes it is called a positive electron.

Other important particles are the mesotrons. The mesotrons are
peculiar in the sense that they have but a finite life and die in due
course without the intervention of any external agency.

When the mesotrons were first discovered, it was thought that they
were all of one kind, but as knowledge has advanced, it now appears
that there are several kinds, which are in part related to one another
like child and parent, or brother and sister. When a proton of high
energy enters our atmosphere, collisions with the atoms of the air re-
sult in the proton’s disintegration and the formation of mesotrons
which are, as it were, born from its ashes. When a heavy atom enters
the atmosphere, its individual protons suffer a similar fate, with the
resulting production of mesotrons. The neutrons of the atomic nuclei
seem to be preserved from a like fate, but they are not completely im-
mune, because a neutron freed from its home in an atomic nucleus
sacrifices its right of permanent existence and dies after a period of
about 20 minutes.

On page 249 we shall return to a fuller discussion of the individuals
of the mesotron family.

In phenomena of the kind we are discussing, another particle has
entered the picture, the neutrino. Its presence has only been inferred,
but never observed in the ordinary sense of the word. As is well
known, physicists place great faith in the conservation of energy and
momentum in atomic processes. However, it appears that in some of
these processes, adding up all the contributions of the various particles

THE STORY OF COSMIC RAYS—SWANN 247

to the energy after the occurrence in question gives a sum less than that
obtained by adding up the various contributions before the occurrence.
And so the concept of the neutrino was invented to play the role of
the thief who stole the energy.

Photons.—The term “photon” is used to characterize all of those
particles that are associated with wavelike properties. In particular,
it comprises ordinary light rays, ultraviolet rays, X-rays, and the so-
called gamma rays from radium.

There was a time when these radiations were thought to be of a wave
nature, the wave concerned spreading out into space from the place
of origin with ever-decreasing intensity.

Ficure 1,—These sketches illustrate the two concepts of the natureoflight. At the right,
waves diminish in intensity as they spread from a source; at the left, wavelike particles
retain their energy as they travel outward.

Early in the present century, radiations of this type began to present
a great puzzle to the student of physics. In some respects the radia-
tions acted like waves, as already stated, but in others they acted like
particles.

The concept of spreading waves is inevitably bound up with dim-
inution of the wave’s intensity with distance from the point of its
origin. On the other hand, the radiations we have classed as photons,
while exhibiting wavelike characteristics in certain phenomena, mas-
querade in other instances like bullets shot from a gun. Apart from
effects resulting from the resistance of the medium, such a bullet is
just as potent after traveling 100 yards as it is after 1 yard. In the
case of a battery of such guns firing in all directions from a fort, the
chance of getting hit would diminish with the distance from the fort.
But if one did get hit, he would be just as dead if hit at half a mile as
he would be if hit at 100 feet.

The mathematical physicist has formulated his ideas and theories
in such a manner that he is not disturbed by the apparent paradox in

412575—57-——17

248 = ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

the coexistence of the bulletlike properties and wavelike properties,
but he has not succeeded in presenting them in such a form as to give
contentment to the layman. Fortunately for our purpose, these mat-
ters need not cause us serious trouble. It will suffice for us to think
of these radiations, which in the aggregate we have called photons, as
particle-like in nature; they differ in energy, however, not by the nor-
mal differences of velocity, but by some other characteristics custo-
marily associated with definite frequencies of vibration. In other
words, their velocities are all the same (in a vacuum), and their fre-
quency of vibration determines their energy content.

FURTHER PROPERTIES OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PARTICLES

Ionization Consider the behavior of a charged particle in creating
ions as it passes through a gas. It detaches electrons from the atoms
which it approaches sufficiently closely, and these electrons form the
basis for the creation of ions, as we discussed on page 245. If the
charged particle is moving very rapidly, with a speed comparable
with but not too nearly equal to the velocity of light, and if it carries
the equivalent of one electronic charge, it detaches from atoms about
80 electrons per centimeter of path at atmospheric pressure.

Ficure 2.—P is a high-energy charged particle pursuing the line of flight MN. It affects
atoms along its path and frees the electrons, E.

By this act, the particle loses energy as it progresses through the
gas, and the more energy it has lost the more rapidly does it spend
that which remains.

Particles moving more nearly with the speed of light, that is, faster
than those that begin by detaching about 30 electrons per centimeter
of path, are even more active. Thus, the charged particle spends its
energy freely when it is very rich (moving nearly with the speed of
light) and when it is very poor (near the end of its path). It is
most conservative in its expenditures when it is moderately rich.

The ionization produced by a particle per centimeter of its path
depends to a first approximation only upon its velocity and its charge.
Doubling the charge increases the ionization per centimeter of path
by a factor of four.

Pair production.—A phenomenon more drastic than ionization oc-
curs when very rapidly moving charged particles collide with atoms,
and associated with it is a phenomenon resulting from the collision
of high-energy photons with atoms. The charged particles concerned

THE STORY OF COSMIC RAYS—SWANN 249

in this matter are almost exclusively electrons, for although, in prin-
ciple, heavier particles can operate in an analogous manner, the effect
is so much more prominent in the case of the lighter electron that we
can ignore it in the other cases.

Start with a high-energy photon which finds itself directed toward
an atom. This photon possesses the characteristic of becoming mathe-
matically irritated when it comes into the vicinity of the atom. Exist-
ence as a photon becomes mathematically intolerable, but nature has
provided for it the option of changing its state of existence by allow-
ing it to materialize into two oppositely charged electrons; these share
the energy of the photon between them, but not necessarily in equal
amount.

Each of the pair of electrons thus produced pursues its course, and
if either has sufficient energy, when entering the domain of another
atom it will jerk that atom in such a manner as to give rise to a new
photon. This photon, if of sufficient energy, will repeat the history
of its ancestors, giving rise to two more charged particles. The process
would go on and on were it not for the fact that each of these progeny
has only a small share of the energy of the original photon; and when
the energy of a particle falls below about 10 million electron volts,
the chance of its reproducing itself in this manner becomes infinitesi-
mal. (An electron volt is the energy gained by an electron in falling
through a drop of potential of one volt.)

Once the energy of an electron has fallen below the value necessary
to carry on the process of photon emission and pair production, its
remaining energy is gradually drained away from it by ionization and
it loses the characteristics of a high-energy ray.

In the light of the foregoing, it may be expected that if a high-
energy photon or electron enters our atmosphere, or comes into exist-
ence in the upper atmosphere as a result of the primary cosmic rays,
this electron or photon will initiate the phenomenon of pair produc-
tion. As we descend into the atmosphere, the number of electrons
passing through a unit area will at first increase, attaining finally a
maximum, after which it will decrease. This is because there is a
birth rate of electrons resulting from the pair production and a death
rate resulting from electrons falling to an energy at which they are no
longer able to perpetuate the process. Highest in the atmosphere is
a region where the birth rate exceeds the death rate; below that the
two are equal and the number of rays is a maximum; further descent
takes us to regions where the death rate exceeds the birth rate and
the number of electrons diminishes.

As we proceed in the study of cosmic rays, we shall find that pair
production plays a significant role in the phenomena observed.

Properties of mesotrons—The need for the existence of a charged
particle intermediate in mass between the electron and the proton was

250 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

first sensed by the Japanese physicist Yukawa, as a result of efforts
to understand the nature of the forces that bind the particles of an
atomic nucleus together. From purely theoretical considerations,
Yukawa was able to calculate the mass and mean life of the particle
in question: about 300 times the mass of the electron and a mean life
of the order of 499 of a microsecond (a microsecond is a millionth of
a second).

Not long after Yukawa’s calculations were made, it was found that
the principal constituents that we observe as cosmic rays at sea level
are charged particles having a mass of the general order of magnitude
of that of Yukawa’s predictions, but these particles have a mean life
of the order of 100 times that predicted by him.

Of course, the discrepancy of 100 times in the mean life was em-
barrassing to the logic of the subject, but physicists were happy to
have experimental verification of Yukawa’s work to the extent of the
actual existence of any kind of particle intermediate in mass between
the electron and the proton, and having any kind of a finite life
expectancy. It was hoped that time would clear up the discrepancy,
possibly by modifications of the theory.

Time did, indeed, clear up the discrepancy, but not quite in the way
anticipated. ‘The particle found in cosmic rays was not Yukawa’s
mesotron, but rather a child of that mesotron. Before very long,
experiment revealed that there did indeed exist in nature a particle,
now called the pi-mesotron (x-mesotron), of mass about 300 times the
electron’s mass and with a mean life of the order of a hundred
millionth of a second, as predicted by Yukawa. The pi-mesotrons are
usually brought into existence as the result of the bombardment of
atomic nuclei by high-energy charged particles such as the primary
cosmic rays which enter our atmosphere from outer space. This kind
of mesotron can have either a positive or negative charge.

Experiment has further revealed the existence of uncharged meso-
trons of mass about 300 electron units; these are also called pi-
mesotrons. They are produced by bombardment of atomic nuclei by
high-energy particles, and have a life expectancy of the order of
10-* second. A neutral pi-mesotron decays into two photons of high
ote atte See.

The child of the pi-mestron is called a mu-mesotron (y-mesotron),
and it is the result of the death of a pi-mesotron, which is thought to
be accompanied also by the emission of a neutrino. The mu-mesotron
plays the most important role in cosmic-ray phenomena. Being a
charged particle, it, of course, ionizes like any other charged particle.
However, it has a rest mass 210 times as great as that of the electron,
and so an energy 210 times that of the electron for the same velocity.
Moreover, on account of its large mass, it is relieved of the duty of

THE STORY OF COSMIC RAYS—SWANN 251

PRIMARY
= PARTICLE.

Se
Tau- MESOTRON
(CHARGED)

J

Poet
K-MESOTRON

Vi

: e - Pe
Piit= MESOTRON’ >" Pios MESOTRON .

AN hee fae \

fs :
Three. Pi-tMesotrons «ct
Mixed Sign of Charge.

ey 1

4 H

EN BERET NEG EI Ss Bae

/ N fen Fs X
Mu_=Mesofron -~ Two. Gamma. Rays

Nisa
See

Set
Two Unidentitied
Particles

Mu,~ Mesotron Neutrino :
4 E INCE - ;
: SEN ra

SN \

ES Electron:

Mu - Mesot ron
BS
\

Neutring

2 Two Neutrinos

£, Electro Two Neubrinos Two-Neutrinos Zlectron

Figure 3.—The descendants of a high-energy particle may include those shown here. Any
one such primary particle does not, in general, give rise to all the types of mesotrons in
the second stage.

pair production and loses energy only by ionization phenomena. As
a result of this, the mu-mesotron can travel very much farther through
matter than can an electron of the same energy.

The mu-mesotron, when traveling with a velocity small compared
with that of light, has an average life of only about 2.3 microseconds.
Even if it traveled with the velocity of light and had only this average
lifetime, it could not go more than about 700 meters before death over-
took it. However, it results that the theory of relativity demands
and experiment confirms that the lifetime of the particle shall increase
with itsenergy. Asa result of this, many cosmic-ray mesotrons have
lives hundreds or thousands of times 2.3 microseconds, so that, so far

ELEMENTARY PARTICLES OF MATTER

Mass in electron Average lifetime against Products of spontaneous
Particle masses spontaneous decay decay*

Blectrom 22222 tite iiss 1 Stable

PP TOCOM Sees a ot co 1,845 Stable

INGHELON Geos eee cece eee 1,848 18.5 + 3.6 minutes Proton and electron

IBOsiiron = s Ser Pee yee) oes 1 Stable

Positive mu-mesotron-_-_---- 210 2.3 x 10-6 sec. Electron and two neutrinos

Negative mu-mesotron_______ 210 2.3 x 10- sec. Electron and two neutrinos

Positive pi-mesotron.-___-__-- 276 About 10-8 sec. Mu-mesotron and neutrino

Negative pi-mesotron_______- 276 About 10-* sec. Mu-mesotron and neutrino

Neutral pi-mesotron--_---_--- 264 Less than 10-13 sec. Two photons

Ke=particle= 222-65 59s + About 1,100 About 10-° sec. One mu-mesotron and two
neutral particles

Tan-particle =. s2's. 1) 222 - 977 Greater than 10~ sec. Three pi-mesotrons

Chi-mesotront_.-_----------- 900-1,500 Greater than 10-° sec. Pi-mesotron and one neu-
tral particle

Kappa-mesotront-_----------- Less than 1,400 Greater than 10- sec. Mu-mesotron

ZOte-Dariicles 222 2-2-2 2 537 Greater than 10-1 sec. Two pi-mesotrons

Positive V-particlet__-_--.--- Uncertain Less than 10-* sec. Uncertain

Negative V-particlef___._.__- Uncertain Less than 10-° sec. Uncertain

Neutral V-particle..........- Uncertain Less than 10-!6 sec. Probably mesotrons and
protons

POUOM as cece a acca ee 0 Stable None

Weutrino225222 44-5 26 0 Stable None

*In general, these products are accompanied with release of energy in kinetic form and in amount sufficient

to conserve mass.

fit is uncertain how far the positive and negative V-particles are distinct from the chi- and the kappa-

particles,

252 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

as life is concerned, they could travel right through the atmosphere
and to distances far below.

The death of a mu-mesotron is accompanied by the birth of an
electron—positive or negative—and two neutrinos.

Finally, in the realm of cosmic-ray particles there have appeared
the H-mesotron, of around 1,100 electron mass units, and another
heavy particle, the tau-mesotron (7-mesotron) of about 900 electron
mass units. The tau-mesotron is unstable and is believed to decay into
three pi-mesotrons.

It is of interest to observe that even the neutron, when in free space,
is unstable and has a life expectancy of only about 1814 minutes, after
which it changes to a proton by ejecting an electron in the mysterious
process of dividing nothing into two halves, throwing out the negative
half (a negative electron) and retaining the positive half (a proton).

Of the various mesotrons, only the mu-mesotron plays a significant
part in the phenomena observed in cosmic rays. However, from the
standpoint of what one may call cosmic-ray genealogy, a recognition
and understanding of the other particles is necessary.

COSMIC RAYS IN THE ATMOSPHERE

The primary cosmic radiation—The primary cosmic rays appear
to contain samples of every kind of nonradioactive atom in the uni-
verse. ‘The chief constituent is the proton, the nucleus of the hydrogen
atom. The percentages of the elements vary according to different
observers, but from representative data they are in the ratio of 4,000
particles of hydrogen to 1,000 of helium, to 35 of carbon, nitrogen, and
oxygen, to 10 of all nuclei with atomic numbers greater than 10.

There can be no mesotrons in the primary radiation, for the mean
life of the mu-mesotron, the longest-lived of the mesotron family, is
only 2.3 microseconds when the particle is at rest, and even with ener-
gies as great as 100 billion electron volts, the mean life is only 900 of
a second. There is no place from which the mesotrons could have
come, for the nearest body that could reasonably be a candidate for
supplying them is the sun, and a particle traveling with the velocity
of light itself would take more than 8 minutes to reach us from the
sun.

Lifetime considerations rule out even neutrons as possible com-
ponents of the primary radiation, since neutrons have a mean life of
the order of 18.5 minutes. The sun is the only body from which they
could reach us, and if they came from the sun in appreciable amount,
there would be a much larger change in their intensity from day to
night than experiment reveals. Unlike charged particles, whose paths

THE STORY OF COSMIC RAYS—SWANN 205

can be bent by the earth’s magnetic field, neutrons could not reach the
side of the earth opposite their point of origin.

The production of mesotrons—When the protons of the primary
radiation enter our atmosphere, they very rapidly disintegrate into
mesotrons, as the result of collisions with the nuclei of atoms. The
protons disappear so rapidly by this process that only about a third of
them remain at an altitude where the pressure is 49 of an atmosphere.

Even in the case of the heavier atoms contained in cosmic rays, it
is the protons in their nuclei that are responsible for giving birth to
mesotrons; and since mesotrons are the most important constituent of
the rays that we observe at lower altitudes, a helium atom, containing
two protons, is twice as effective in producing mesotrons as is a single
proton. An atom like iron, with 26 protons in its nucleus, is 26 times
as effective as is the proton itself. If iron atoms, for example, were
only 1 percent as numerous as free protons, they would nevertheless
contribute about one-third as many mesotrons as do the free protons.
Thus, despite the relatively small percentage of atoms of high atomic
weight, it turns out that 50 percent of the mesotrons produced in the
atmosphere come from primaries that are heavier than protons.

When a proton, either free or in combination in a nucleus, enters the
atmosphere and collides with the nucleus of an atom of air, it is prob-
able that, in the first instance, pi-mesotrons are produced, as shown
in the genealogical chart on page 251. A slowly moving pi-mesotron
with a mean life of 10-* second would travel only a meter or so before
disintegrating to form a mu-mesotron. A slow mu-mesotron, with
a mean life of the order of 2.3 microseconds, would go less than 700
meters before disintegrating into an electron.

Mesotrons of higher energy live longer and penetrate farther,
so that a mesotron of 10 billion electron volts would live for about
% 0000 Of a second and in that time could travel 60 kilometers. Thus,
from mean-life considerations alone it would have no difficulty in pene-
trating the whole atmosphere. As a matter of fact, only about 1.3
billion volts of its energy are necessary to allow for all the ionization
it would cause on such a journey, so that neither ionization loss of
energy nor mean-life considerations would prevent such a mesotron
from reaching the earth’s surface. Indeed, some of the mesotrons
are produced with such high energies that they can penetrate far
more than the thickness of the earth’s atmosphere, and cosmic-ray
intensity has a measurable value at depths below the earth’s surface
comparable with 250 meters of water.

Starting in the outer regions of the atmosphere, we have only the
primaries. These decrease rapidly with descent, by the production of
mesotrons, so that the mesotron intensity rises as we descend into the
atmosphere until, at a depth of about 149 of the whole atmosphere,

254 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

the rate of production of mesotrons balances the rate of decay and
there is a maximum in the mesotron intensity. Below this point, the
disappearance of mesotrons (as a result of mean-life considerations
enhanced by energy loss) exceeds the rate of formation, and the meso-
tron intensity declines and continues to decline with further descent.
The high-energy mesotrons penetrate far, while the low-energy meso-
trons, either by decay or by coming to rest as a result of energy loss,
travel only shorter distances.

The production of electrons—How does the number of electrons
change with height? Near the extreme upper limits of the atmos-
phere cosmic-ray electrons are very few, because the mesotrons that
breed them have not yet been produced by the primaries in sufficient
number. The mu-mesotrons that are produced with low energy in the
first tenth of the atmosphere die very near the places where they are
born, giving rise to electrons. Higher-energy mesotrons, which can
travel farther, do not die as rapidly and therefore do not produce
electrons as copiously as do the low-energy mesotrons. ‘Therefore,
many more electrons will be formed in the higher regions of the at-
mosphere than in the lower.

Each electron that is produced, however, goes through the process
of pair production (discussed earlier, on pp. 248-249) and gives rise to
progeny which increase in numbers as we descend from the point
where the original parents were formed. The increase continues until
it becomes balanced by the loss of electrons, when the ionization that
they produce reduces their energy below the point at which the elec-
trons can reproduce themselves. Thus, each electron formed has its
own little genealogical history involving rise in progeny to a maxi-
mum with descent, followed by a decline in numbers with further
descent. A combination of the life histories of all the parent elec-
trons produced near the top of the atmosphere thus results in a rise
of the electron intensity as we descend, a maximum being reached at
a depth corresponding to about 49 of the atmosphere, after which
the electron intensity diminishes rapidly with further descent.

The situation is such that practically none of the parent electrons
produced in the higher regions of the atmosphere can succeed in hav-
ing any progeny at the earth’s surface. In fact, a parent electron
would have to have an energy of some 10 trillion electron volts in the
outer regions of the atmosphere to have a single offspring at the earth’s
surface!

Such electrons as we find in the lower atmosphere come partly from
the relatively rare deaths of fast-moving mesotrons and from the
deaths of mesotrons that have been slowed down by ionization energy
losses. Another source of electrons is closely related to ionization
itself: If a mesotron passes sufliciently near an electron in an atom,

THE STORY OF COSMIC RAYS—SWANN 255

it may hur] that electron out with an energy very high compared
with the normal energy given to electrons by mesotrons in ordinary
ionization. Electrons shot out of atoms with high energy in this man-
ner are referred to as knock-on electrons, and they contribute appre-
ciably to the electron component of the radiation measured, particu-
larly at low altitudes.

Neutrons.—It is of importance to observe that disintegration of the
protons in a primary incident atom leaves free neutrons, which should
therefore be fairly plentiful in the places where proton disintegration
occurs. Experiment, indeed, reveals the fact that neutrons do exist
in the atmosphere, and their intensity mounts very rapidly as high
altitudes are approached. It is not at present known whether the neu-
trons in high-energy atoms disintegrate on collision as protons do, but
even if such is the case, we may expect to find some neutrons that have
escaped destruction of this kind by becoming reduced in energy in the
collision process to the point at which they no longer invite destruction
by such a process.

Extensive showers—The phenomena above are the main contri-
butions to what we measure as the cosmic radiation. However, there
are other comparatively rare but very interesting phenomena. In
extensive showers, some of the rays observed at sea level arrive so
close together in time, in spite of wide separation in their places of
arrival, as to suggest that they have a common origin, probably in
one very high-energy primary particle. P. Auger, who has studied
these matters intensively, states that such showers of rays may corre-
spond to more than a million particles arriving simultaneously over
an area of 25 acres. If we should imagine these particles to originate
through pair production from a single high-energy electron, it would
be necessary to assume for that electron an energy between 10*° and
10% electron volts. Taking all losses into consideration, as high as
1078 electron volts for the parent particle has been estimated as neces-
sary to account for some of the phenomena observed.

Nuclear disintegration caused by cosmic rays.—Another matter of
great interest in nuclear physics, although possibly of subsidiary
interest to cosmic-ray students, is nuclear disintegration produced by
the rays. The neutrons in the upper atmosphere doubtless play a
significant role in promoting such nuclear disintegrations.

It has been customary to classify the events observed according
to the number of prongs which emanate from the centers of collision
of the rays with the nuclei of the atmospheric atoms, as seen in sensi-
tive films. Study of these tracks, their angular spread, their ranges
in matter, combined with the fundamental principles of the conserva-
tion of energy and momentum during collision, serve to enhance our
knowledge in that most mysterious realm of nuclear theory that in-
volves the nature of nuclear forces.

256 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

THE EFFECT OF TERRESTRIAL, SOLAR, AND GALACTIC MAGNETIC FIELDS

The primary cosmic rays appear to come toward our earth uni-
formly from all directions, or nearly so. The earth is a huge magnet,
with a magnetic field of small intensity but large extent, so that the
paths of charged particles approaching the earth are bent. Considera-
tion of the influence of the magnetic field leads to the following con-
clusion: Particles of the same charge and momentum (relativistic mass
times velocity) are indistinguishable as regards the effect of the mag-
netic field upon them.

While the student of cosmic rays usually speaks of particles in terms
of their momenta, the kinetic energy is a quantity more familiar to the
layman. It is, however, less simply related to the bending effect in
a magnetic field. Thus, for a given energy, heavy particles are bent
less in their paths than are light particles.

Ficure 4.—Paths of primary cosmic rays (in this case protons with 15 billion electron volts
energy) as they are deflected by the earth’s magnetic field. ‘The paths are drawn in the
plane of the earth’s magnetic equator, with the north pole upward from the paper.

Any charged particle, such as a proton, has to have a certain mini-
mum energy before it can reach the earth’s vicinity at all without
being bent back into space by the magnetic field. That minimum
energy amounts to 14 billion electron volts for a proton entering
vertically at the magnetic equator. It gets less and less as we proceed
toward the magnetic poles until, theoretically, at the poles themselves
particles with infinitesimal energy could reach the outer bounds of
the atmosphere.

At any given geomagnetic latitude (we shall henceforth call this
simply latitude), the minimum energy for entry of positive particles
into the atmosphere varies as the direction of entry varies. It is
greatest for the east and least for the west, the value for the vertical
being intermediate in amount.

THE STORY OF COSMIC RAYS—SWANN 257

There was a time when a strong belief existed that the primary
particles were photons and not charged particles at all. J.C. Clay’s
discovery of the variation of cosmic-ray intensity with latitude, a
discovery confirmed by a series of worldwide measurements by A. H.
Compton and his associates, first led to the conclusion that there were
at least some charged particles in the primary radiation. Later, as the
matter was more deeply studied in connection with intensities from
different directions, it appeared that there was no room for anything
else but charged particles and, further, that the particles were posi-
tively charged.

Of course, the latitude effect is greatly complicated by the fact that
our observations are made in the atmosphere itself. Suppose that ob-
servations could be made at an altitude so high that a negligible
amount of air existed above. Then we might expect that the intensity
of the radiation would mount continually as we passed from the mag-
netic equator to the magnetic pole and included in our measurements
more and more of the less energetic radiation that can reach the atmos-
phere at higher latitudes. But if we should observe at a depth in
the atmosphere, and even if we could be sure that we were measuring
only the primary cosmic rays, we should expect that the increase of
intensity with latitude would continue only until a latitude was reached
at which the low-energy rays, deflected away by the magnetic field
below that latitude, would still be unable to reach us because they
were stopped by the atmosphere.

From this viewpoint the variation with latitude of, let us say, the
vertical intensity of the primary cosmic rays might take the form
shown in the accompanying simple diagram (fig.5). The curve ABC
would hold at very high altitudes; ABD would apply at a place where
there is an appreciable amount of the atmosphere above; A/F, where

VEATICAL INTENSITY

° MAGNETIC LATITUOE 90

Ficure 5.—The effect of absorption by the atmosphere on the intensity of cosmic rays at
various latitudes.

258 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

there is more of the atmosphere above, and soon. We might thus ex-
pect that the knee of the latitude curve—the place where the hori-
zontal portion starts—would occur at a latitude which was greater the
greater the altitude.

Now the simplicity of the foregoing picture is disturbed by the fact
that the knee does not seem to vary with latitude as the altitude is
varied, but seems to occur around 50° latitude for all altitudes. This
led to the view that the origin of the knee was not to be explained by
the absorption of low-energy rays by the atmosphere, but by something
outside the atmosphere, something that creates, for the energy spec-
trum, a lower limit of energy which is nevertheless sufficiently great to
permit penetration of the whole atmosphere. Under such conditions,
the intensity-versus-latitude curve would show, at all altitudes, a knee
corresponding to this energy.

To solve this paradox, it was suggested that the knee of the latitude
curve owed its origin to the sun’s magnetic field. The bending of the
paths of the rays near the earth, that is, within a few earth radii, is
caused mainly by the earth’s magnetic field, which is here considerably
stronger than the field of the sun. At greater distances from the
earth, however, the sun’s magnetic field could predominate.

Consider a sphere containing the earth’s orbit and centered at the
sun. Then, neglecting the influence of the earth’s magnetic field, we
ean ask what energy a cosmic ray of assigned type must have to enter
that sphere at all in the vicinity of the earth’s orbit, which orbit lies
roughly in the plane of the sun’s magnetic equator. No rays of energy
less than this amount could reach the earth’s orbit at all. If this energy
is enough to penetrate the atmosphere, we would expect, as found,
that the cosmic rays falling upon the earth would increase in intensity
with increase of latitude from the equator only to the point at which
all the rays permitted access to the earth’s orbit by the sun had been
received by the earth. Increase of latitude beyond this point would
yield no further rays because there would be no more rays. The knee
of the latitude curve would occur at a definite latitude which would be
the same for all altitudes.

The foregoing considerations become complicated by what happens
to the primary cosmic rays as they enter our atmosphere. However,
a fairly clean-cut story appears if observations are made so high in
the atmosphere that down to that depth nothing in particular has
happened to the primary rays. At such altitudes, and for the case
where the primary radiation contains rays of all degrees of smallness
in energy, we should expect the intensity to show a continual increase
with latitude right up to the poles. (However, the matter is not quite
as simple as here stated because even the small amount of atmosphere
above the apparatus at high altitudes, and indeed the absorbing mate-

THE STORY OF COSMIC RAYS—SWANN 259

rial in the apparatus itself, places a lower limit on the energy of the
rays that can be observed.)

If the intensity of the magnetic field of the sun at its magnetic pole
is known, we can calculate its value at the earth’s orbit, and we can
calculate the energy below which no rays are to be found striking the
earth’s atmosphere. We can then compute the corresponding latitude
on the earth at which further increase of latitude would yield no addi-
tional rays, as these would have energies lower than those permitted
by the sun to be present.

The magnitude of the sun’s magnetic field has been debated for a
long time, and particularly within recent years. Optical measure-
ments of the Zeeman effect led, about 40 years ago, to the conclusion
that the sun had a field of about 50 gauss at its pole. If the sun acted
like an ordinary magnet, the corresponding field in the earth’s vicinity
would prevent protons reaching us if they had less energy than 3
billion electron volts, which is the energy for entry through the earth’s
magnetic field at the latitude of 50° geomagnetic. Consequently, on
this basis, we should expect that even at the outer limits of the atmos-
phere there would be no increase of intensity with latitude from 50° to
the pole.

However, recent experiments by M. A. Pomerantz, under the aus-
pices of the Bartol Research Foundation, the Office of Naval Research,
and the National Geographic Society, have shown that over the range
_of latitude from 52° to 69° there is an increase of 46 percent in the
vertical primary cosmic radiation intensity. Also, this radiation is
composed of rays of such small energies that they could not possibly
have come to us from outer space through the sun’s magnetic field if
it had more than 6 percent of the strength originally assumed from
the Zeeman effect.

This argument should be accepted with reservation. There is in-
creasing evidence that some primary rays may come to us from the sun
itself, and such rays might reach us in spite of the sun’s magnetic field
because their short journey to us would not permit enough bending
in their paths to keep them away from us. At the present time, the
whole question of the magnitude of the sun’s magnetic field and its
bearing upon the primary cosmic rays calls for further elucidation.

Astronomers have come to doubt the existence of a solar magnetic
field as high as 25 or 50 gauss at the poles of the sun. Indeed, G.
Thiessen, who was originally one of the strongest supporters of the
earlier value for the sun’s field, concluded in 1949 that a strict analysis
of the original data, while not denying the existence of the larger field,
does not support such a field with any certainty. Moreover, his recent
careful observations by improved methods, and those of others, using
the new solar magnetograph, have led to a solar value of only about
one gauss, and in the opposite direction to that formerly found.

260 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

On the other hand, observations of the solar field at one time do not
necessarily guarantee its value at another. This warning is important,
for some stars are known with certainty to possess variable magnetic
fields. H.W. Babcock found in 1948 that the star HD 125248 has a
magnetic field of 6,000 gauss at its pole, a field that reverses itself to
a comparable value of opposite sign in a period of about 10 days. In
Sky and Telescope for March 1950, Otto Struve presented a detailed
discussion of “Stars as Magnets.”

B-29 FLIGHTS
1946

COUNTS PER MINUTE

CounTING RATE vs. LATITUDE
33,000 FEET

v6
°

10 20 30 a0 r) 60
GEOMAGNETIC LATITUDE N

Ficure 6.—How cosmic-ray intensity varies with latitude is shown by these measurements
made under the author’s direction in 1946 with airborne Geiger counter trains. As the
number of counts per minute varies, each measured intensity has a statistical uncertainty,
indicated by the length of the vertical line representing it. Note the leveling off of the
curve at about 50° latitude.

Finally, in connection with cosmic magnetic fields, it has been sug-
gested that the great galaxies of space may be the seats of magnetic
fields. The magnetic fields in question are extremely small, of the
order of 10> gauss, but their great extent makes them potent influences
on the paths of the cosmic rays within the galaxy. Theoretical con-
siderations show that a charged particle coming to the boundaries
of such a region would be turned back into the galaxy as though the
latter were provided with a reflecting wall, and similar considerations
operate to prevent any cosmic ray that is outside the galaxy from enter-
ing it. Thus, on such an assumption, the cosmic rays within the galaxy
would remain imprisoned within it forever or until destruction
through collision with atoms or with other material in the galaxy, such
as the stars, terminated their existence.

THE ORIGIN OF THE PRIMARY COSMIC RADIATION
Early students of the primary cosmic radiation pictured it as dis-
tributed with equal intensity over the whole of galactic and inter-
galactic space. Such an idea is attended with considerable difficulty.

THE STORY OF COSMIC RAYS—SWANN 261

Thus, R. D. Richtmyer and E. Teller have pointed out that on such a
view the total energy carried by all cosmic-ray particles is much more
than all the energy ever emitted by stars, together with their kinetic
energy. In fact, it would be an energy less by only a few orders of
magnitude than the total energy (#=mc’*) represented by all the
matter in the universe.

Difficulties also arise as to how the supply of cosmic-ray particles can
be maintained, since it is necessary to allow for a continual loss as a
result of their collisions with atoms in space.

Such considerations have led to the general concept of an extensive
magnetic field confining cosmic radiation to a definite region, a galaxy
for example, as just mentioned above. Such a theory removes the
necessity of extending the rays to the whole of intergalactic space, and
avoids the enormous amount of energy that such extension would im-
pute to cosmic rays in the universe as a whole.

There are three general possibilities to account for the enormous
energies of the rays themselves, from 10’ to as high as 10* electron
volts:

1. The particles may receive energy by relatively small forces acting
over great distances.

2. They may receive energy in single acts associated with enormous
forces.

3. The particles, with their energies, might be considered to have
been born with the universe, their properties depending upon the cir-
cumstances associated with that event.

The third possibility, first propounded by the Canon Lemaitre, can-
not very well be proved or disproved. At the time of the supposed
origin of the universe, conditions may have been so drastically different
from what they are now that in our ignorance we may assume almost
anything to form a basis for the origin of the high energies.

The second category is deemed unlikely because we now know that
the cosmic radiation contains particles much heavier than protons.
Quantum theory demands that a process that could give them their
energy in a single act would disintegrate them.

The first category, therefore, presents the natural field for explana-
tion in terms of our present knowledge. This category may be divided
into two classes, in one of which the energies are acquired little by
little by processes that are primarily mechanical, while in the second
the forces are primarily electrical. Of course, mechanical forces are
usually electromagnetic in the last analysis, but it is convenient to
distinguish between processes that are very clearly the result of elec-
tromagnetic forces and those in which any electromagnetic feature is
involved in more subtle form.

Mechanical methods.—Thus, in the mechanical realm we have effects
of the pressure of light. For instance, L. Spitzer, Jr., has considered

262 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

the acceleration of small particles under the influence of radiation
pressure in the tremendous energy outburst of a supernova. He calcu-
lates that such particles can receive from a supernova outburst from
0.01 to 1.0 billion electron volts per nucleon (proton or neutron) of
each particle, within an interval of a few hours to a few weeks.

It is also postulated that the particles are held within the galaxy by
an extensive magnetic field. As a result of collisions with atomic
nuclei in the galaxy, the particles which have escaped collisions with
stellar bodies break up ultimately into nucleons. The neutrons soon
change to protons because of their finite life expectancy, and the pro-
tons are lost finally by encounters with atomic nuclei or by striking
large bodies like the earth. An equilibrium condition is set up in
which the number of high-energy nucleons contributed to the galaxy
per unit time is equal to the number lost by the aforesaid processes.
By this means, a cosmic-ray intensity between 0.0001 and 0.01 of the
measured intensity is predicted, depending upon assumptions as to
the frequency of nuclear collisions in the galaxy.

EK. Fermi, in 1949, suggested an intriguing mechanism which may
be pictured in elementary fashion by thinking of a room containing
gas molecules and many hard steel spheres flying about and rebound-
ing from one another and from the walls of the room. It will be con-
venient to eliminate gravity temporarily during our meditations.

According to well-understood principles of thermodynamics, the
spheres will, in the last analysis, lose their energies to the gas mole-
cules and will finally come to a state of equilibrium in which the aver-
age translational energy of each sphere will be the same as that of a gas
molecule. If the spheres are sizable, let us say 10 centimeters in radius,
their average velocity will then be very small compared with that of
the molecules. If, however, the spheres and the walls of the room are
perfectly elastic, and if the spheres have considerable velocities ini-
tially, it will be a very long time before they get to this final state of
equilibrium.

Meanwhile, the spheres will seek another quasi-stationary equilibri-
um in which they have a velocity distribution among themselves which
is like that of the gas molecules, but with an average kinetic energy
of each sphere enormous compared with that of one of the molecules.
This kinetic energy will be approximately equal to the total original
energy of the spheres divided by their number. In other words, the
spheres will have a kind of macroscopic temperature of enormous
amount which diminishes extremely slowly to the final temperature
representative of the true equilibrium of both spheres and gas
molecules.

The quasi-equilibrium of the spheres is not an accidental phenome-
non, but is an inevitable consequence of the laws of dynamics as
applied to the collisions between the spheres.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—SWANN PLATE 1

A cosmic-ray cascade of 10 billion electron volts.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—SWANN PLATE 2

Ha spectroheliogram showing solar flare, April 26, 1946.

THE STORY OF COSMIC RAYS—SWANN 263

Suppose now that we imagine the molecules to be reduced in number
so that the chances of molecules colliding with one another are very
much less than their chances of colliding with the spheres. The mole-
cules may become “ambitious” and seek, through their collisions, to
accommodate themselves to the kinetic energy of the spheres, acquir-
ing velocities much greater than those of the spheres. This ambition,
though at first sight fantastic, is not indeed illogical under the spe-
cialized conditions we have assumed—dynamical laws require it.

In the Fermi mechanism our steel spheres are replaced by bounded
magnetic fields, associated with moving masses of gas in the galaxies.
A magnetic field of this kind is representative of a hard elastic body,
because an electric particle entering it is turned back to the region
from which it came, without any loss of energy as measured in the
frame of reference in which the magnetic field is at rest.

However, there are certain difficulties in the Fermi mechanism.
A fast-moving charged particle loses energy by ionizing the other
atoms in its path; and while the density of matter in space is very
small, the loss of energy by this process more than offsets the Fermi
gain for low energies, where the ionization probability is greater.
Only when a particle has attained the lower range of cosmic-ray
energies is the Fermi mechanism capable of taking hold to increase
further the energy of the particle. In this matter, heavy particles
are at a disadvantage with respect to light particles. Thus, the Fermi
mechanism requires a kind of injector process to get it started, such
as the suggestion of Spitzer already cited.

Then, since the average energy gained by the mechanism is only
about 10 electron volts per collision, and since each particle would
have only about one collision per year, about 60 million years would
be necessary for a particle to acquire cosmic-ray energy. During
this period, it would have opportunities for collision with the nucleus
of some particle in the surrounding space, and such a collision, as
we know from the evidence presented by protons entering our atmos-
phere, would result in destruction of the particle and its conversion
into mesotrons, which disappear because of their finite life.

As our quantitative knowledge becomes more complete, the strength
of the evidence against the Fermi mechanism increases also, one of
the most potent difficulties arising from the time necessary for the
particle to acquire cosmic-ray energies and the chance of its destruc-
tion during that time.

Electromagnetic methods.—TVhe science of electricity and magnet-
ism suggests many processes by which cosmic-ray energies can be
realized. Phenomena and quantities that are of negligible importance
in experiments on a laboratory scale can grow to very fundamental

412575—57——_18

264 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

significance in the scale of the cosmos. We can only briefly sketch
some of the suggestions that have been made in this connection.

First, we could view the planets or other cosmic bodies as electrically
charged to very high potentials, so that charged particles coming to
them from space could acquire great energies in reaching them. It
is with some comfort that one finds a fairly general method of dis-
missing this naive suggestion. While interstellar space contains
only about one atom per cubic centimeter, there is reason to think
that it is a comparatively good conductor of electricity for small
electric fields. A large portion of interstellar atoms is ionized by
ultraviolet starlight, and the mean free path of the ions is large
because of the low density. Therefore, on a simple view of the matter,
the electrical conductivity of interstellar space should be comparable
with that of a completely ionized gas at atmospheric pressure and
should amount, in fact, to two percent of the conductivity of copper.
Under such conditions, any electrostatically charged body in the
galaxy would become rapidly discharged.

A rotating, magnetized, conducting sphere experiences electro-
dynamic forces resulting from the rotation of its substance in its
own magnetic field. Such a rotating sphere develops a potential
difference between its axis and its equator. A star the size of our
sun, possessing a magnetic field like that attributed to the sun until
recently, would acquire a potential difference of about three billion
electron volts when rotating in a nonconducting medium. For a
magnetic star, such as was cited by H. W. Babcock, with a field of
some 6,000 gauss at the pole and twice the sun’s radius, the potential
difference would be of the order of a thousand billion volts for the
same angular velocity.

These potential differences would not be completely annulled by the
electrical conductivity of interstellar space since they would be con-
tinually rejuvenated by the rotation of the star. They would be modi-
fied depending upon the ratio of the conductivity of space to the con-
ductivity of the star itself. Under suitable conditions, such a rotat-
ing star could shoot out from one of its poles charged particles which
at great distances would show cosmic-ray energies.

Recognizing the existence of violent magnetic disturbances on
stars, akin to the growth of sunspots with their accompanying mag-
netic fields, the writer, some 20 years ago, suggested that such phe-
nomena might result in cosmic-ray energies. ‘The mechanism is quite
analogous to that of an ordinary electrical transformer, where we
have a changing magnetic field threading through a wire circuit and
inducing therein an electromotive force which drives the current
through the circuit. The actual circuit itself is not necessary for the
realization of the electromotive forces, and if there be charged par-

THE STORY OF COSMIC RAYS—SWANN 265

ticles in the vicinity of the changing magnetic field, they will be
whirled around by the electromagnetic forces even though they do
not form part of a material circuit. It seems that cosmic-ray ener-
gies can readily be acquired by processes of this kind.

Recently, the foregoing mechanism has been extended to galaxies,
where magnetic fields of the order of 7X10-° gauss are recognized as
existing. On the supposition that these magnetic fields have grown
from zero, it appears that a charged particle that had zero energy
when the field was zero would acquire energy continually, and could
attain an energy greater than 10'° electron volts by the time the field
had risen to 7X10-* gauss. The complete story of the possibilities in
this matter involves the lifetime of a cosmic ray, and the conditions
pertaining to the case where the magnetic field has already attained a
finite value at the time the particle, as a result of becoming charged,
starts to acquire energy.

It is also known that if an electrical conductor in a magnetic field
is removed from the field, the conductor will tend to carry the mag-
netic field with it. What really happens is that the change of magnetic
flux that would occur in the conductor, if it simply left the magnetic
field behind, introduces electromotive forces and so current. This
forms a new magnetic field which just replaces the loss of magnetic
flux that would otherwise have resulted from the departure of the
conductor from the original field. A. Unséld has called attention to
the fact that, in those huge solar cataclysms in which a mass of matter
is seen to be hurled from one portion of the sun’s surface and to fall
back upon another, we have a condition favorable for changing mag-
netic fields. If such a mass of matter is conducting and starts from a
place where there is a magnetic field, it will pursue its course in the
cataclysm, carrying the magnetic field with it until it eventally
splashes once more into the sun, resulting in the annihilation or the
dispersal of the magnetic field that it carried. The rapid change in
magnetic flux through the regions of space in which the cataclysm
occurs provides for the birth of electrical forces that can give cosmic-
ray energies to charged particles.

Another method of accelerating charged particles has been sug-
gested by D. H. Menzel and W. W. Salisbury and has been further
developed by E. M. McMillan. It depends upon energy that is elec-
tromagnetic in nature, but with very low frequencies of only a few
cycles per second and existing only in the extreme outer portion of the
solar corona. Such low-frequency waves may arise from large mag-
netic disturbances initiated by solar flares and propagated through the
corona. Sparsely distributed ions in the space around the sun (and
other flare-type stars) might be accelerated to cosmic-ray energies if
a mechanism of this kind actually exists.

266 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

But if the general cosmic radiation originates in stellar flares, why
does it come nearly uniformly from all directions? This difficulty
attends any theory that involves the stars as the origin of cosmic rays.
Therefore, it has become customary to postulate an extensive mag-
netic field extending throughout the whole galaxy. This field is
supposed to be weak but sufficiently extensive to curl up the paths of
the cosmic-ray particles in such fashion as to prevent their escape
from the galaxy, and at the same time to provide, as the result of
successive reflections at the boundaries of the galaxy, for a condition
in which an observer on our earth, for example, receives rays with
approximately equal intensity from all directions.

If cosmic rays are purely stellar in origin, however, we might expect
cosmic radiation from the sun to outweigh that from the other stars
by something like the extent to which sunlight exceeds starlight. This
is not the case, and radio noise from the stars in general seems to out-
weigh that from our sun; therefore, Unsdld is driven to assume that
the sun is not typical in these matters and that the cosmic-ray activity
of many stars may be very much larger than that of the sun.

An alternative not inconsistent with the possibilities is to attribute
practically the whole observed cosmic radiation to the sun itself. For
this, the magnetic field of the space around the sun would have to con-
fine cosmic rays to the general vicinity of the solar system, with bound-
ary reflections producing the observed near-uniformity from all di-
rections. It is a fact that unusual solar activity is accompanied by
variations in measured cosmic radiation. Thus, for example, in July
of 1946 an exceptionally large flare developed on the sun, and during
this period a change of as much as 20 percent in cosmic-ray intensity
was observed by stations of the Carnegie Institution of Washington
distributed in various localities.

Abundances of the elements—Suppose that, regardless of the
methods of origin and places of origin of the rays, different substances
contributed to the rays in proportion to the amounts of the substances
present. If the rays came directly to us from their places of origin,
the proportions of atoms of different kinds in the primary rays should
reflect the abundances of the different kinds of atoms in the universe.

If, however, the rays are confined by the boundaries of a magnetic
field co-extensive with the galaxy, like fish kept in a gigantic pool,
they will increase in numbers without limit. But each fish will die
eventually, and a state of equilibrium will finally be reached in which
the density of fish is such that the number that die per year will equal
the number thrown into the pool. For a given rate of supply to the
pool, the ultimate density will be greater, the greater the life of the
fish. If fish of different kinds have different lives, their ultimate rela-
tive numbers will reflect their relative lifetimes as well as the rate at
which they are thrown into the pool.

THE STORY OF COSMIC RAYS—SWANN 267

Death occurs to a cosmic ray when, in its wanderings through the
galaxy, it strikes another atomic particle and disintegrates into meso-
trons, and these in due course decay into electrons and neutrinos. The
chances of collision are small; a cosmic ray may travel for many
millions of years without hitting another atomic nucleus and dying.
However, a larger atom will collide more frequency than a smaller
one, and so lifetime considerations will tend to favor the lighter
particles.

From the researches of astronomers, physicists, and chemists, we
have found the observed relative abundances to be:

Sun, stars,
Element Cosmic rays interstellar matter
JB Lk a a I pO A a ee cg 100, 000 100, 000
LET @ erent Se Sock es OL eo ek ee a eo a 25, 000 10, 000
OPIN uk (0) eer ea ae rie Et cs Ae een ee 900 130
TSU ET heen SCENT TET) 5 Spe li eR Np al el en ep ne 10 15

This table does not favor the light elements in relation to heavy
ones, although carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen appear to be relatively
more abundant in cosmic rays than in the universe as a whole. How-
ever, the mechanisms of acceleration may act more strongly on one
atom than on another, and there is, after all, very little reason to sup-
pose that the atoms of different elements have an equal chance of
recelving cosmic-ray energies.

Nevertheless, one cannot doubt the importance of obtaining further
more definite knowledge of the relative abundances of elements in
the primary cosmic rays, and of the relative energies acquired by the
different kinds of particles. From data of this kind, combined with
further studies of such phenomena in the cosmos as a whole, we may
hope some day to understand in greater detail all the processes in-
volved in the life histories of these rays from the time of their creation
from ordinary matter to their entry into our atmosphere.

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Atmospheric Pollution in Growing

Communities’

By Francois N. FRENKIEL

Applied Physics Laboratory, The Johns Hopkins University

An urban community consists of an agglomeration of houses, com-
mercial and industrial buildings, parks, churches, and various loca-
tions in which human activities are performed. Most of these activi-
ties require the use of such air-polluting sources as motor vehicles,
railroads, house heating, refuse disposals, factories, and powerplants.
Like a living being, a living community breathes the surrounding air
and discharges the polluted air into the atmosphere. The very life
of an urban area must, therefore, be accompanied by atmospheric
pollution. In some cases, unfavorable meteorological conditions pro-
voke an accumulation of pollutants; in others the density of polluting
sources or their ineffective control are responsible for increasing con-
taminations. When, however, the meteorological conditions become
unfavorable, in an area with a particularly high density of polluting
sources, the air contamination may become very serious.

In an urban area the pollutants emitted into the atmosphere by
such sources as industry, municipal and household incinerators, house
heating, motor vehicles, railroads, and the inhabitants themselves in-
clude solid particles, liquid droplets, vapors, and gases. Some of the
heavier particles fall out rapidly to the ground near the pollution
sources, and the lighter ones deposit at some distance. However, a
large amount of the pollutants move through the community before
they are dispersed into the surrounding areas. Sometimes a tempera-
ture inversion confines the pollutants to lower levels of the atmos-
phere, or a mountain chain restricts their dispersion out of the com-

* This article is based on a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Air
Pollution Control Association in Detroit, Michigan, May 22-26, 1955, and pub-
lished in the Scientific Monthly, April 1956, pp. 194-203. It is used by permission
of the editor of that journal. The present paper includes changes and additions
made during the author’s part-time association with the David Taylor Model
Basin. A large part of the studies described were supported by the Bureau
of Ordnance, Department of the Navy, under contract NOrd 7386.

269

270 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

munity. After a certain time, they spread out into the rural areas,
reaching other communities, another State, or even another country.
The nature of some pollutants may change by chemical or physical
processes that take place during their dispersion. ‘These processes
may be due to meteorological causes such as snow, rain, and fog or to
solar radiation and interactions with aerosols of natural origin, in-
cluding salt nuclei, volcano dust, pollen, or such gases as ozone and
nitrogen oxides. Various pollutants may interact among themselves,

DEATH RATES IN LONDON COUNTY

LLLLLLLLL LALLA
SERS

OO on

LLLILLLLLLLL A ALLL LD
LE LL

OOO

LLLLILLLLL LLL LA.
LESTE DTS RRR,

III III

Week No. |
Week No.2
[Cj week No.3
[I] Week No.4

Week No.5

Smog Period

1000 2000 3000 4000 5000
NUMBER OF DEATHS REGISTERED

Figure 1.—Death rates in London County. Weekly death rates during several winter-
season smog periods are compared with the weekly rates preceding and following the
week of the smog period.

disintegrate, or otherwise change during their dispersion. Except for
those pollutants that change into normal constituents of the atmos-
phere, the dispersing aerosols and gases come, after a certain time,
into contact with the surface of the earth. Most of the solid particu-
lates reach the land or the sea as a fallout; other pollutants may be
washed down by the rain or may simply hit the ground when they are
spreading in the atmosphere.

Atmospheric pollution starts with the production of pollutants—
often as undesirable or incidental consequences of various industrial
processes. An airborne cycle (fig. 5) for the pollutants begins with
the emission of pollutants; emission is followed by transfer through

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION—FRENKIEL Zak

the atmosphere, and the cycle is completed by the contact of pollutants
with people, livestock, vegetation, or any other objects. This contact
may result in the elimination of the pollutants from the atmosphere,
or it may be followed by the repetition of a similar cycle. The final
stage of atmospheric pollution is its possible damage to health and
property.
DEATHS AND AIR POLLUTION IN LONDON
DURING DECEMBER [952

1000

”
z=
=
<q
LJ
(an)
LL
ro)
&
uJ
joa)
=
=
=<

DAY OF DECEMBER 1952

Ficure 2.—Deaths and air pollution in London County during December 1952. Daily
mortality rates are compared with the concentrations of smoke and of sulfur dioxide

(SOx).

Although the physiological effects of air contamination are not very
well known, it has been determined that each year atmospheric pollu-
tion is responsible for the death of a large number of people. It is
estimated [1,2]? that the intense smog of December 1952 in London,
England, which contained large concentrations of sulfur dioxide,
killed at least 4,000 people (see figs. 1-4). For the last two years the
concentration of ozone during smoggy days in the streets of Los

? Figures in brackets indicate references at end of text.

272 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

WEEKLY DEATH RATES IN LONDON COUNTY IN 1952

AGE GROUP (years)
Ga Th kover Bes) 45-64
65-74 35-44
== 55-64 (C1 0-34

Smog Period : 5-9 December Population: 8.5 million

Average Deaths Ry
Nov. (4weeks) fa

Week ending
Dec.6

Week ending
Dec. !3

Week ending
Dec. 20

Week ending

NUMBER OF DEATHS REGISTERED

Ficure 3.—Weekly death rates in London County in 1952 per age group.

WEEKLY DEATH RATES IN LONDON COUNTY IN 1952

Smog Period: 5-9 December Population: 8.5 million
Ti Liss | aaa: | CAUSETOR DEATH oe ee ea

CIRCULATORY DISEASES E55 RESPIRATORY DISEASES
33) LUNG CANCER PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS
[J ALL OTHER CAUSES

Now tawocks) Lo |

pec.e QW.

vec.is” WWM
v.20 UW ee
wera /,- |

NUMBER OF DEATHS REGISTERED

Ficure 4.—Weekly death rates in London County in 1952 per cause of death.

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION——FRENKIEL 273

Angeles County, Calif., was often larger than the safe concentration
levels recommended by industrial hygienists as the maximum accept-
able concentration for adult workmen in the factories. In many
urban areas over the world, atmospheric pollution deteriorates build-
ings and materials, damages plants and crops, reduces visibility, and
increases morbidity. The nuisance of periodic outbursts of smog in
New York, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Fran-
cisco, and many other communities in the United States has often
been reported. With the growth of a community these outbursts will
become more frequent and more damaging unless some appropriate
measures are taken to control or to limit the pollution of the atmos-
phere.

Emission = Heese
= Transfer =

Production Damage

Figure 5.—Schematic representation of the atmospheric pollution cycle consisting of pro-
duction, emission, transfer, contact, and damage.

Although effective measures to reduce air contamination can al-
ways be applied, they often require complicated and expensive equip-
ment or inconvenient zoning regulations. The costs and inconveni-
ences of such measures must be compared with their effects on the re-
duction of present or future air contamination of the community.
These measures, whether corrective or preventive, must necessarily
represent a compromise between the costs and inconveniences of pol-
lution control measures and the desire for clean air in the community.

Mathematical methods can be used to study several aspects of at-
mospheric pollution in an industrial area. One of the objects of such
studies is to determine the probable pollution patterns and the rela-
tive contributions of each pollution source to the mean concentration
at each location. As an example of the results that can be obtained
with a mathematical model of atmospheric pollution, we shall use Los

274 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Angeles County, for which extensive data on the meteorological con-
ditions and the distribution of pollution sources are available, and
which is a good proving ground for atmospheric pollution studies. A
theoretical analysis determines the contributions of pollutants dis-
persed from the following five general sources: (1) Motorcars, (2)
oil and gas heating, (3) refuse incinerators, (4) petroleum industry,
and (5) other industries. The expected effects of various improve-
ments in the operation of incinerators, cars, and industry can then be
evaluated using mathematical models with appropriate characteristics
representing these improvements. The effect of a partial reduction in
the production of certain pollutants by industry is calculated. Since
motorcar exhausts contribute largely to the air contamination in Los
Angeles, the effect on the pollution pattern of such general improve-
ments as the reduction of exhaust gases during deceleration and idling
periods can also be evaluated.

Mathematical models can then be used to determine: (1) Tempo-
rary emergency measures to be taken when atmospheric pollution
threatens to reach the allowable contamination levels, (2) efficacy of
various plans to reduce the pollution in an urban area, (3) effects of
a new pollution source on the mean concentration patterns, (4) pollu-
tion patterns for a city after future expansions, and (5) efficacy of
various solutions in urban planning on predicted contamination levels.
In the present paper we are discussing some estimates of probable
pollution patterns which would follow industrial expansions and pop-
ulation increases of an urban area. Possible effects of increasing the
combustion efficiency and other industrial operations, as well as the
improvement of traffic, on present and future pollution patterns are
then examined. Such an analysis may have some interest to urban
planning which should be of particular importance in connection with
the forthcoming development of nuclear industry.

It should be emphasized that a large part of the results presented
in this paper refers to a mathematical model representing the atmos-
pheric pollution problems in Los Angeles County. Such a model is
necessarily a simplification of the real physical phenomena taking
place in the atmosphere. Although most of the data on the relative
contributions of each pollution source are based on published reports
in which these contributions are estimated, the mathematical model
cannot reproduce exactly the real situation.

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION CONTROL

Production, emission, transfer, contact, and damage—this is the
story of atmospheric pollution. At each of these stages the reduction
of the danger of contamination can be attempted, and in most cases
scientific and technological methods for this purpose already exist [3].

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION—-FRENKIEL 275

Those methods consist essentially of one or more of the following:
(1) Improvement of chemical or physical processes with consequent
reduction of the quantity of pollutants produced; (2) collection of
pollutants at their sources; (3) transformation of noxious pollutants
into inoffensive ones; and (4) improvement of the methods for evacu-
ating pollutants into the atmosphere. When these methods are sufli-
cient to eliminate the inconveniences and dangers of contamination
and are still economically acceptable, then the atmospheric pollution
problem can be easily solved. Often, however, under certain meteoro-
logical conditions, there still remains too much pollution even after all
these methods have been applied.

The question then arises: What other methods can be used to reduce
further the atmospheric contamination? An obvious answer is that
one should improve the methods already existing and, more particu-
larly, develop new ones that will give better results. Science and
technology will have to play an important role in such development.
As in many other technical problems, scientific work on atmospheric
pollution depends on basic research in various fields of science. That
a better understanding of those problems is necessary and that basic
research will be helpful should be self-evident. But what is important
to know now is: What can we do about atmospheric pollution with
the help of the knowledge presently available? Can we, for instance,
eliminate the emission of pollutants into the atmosphere from the
various industrial plants or other sources of pollution without altering
the useful operation of the industry or of those sources? The answer
is a very simple one: Yes, we can.

You may then wonder why it is not being done in those urban
areas where atmospheric pollution is an already well-recognized
nuisance. There are no doubt many reasons for the lack of effective
action, but they do not include the one that says action is technically
impossible because of our limited understanding of the basic problems
of atmospheric pollution. If we are ready to pay the price of the
necessary equipment and to accept the possibly complicated methods
of pollution abatement, we can reduce the contamination to any
desired degree. The expenses and inconveniences required to achieve
these results should be measured by the importance that is placed on
the need for the reduction of atmospheric pollution.

How important is the reduction of atmospheric pollution at pres-
ent? There is still need for much research to provide a quantitative
determination of the dangers, inconveniences, and costs of atmospheric
contamination. Nevertheless, it is a recognized fact that several
urban areas produce too much pollution already and that a further
Increase in the contamination of their atmosphere may become very
dangerous under certain meteorological conditions. Urban areas

276 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

must therefore face the problem of reducing the degree of contamina-
tion without at the same time seriously affecting many of those human
activities that are responsible for the contamination and which, as
much as the clean air, are necessary to the population.

Zoning of an urban area for the purpose of eliminating or limiting
atmospheric pollution has been considered in several instances, The
usual purpose of zoning in urban planning is the regulation of resi-
dential building. However, the principles and methods used in such
zoning cannot be applied directly to atmospheric pollution zoning.
In the regulation of residential building, one is concerned with zoning
the use of the land; in the regulation of atmospheric pollution, one
should be concerned with zoning the use of the atmosphere above the
land. In the present article, I shall refer to such air zoning and I
shall examine how it can be achieved.

An urban area usually includes residential and industrial buildings.
Both the industrial and residential parts of the area contain sources
of pollution. In a residential area, those sources may include house
chimneys, motorcar exhausts, household incinerators, and others. In
the industrial area, we may have smokestacks, oil refineries, steel mills,
and other sources of industrial pollution. We should differentiate
between two general areas of contact of pollutants with the ground.
The first is the area near the source of pollution itself, and the second
is the area at a considerable distance from the source. Most of the
industrial sources emit very large amounts of pollutants but often
discharge them through tall stacks and avoid the high concentrations
of pollution at ground level. Therefore a large part of the industrial
pollutants comes in contact with the ground at considerable distances
from the industry that produces them. In residential buildings, auto-
mobiles, and house incinerators, the most important area of contact
of pollutants with the ground is near the source of pollution itself.

The problem of air zoning is to limit the amount of atmospheric
pollution tolerable at various locations in the area. In a populated
community such limitation may be based on health requirements,
nuisance level, visibility, or the pollution deposits on buildings, cars,
and other objects. In rural areas it is necessary that atmospheric
contamination be reduced to such an extent that it will not poison
the soul, damage crops and vegetation, or injure livestock.

ATMOSPHERIC DISPERSION OF POLLUTANTS

The most obvious dangers of contamination are limited in some
areas to the periods of time when the meteorological conditions are
very unfavorable to the dispersion of the pollutants. Since not much
can as yet be done about the weather, consideration is often given to.
shutting down sources of pollution when such unfavorable conditions

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION—FRENKIEL 277

prevail. If such extreme measures should be necessary, it would be
essential to reduce them toa minimum. It may indeed often be suf-
ficient to reduce only partially the operation of the sources of pollution
and to apply this measure only to some of the sources. It will also be
important to predict the unfavorable atmospheric conditions in ad-
vance to avoid the application of such measures after the damage has
started. What then is the most important information about the
atmospheric conditions required for such a prediction? It appears
to concern primarily the following factors: The velocity of the wind
that carries the pollutants, the characteristics of the turbulence that
disperses them, and the nature of the temperature inversions that
confine them to the lower levels of the atmosphere. With the ex-
ception of precipitation, these are the most important atmospheric
factors with which we should be directly concerned.

One of the most common illustrations of turbulent diffusion, which
is directly related to atmospheric-pollution problems, is the dispersion
of smoke emitted from a stack. The dispersion of the smoke plume
is caused by two principal factors: (1) The general air motion that

Ficure 6.—Schematic illustration of various types of smoke plumes that can occur under
the same meteorological conditions. Mean concentration for an average smoke plume
in the framed figure can be compared with theoretical results.

278 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

carries the smoke downstream, and (2) the turbulent velocity fluctua-
tions that disperse it in all directions. Figure 6 illustrates some shapes
of smoke plumes under the same atmospheric conditions. The nature
of atmospheric turbulence makes impossible a correct prediction of
any of the individual examples of smoke plumes. One can, however,
describe mathematically an average smoke plume and relate the mean
concentrations of smoke at each point of this plume to the statistical
characteristics of turbulence and to the mean wind velocity. The
equations of turbulent diffusion for a continuous point source, which
may be used to represent the emission from a smokestack, can be
written explicitly under some simplifying assumptions, particularly
when the mean wind velocity remains constant and the mass and size
of the dispersing particles can be neglected [4].

The theoretical equations give the mean concentration distribution
of dispersing particles as a function of the statistical characteristics
of turbulence and of the mean wind velocity. These equations can
be used to determine isoconcentration curves similar to those repre-
sented in figure 6 in the framed illustration. Each of these curves
is a locus of points at which the mean concentration is the same.
These theoretical curves should be compared with the mean concentra-
tions measured using a large number of individual smoke plumes
(similar to the 10 plumes illustrated in the figure) and observed under
the same general meteorological conditions.

MATHEMATICAL MODEL

A mathematical model of the atmosphere over an urban area can
be used to study the probable pollution patterns. One of the simplest
models can be constructed by including in the description of the model
the distribution of pollution sources, their emission conditions, and
the micrometeorological characteristics that directly affect the dis-
persion of pollutants. The mean concentration distribution of pol-
lutants due to each source of pollution can be determined, and the
effects of the several sources can be added. One can then find the
mean concentration pattern of pollution over the urban areas as a
function of the time. The relative contributions of each of the sources
of pollution to the contamination at various points of the area can
then be analyzed. Under some meteorological conditions there exists
a thermal inversion above the ground that confines the dispersion of
pollutants to the lower levels of the atmosphere. In our mathematical
model such an inversion will be represented by proper boundary con-
ditions under which the thermal inversion and the ground reflect the
dispersing particles.

In the examples described earlier we have assumed that there exists
a well-defined mean wind velocity that is approximately constant in

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION—FRENKIEL 279

BURBANK

9 “"
# LOS ANGELES

Ficure 7.—Hypothetical dispersion of smoke puffs released at two points of the Los Angeles
Basin at 7 a. m. and 8 a. m., respectively.

magnitude and in direction for the whole urban area. However, in
some cases it may not be possible to define such a constant mean wind
velocity. Figure 7 illustrates how one may be able to construct a
mathematical model of atmospheric pollution when the “mean” wind
velocity cannot be considered as being the same for the whole area.
On this figure an outline of Los Angeles County is illustrated with
two trajectories determined from measured hourly wind streamlines.
Let us consider, for instance, the point marked with the number 7.
We assume that a puff of smoke has been emitted above this location
at 7 a.m. The puff is carried downstream with the general wind
velocity along the trajectory. At the same time, the turbulent wind
fluctuations disperse the smoke puff to sizes illustrated by the elliptical
figures for successive hours following the emission. A smoke puff
emitted at the same point but at another time may follow a different
trajectory and have a different rate of dispersion. By adding the
effects of a large number of similar smoke puffs emitted at the same

412575—_57——__19

280 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

re | ONG_BEACH

$ NAS.
ISLAND 2:00 p.m. TAK 5:00p.m.

F
UCLA

CS
i

Ficure 8.—Isoconcentration curves at 2 p.m., 5 p. m., and 8 p. m. for a single point source
continuously emitting particles at a constant rate located at Long Beach-Wilmington.
(Effects of topographic features and temperature inversion not included in this mathe-
matical model.)

point at successive times, one can find the mean concentration pattern
produced by a continuous point source.

Such a study has been made for Los Angeles County. The main
difficulty in the analysis was the lack of appropriate micrometeoro-
logical measurements for the Los Angeles Basin. Although some
very valuable data on hourly flow patterns are available [5], data
on turbulent fluctuations are not sufficient. It was therefore necessary
tc make several assumptions concerning the characteristics of turbu-
lence. Figure 8 represents some results of this analysis. The point
source is located in the Long Beach-Wilmington area; it is assumed
that it emits pollutants at a constant rate. The mean concentration
distributions at 2, 5, and 8 p. m. have been determined, and the cor-
responding isoconcentration curves are traced on the figure. The

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION—FRENKIEL 281

values referring to each of the curves indicate the relative magnitudes
of the mean concentration In this analysis we have not taken into
account the topographic situation of Los Angeles and have assumed
that there is no temperature inversion.

RELATIVE RESPONSIBILITIES OF POLLUTION SOURCES

A more complete study has been made to determine the theoretical
mean concentration at one location in Los Angeles County—California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena. We have assumed a thermal
inversion at 1,500 feet above sea level and have found the probable
mean concentrations using the average meteorological conditions in
Los Angeles County as measured in September 1947. We have further
taken into account the topographic situation of the Los Angeles Basin
by including in our model the San Gabriel Mountains, which are
north of Pasadena.

Sources of pollution distributed over a large area such as motor
vehicles, gasoline service stations, home incinerators, and house chim-
neys can be represented as area sources. An area source can be
considered as a large number of point sources spread over the area
or represented by an appropriate mathematical equation correspond-
ing sufficiently closely to the real area source. In order to illustrate
the analysis for an area source, we shall consider the motor-vehicle
traffic distribution in the Los Angeles Basin. The geographic traffic
distribution is based on some of the available data [6], and the
density of traffic in squares of size 4 by 4 miles has been determined.
In figure 9, the area of each black circle placed at the center of the
square is proportional to the corresponding traffic density. A model
of the geographic traffic distribution has been described by a mathe-
matical equation. Figure 10 represents the hourly variation of the
traffic volume measured at a particular location in Los Angeles County.
Obviously, the hourly traffic distribution does not change in each of
the squares in the same way; however, we shall assume that it does
for our model, because more complete data on the traffic variations
were not obtainable.

Using similar methods, it is possible to include in our mathe-
matical model of Los Angeles County several other sources of
pollution and to consider their relative contributions to the mean
concentration at each locality in the area. We have considered four
classes of pollution sources, namely: (1) Motorcars, (2) oil and gas
heating, (3) refuse incinerators, and (4) industry. In what follows,
I shall try to illustrate what kind of data can be found on these rela-
tive contributions of various sources of pollution. We shall first
add to our mathematical model an area source representing the pollu-
tion from refuse incinerators. Not having available information on

282 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Ficure 9.—Geographical distribution of traffic in Los Angeles County. Area of circles is
proportional to the number of vehicles; each square represents 16 square miles (4 x 4
miles).

epee Ba umoberee
eke eke dart
CIA
Mirna ce figes
codec poe ene
ie Aa ioe

2 4 6 8 10 12 2 4 6 8 10 12
HOUR OF DAY

Figure 10.—Example of hourly variation of traffic volume in Los Angeles.

2.4

2.0

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION—FRENKIEL 283

their geographic distribution in the area, we have used the same
distribution as we did for the motorcar traffic, which is approximately
comparable to the distribution of population. We have further
assumed that the incinerators are operated between 6 and 10 a. m.
with an hourly variation presenting a maximum at 8 a.m. Finally,
we have considered the case when the relative amounts of pollutants
emitted in our mathematical model during a period of 48 hours by
the four sources—motorcars, oil and gas heating, incinerators, and
- industry—are 52, 6, 16, and 26 percent, respectively. These percent-
ages were derived from data referring to the emission of “important”

0.028

gira ts
0.024 Z

INCINERATORS

0.020
0.016
0.012
0.008

0.004

NS

LD

SS

HOUR OF DAY

Ficure 11.—Relative contributions of the selected four principal sources to the mean
concentration at the California Institute of Technology. The data refer to a mathe-
matical model of Los Angeles County in which the topographic features and inversion
are taken into account. For this hypothetical model the relative proportion of the
“important” pollutants (including acids, organics, and nitrogen dioxide) emitted by the
four principal sources are based on the 1954 data for Los Angeles County [7]. The
meteorological conditions are based in large part on data for the month of September [5].

284 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

pollutants as evaluated for 1954 [7]. Figure 11 represents the rela-
tive contributions of each of the four sources to the mean concentration
at California Institute of Technology as functions of the hour of the
day. It should be emphasized that these results cannot be directly
compared with measured mean concentrations at the institute. In
this example we have not, indeed, taken into account the chemical
reactions of the various pollutants that may occur before they reach
the point of measurement. We shall refer later to some chemical
reactions and include their effect in the model of atmospheric
pollution.
ALLOWABLE POLLUTANT CONCENTRATIONS

The purpose of atmospheric pollution control is to limit the al-
lowed maxima of pollutant concentrations in the atmosphere of an
urban or rural area. These maxima are determined by the individual
and combined characteristics of the principal pollutants and the
degree of inconvenience and damage that is to be tolerated. The ef-
fects of long exposure to low concentrations and the effects of imme-
diate exposure to high concentrations should be considered in relation
to damage to health, crops, and livestock, as well as to the deterioration
of property. It is necessary, therefore, to take into account the allow-
able long-exposure concentrations and the allowable threshold con-
centrations beyond which harmful and damaging effects will result.
A quantitative determination of the safe limits of concentration is
still an object of research studies.

In determining allowable threshold concentrations, one must take
into account several factors involving not only the receiving end but
also the emitting origins of atmospheric pollution. Too stringent
limitations of allowable levels of pollution may impose great costs
and difficulties in operating many indispensable or useful activities
of the population. On the other hand, insufficient restrictions may
result in harmful effects on the health of the population or damage to
property. Therefore, the costs and operational difficulties of limita-
tions on the allowable levels of pollution should be measured by the
beneficial effects of such reductions.

TEMPORARY EMERGENCY MEASURES

One may wish to consider some temporary emergency measures
that would limit or modify the operation of the sources of pollution
and reduce the contamination. One could, for instance, consider
changing the hours of operation of the incinerators to shift their con-
tributions to pollution to other hours (see fig. 12). The contribution
of motorcars can be modified by changing, for the emergency period,
the traffic pattern or traffic regulations. As a result, idling and de-
celeration periods, during which the motorcars emit large amounts

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION—FRENKIEL 285

of pollutants, would be reduced and the over-all time of operation of
motorcars would be shortened. The industrial pollutants may be
reduced, for the emergency period, by changing the hours of operation
of some of the industrial sources of pollution. The emergency meas-
ures could, for instance, attempt to distribute the pollution concen-
tration more uniformly over the 24-hour period to keep it below a
chosen value for the allowable threshold concentration at any hour.

HOUR OF DAY

Ficure 12.—Similar to preceding figure except that the incinerators are assumed to operate
between 4 p. m. and 8 p. m. instead of between 6 a. m. and 10 a. m.

They must of course be applied in time to be effective; this requires
a quantitative prediction of the mean concentrations to be expected
under various meteorological conditions.

The emergency measures modifying the operation of the various
pollution sources may not always be sufficient, and the stoppage of
some of these sources may have to be considered. The effects of the
modification in the operation or of the complete stoppage of the
sources of pollution can be analyzed not only as far as the four
general sources of pollution (motorcars, oil and gas heating, incin-
erators, and industry) are concerned, but also with reference to in-

286 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

dividual sources or groups of sources. In our present example, we
have considered the concentration of pollutants referred to in figures
11 and 12. It may be necessary to examine the pollution levels for
other pollutants as well. <A similar analysis would, of course, have
to be made for other locations in the urban area or in the surrounding
rural areas. A complete analysis will therefore require finding the
pollution patterns over Los Angeles County, similar to those illus-
trated in figure 8. If the air-zoning requirements take into account
the differences between the nature of possible damages in each of the
locations, then the allowable threshold concentrations may vary with
the location.

This analysis refers to the mathematical model in which the mean
concentration patterns due to the over-all urban pollution sources are
considered. To approach more closely the real conditions, one must
take into account the possible departures from the mean concentra-
tions and the added effects of local sources of neighborhood pollution.
The mean concentration patterns were determined for the average
meteorological conditions for the month of September. In our mathe-
matical model, the description of the meteorological conditions was
based on hourly mean streamlines as measured in Los Angeles County
in September 1947. On each day of this month the streamlines depart
from this average. This departure results in a departure of the mean
concentration patterns, for a particular day, from the results obtained
from the analysis. However an important part of the present analy-
sis is to try to forecast the mean concentration patterns to determine
in advance whether any emergency measures are required. An analy-
sis based on general meteorological conditions corresponding to a
period of the year, such as the month of September, may be sufficient
for such a forecast. In the final result one would, however, take into
account the characteristics of the temperature inversion for the par-
ticular day for which the mean concentrations are determined since
they have a major influence on the levels of concentration.

LOCAL SOURCES OF NEIGHBORHOOD POLLUTION

Let us now consider a residential neighborhood with its own sources
of pollution that may include automobiles, indoor heating, home in-
cinerators, and so forth. Figure 13 illustrates a small neighborhood
with two houses and one incinerator. We should differentiate between
the contamination from the over-all sources of urban pollution and
the contamination from the local incinerator. The over-all sources
of urban pollution include, for instance, the numerous industrial
sources represented in our mathematical model. If our residential
neighborhood is located near the California Institute of Technology,
then the mean concentration originating from the over-all sources of

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION—FRENKIEL 287

urban pollution is represented by curves similar to those in figures
11 and 12. For the present discussion, let us use the curves in figure
11 and consider what should be the expected mean concentration of
pollutants, say, at 12 M. From the scale used in the figure, we find a
mean concentration of 0.0251 at 12 M. While the relative amounts of
pollutants emitted in the urban area by motorcars, oil and gas heating,
incinerators, and industry are, respectively, 52, 6, 16, and 26 percent,
the contributions of these three sources to the mean concentration at
the institute at 12 M. are 47, 6, 27, and 20 percent, respectively.

CONTRIBUTION FROM
THE OVERALL URBAN
AREA POLLUTION

CONTRIBUTION TO
THE OVERALL URBAN
AREA POLLUTION

i Hay

Ficure 13.—Illustration of a residential area with the pollution from its own sources and
from the over-all urban pollution sources.

The operation of the local incinerator will of course contribute to
the over-all pollution. However, before they lose their identity by
mixing with pollutants from many other surrounding sources, the
pollutants originating from the local incinerator may largely increase
the pollution in the neighborhood. A similar problem to the one con-
cerning a local incinerator may occur in industrial or commercial areas.
For instance, at a busy crossroad a large number of cars may have to
stop periodically for traffic signals; during their deceleration and
idling periods they emit large quantities of pollutants. Each such
crossroad may in itself be considered as a local source of pollution that
contributes largely to the contamination of the neighborhood. There
will be many other similar cases where one may have to differentiate
between the over-all sources of urban pollution and the local sources
of neighborhood pollution. In the study of air zoning, the effects of
both classes of sources must be taken into account.

PHOTOCHEMICAL OZONE PRODUCTION IN A POLLUTED ATMOSPHERE

The study of the relative contribution of various pollution sources
to the contamination described before ignores the chemical reactions
that modify the nature of pollutants. We shall now try to include in
this model an example of some such reactions. A very important
photochemical reaction taking place in the atmosphere of Los Angeles

288 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

County (as well as in other polluted areas) results in the production
of ozone. It has been shown by A. J. Haagen-Smit [8] that a mixture
of nitrogen dioxide and of certain hydrocarbons in air yields ozone
when submitted to the effect of sunlight. This ozone formation is
limited to a range of concentrations of nitrogen dioxide and hydro-
carbons in air of the order of parts per million in volume. The chemi-
cal kinetics of the reactions leading to ozone production are not yet
well known although some possible reactions have been considered
[9]. Some experiments seem to show that the number of ozone mole-
cules is proportional to the product of the number of molecules of
nitrogen dioxide and hydrocarbons [10]. This simple relation seems
to be applicable for the range of ozone concentrations measured in
Los Angeles. It has also been found, however, that ozone can be
produced by a photochemical reaction in small concentrations of nitro-
gen dioxide in air, even when no hydrocarbons are present [11].
While the kinetics of these various photochemical reactions require
extensive studies, we can, nevertheless, try to obtain some data for
our mathematical model of Los Angeles County by including some
simple reactions. For the purposes of the present example, we have
assumed that the concentration of ozone produced by the photo-
chemical reactions is proportional to the product of concentrations of
nitrogen dioxide and of hydrocarbons. We have also assumed that
four hours of sunlight irradiation are necessary to complete the re-
action. Figure 14 shows some of the results obtained under these con-
ditions. Figure 14a illustrates the combined effect of all sources of
pollution including (1) incinerators, (2) gas and oil heating, (8)
petroleum industry, (4) cars, (5) industries other than petroleum.
Figures 14b to 14f refer to the cases when all sources of pollution are
active except, respectively, one of each of the five sources listed above.
The dash-line curves on figures 14b to 14f (corresponding to the curve
of fig. 14a) give the combined effect of all sources for comparison.
As far as our mathematical model is concerned, it appears that the
exclusion of incinerators (fig. 14b) from the pollution sources will
not reduce very much the ozone concentration. We should call atten-
tion again to our figure 13 and emphasize that in our mathematical
model we are referring to the contribution from the over-all urban
area pollution. This over-all contribution from the incinerators is
not very significant as far as the ozone contamination at the California
Institute of Technology is concerned. However, the additional con-
tribution of each incinerator to the pollution of its immediate neigh-
borhood may be much more significant. One must also recall that
the contribution of incinerators to the contamination by pollutants
other than ozone may be much more important. Figures 11 and 12
illustrate, for instance, the importance of this contribution.

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION—FRENKIEL 289

COMBINED WITHOUT
INCINERATORS

WITHOUT
PETROLEUM INDUSTRY

WITHOUT
WOTOR VEHICLES

WITHOUT
OTHER INDUSTRY

ee ee eS ee ese | NSSSSS S3 Ss- 3 E < 5 iS S
OME CRA Gremepe Orie IdemiGmenieyn 20) eee cay SOM noe i ahearGe Se [OZ e 14 1G teh= 20) week 924
HOUR OF DAY HOUR OF DAY

Ficure 14.—Relative contributions of various pollution sources to the mean concentration
of ozone at the California Institute of Technology. ‘These results refer to a hypothetical
model of atmospheric pollution in Los Angeles County.

A comparison of the results which the mathematical model yields
for cars and industry is given in figure 15. In this figure we have com-
bined the contributions of the petroleum industry with the other in-
dustries. Figure 15a shows the ozone concentration for the case when
only the industrial sources are in operation, while figure 15b refers
to the case when all the sources ewcept the industry are in operation.
These two figures show how difficult it may sometimes be to assign
relative responsibilities to the various pollution sources for their
contamination. Let us consider, for instance, the concentration values
at noon. Figure 15a indicates that if only the industry is in opera-
tion, the 12 M. concentration is about 9 percent of the value obtained
when all the sources are combined (dash-line curve). However, figure
15b shows that all of the other sources except the industry will produce
a concentration of about 44 percent of the value for the combined

290 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

ALL SOURCES

ALL SOURCES
EXCEPT
MOTOR VEHICLES.

ees ee ee ae Spe Pond Ps ees
Ome Giese 6 a 20 meem24 OF 257 ALG 2) OI) 4 20 22 24

HOUR OF DAY HOUR OF DAY

Figure 15.—Contributions of industry (petroleum and other industries) and of cars to the
ozone pollution.

sources. In the first case it would appear that the contribution of the
industry to ozone concentration at the California Institute of Tech-
nology is 9 percent, in the second case it would be 56 percent. This
apparent difference is due to the fact that the contribution of each of
the pollution sources to the ozone concentration are not directly ad-
ditive since a chemical reaction is included in our mathematical model.
In the case of figures 11 and 12 no such reaction was included and the
total concentration of “important” pollutants was equal to the sum
of the contributions from each of the sources. This is not necessarily
true when a chemical reaction is playing a part in the atmospheric
pollution. Figures 15c and 15d represent similar results for the con-
centratins obtained for cars only and for all sources except cars.

REDUCTION OF POLLUTION FROM EXISTING SOURCES

To avoid using temporary emergency measures too often, the pos-
sibility of permanently correcting an unsatisfactory pollution situa-
tion might be studied and the effect of the local sources of neighbor-
hood pollution in each locality should first be examined. In the case
illustrated in figure 18, the contribution of the incinerator operation
to the pollution level would be evaluated. From this evaluation it can
be determined whether the contribution of the local sources of pollu-
tion to the neighborhood pollution is too large; where necessary,
remedies can be applied. This may correct many local situations where
the main responsibility for the pollution lies with the local sources.

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION—FRENKIEL 291

The concentration of pollutant for a section of an urban area repre-
sents the added contributions of its local sources and the over-all urban
sources. Atmospheric pollution control principles may be based on a
limitation of the proportions by which the local sources and the over-
all urban sources may contribute to the allowable concentrations of
pollutants. These limitations do not refer directly to the amount of
pollutants emitted into the atmosphere, but to the mean concentrations
of pollutant. To avoid contamination near the ground in an industrial
zone, tall stacks are often used. While such stacks do reduce the
atmospheric pollution of the local neighborhood, they change little, if
at all, their contribution to the over-all urban pollution, particularly
if there is a low-level temperature inversion.

For pollutants formed by a photochemical reaction, such as ozone
and certain oxidants, it may be desirable to determine whether a night-
time dispersion will reduce the contamination sufficiently to justify
the expense of special equipment or the inconveniences of different
working hours. The possibility of collecting the pollutants during
unfavorable meteorological conditions and dispersing them into the
atmosphere at a later time might also be considered. In this connec-
tion, the use of natural underground caves and caverns can be con-
sidered whenever they can be found near industrial sources of
pollution.

The problem of reducing the over-all pollution from such area
sources as motorcars, incinerators, house heating, and so forth, requires
very serious study. In the case of incinerators, consideration is often
given to replacing them by other methods of refuse disposal. The
possible reduction of pollutants should be evaluated by taking into
account the contamination for which an alternative method may be
directly or indirectly responsible. As far as motorcar pollution is
concerned, several abatement methods are considered. They include
the use of devices that would modify the exhaust gases into inoffen-
sive pollutants, the use of special fuel, and modification of engines.
Serious consideration should be given to a general analysis of trafiic
patterns. An extensive use of expressways and roads without traffic
lights would greatly reduce the contribution of motorcars to over-all
urban pollution. In many urban areas the effect of an increase in
public transportation, including the building of subways, on the pollu-
tion pattern might be examined. An analysis of the driving habits of
the population and the conditions of the car engines could determine
whether proper improvements would reduce the fuel consumption.
In an urban area with hundreds of thousands of automobiles, a small
improvement for each car should not be neglected. The effects of
such undesirable habits as excessively long warm-up periods, rapid
decelerations, and parking with idling engines could be evaluated.

292 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

In a study of various pollution control methods, it is important to
determine if their effects are sufficiently significant to justify their
expenses and inconveniences. Let us, for instance, consider the meth-
ods which consist in a reduction of the quantity of pollutants emitted at
the sources. Our mathematical model can be helpful in such an esti-
mate. Referring to the contribution of the industry to ozone concen-
tration, we have already determined the contamination level when all
industrial sources are eliminated from our mathematical model (see
fig. 15b). Such an elimination would either require a complete stop
to all industrial operations or complicated and expensive equipment
to avoid production or emission of ozone-forming pollutants. It is
doubtful that such extreme solutions would be practical and it is
difficult to imagine a situation in which they might be necessary, al-

0.00016
INDUSTRY IMPROVEMENT
| |
ALL SOURCES

0.00012 ; ELIMINATION OF
50% ELIMINATION OF INDUSTRIAL HYDRO-
INDUSTRIAL LOSSES CARBON LOSSES
IN NITROGEN DIOXIDE :
& HYDROCARBONS

0.00008 | |
ELIMINATION OF
INDUSTRIAL NITROGEN
DIOXIDE LOSSES

| | |

ALL SOURCES
0.00004 EXCEPT INDUSTRY

‘ =< |
0 (e 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 1S 20 22... 24
HOUR OF DAY

Ficure 16.—Effects of general improvements of industry operation on the ozone pollution.

though during an emergency, an industrial area not prepared to con-
trol air pollution by more reasonable methods may be forced to stop
the operation of all its industrial sources. Such a situation should be
avoided by studying in advance the effects of a partial reduction of the
quantity of pollutants emitted into the atmosphere. In the ozone for-
mation of our mathematical model, nitrogen dioxide and hydrocar-
bons both play an important role. Figure 16 illustrates the effects
of each of these pollutants on the ozone concentration. It appears
that the elimination of nitrogen dioxide from industrial pollutants
would have a much larger effect than the elimination of hydrocarbons.
This conclusion refers, of course, to the location of the California In-
stitute of Technology and the result may be different for another loca-
tion. If we can evaluate the expenses in investment and operation

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION—FRENKIEL 293

required to eliminate either nitrogen dioxide or hydrocarbons, then
we will be able to compare each of these control methods with their
effects. Most probably a practical solution will be unable to eliminate
entirely either nitrogen dioxide or hydrocarbons. We should, there-
fore, also try to examine the effects of partial reductions for each of
these pollutants (an example is represented by one of the curves on
fig. 16).

The contribution of motor-vehicle exhausts to the production of
ozone appears to be very large and deserves an extensive study. We
will give here only some results obtained by an analysis similar to the
one made for the industrial sources. It is known that the exhausts
contain relatively large quantities of hydrocarbons during idling and
deceleration periods. Some thought is given to either reducing those
periods or using methods to intercept hydrocarbons. Figure 17 rep-

0.00016

MOTOR VEHICLE IMPROVEMENT
| | |

ALL SOURCES ELIMINATION OF
0.00012 IDLING LOSSES
|
ELIMINATION OF
MOTOR VEHICLES
ELIMINATION OF IDLING NITROGEN DIOXIDE
0.00008. & DECELERATION LOSSES

ALL SOURCES

0.00004 EXCEPT
MOTOR VEHICLES

10 12 14 16 18 20 22: 24

HOUR OF DAY

Ficure 17,—Effects of general improvements of motor-vehicle operation or construction on
the ozone pollution.

resents some results obtained for our model, using available data on
the nature of the exhaust gases during various periods of motor ve-
hicle operation [12]. It appears that a complete elimination of idling
and deceleration periods would reduce the ozone concentration to
about half of its value obtained with all the combined pollution
sources. This result assumes that the methods used for such a reduc-
tion do not themselves add ozone-producing pollutants. One must,
for instance, consider whether burning hydrocarbons in the exhaust
gases does not produce too large quantities of nitrogen dioxide. Fig-
ure 17 shows that a complete elimination of nitrogen dioxide from the
exhaust gases would have a smaller effect than the elimination of

294 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

idling and deceleration effects (largely due to hydrocarbon losses). It
seems, however, that many of the more recent motor-vehicle engines,
with an increased compression ratio, produce relatively larger propor-
tions of nitrogen dioxide. The relative importance of nitrogen di-
oxide effects as compared to hydrocarbon effects may, therefore, be
quite different in the future.

This discussion is presented here to indicate a method for an anal-
ysis and does not give final results, which require the use of much more
extensive data than it was possible to use in our extremely simplified
model of atmospheric pollution.

AIR ZONING FOR NEW POLLUTION SOURCES

All these studies are closely connected with air zoning problems for
an existing urban area. Their purpose is to reduce the pollution of
both the over-all urban area and the local neighborhood. Such a re-
duction may be needed not only when there is danger of reaching the
allowable threshold concentrations at any location of the urban area
but also to make possible the installation of new industries or other
sources of pollution that accompany a normal expansion of a city.
A study of the influence of a new source of pollution on the mean con-
centration patterns may therefore be an important air zoning problem.
It should be emphasized that, as far as air zoning is concerned, there
is no need to impose restrictions on the installation of an industry at
any location of an urban area. Limitations should refer only to the
amount of pollution that such a new industrial source of pollution
would contribute to the atmospheric pollution of its neighborhood and
of the over-all urban area.

Conventional land zoning has as its main purpose promoting art
and amenity in urban building. The urban area is divided into resi-
dential, commercial, industrial, and other zones with specifications
describing the character and the use of the authorized buildings and
enterprises. To accomplish its purposes in each zone, the means used
by land zoning are to apply certain restrictions to the buildings in
the same zone. Air zoning proposes to limit the contamination of
the urban atmosphere, and would specify the allowable levels of
concentration for the atmosphere of each zone. However, building
restrictions for each zone must take into account the contributions
of the whole urban area to the contamination of its atmosphere. The
necessary restrictions will therefore depend on the meteorological
conditions of the urban area and result in different requirements for
the same classes of zones, according to their location in the area.
When building restrictions are considered, one must of course de-
termine some specifications that would apply for all weather condi-
tions. Such restrictions could be based on an analysis of the me-

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION—FRENKIEL 295

teorological conditions for various periods of the year, using data
for several years. One must keep in mind, however, that there will
always be a certain probability of exceptional meteorological condi-
tions that would produce an abnormally high contamination. The
probability of such an occurrence can be reduced to any desirable
degree by appropriate zoning regulations. It should be noted that
it is not necessarily advisable to base the building restrictions on the
most unfavorable meteorological conditions. Temporary emergency
measures when such conditions prevail could be employed and in con-
sequence the restrictions could be relaxed.

OPERATIONAL USE OF HIGH-SPEED COMPUTING

The examples of mathematical models of atmospheric pollution
used in this paper were made sufficiently simple to avoid too ex-
tensive numerical computations. A more complete and more correct
analysis may require the use of high-speed electronic computing
machines. Some use of high-speed computing techniques was made,
in cooperation with the National Bureau of Standards [13], to evalu-
ate the applications of these techniques to atmospheric pollution
studies. It appears that high-speed computing techniques can be used
profitably, not only to obtain very rapidly results similar to those
described before, but also to forecast probable pollution patterns
fast enough to be able to take appropriate precautions when danger-
ous contamination levels are expected.

The results discussed in the preceding sections were based on aver-
age meteorological conditions corresponding to a selected month of
the year, and their variations as a function of the hour of the day.
On each day of the month the meteorological conditions depart from
this average. One can, of course, use as a basis for the analysis the
meteorological conditions for each particular day and as a result
determine much more correctly the concentration patterns. Since
the use of mathematical models of atmospheric pollution requires ex-
tensive numerical computations, such an analysis will be practical
only if high-speed computing techniques are used. A method of
civil defense against radioactive pollution involving the use of high-
speed computers was suggested some years ago [14]. Similar meth-
ods show promise of success in problems of peacetime air pollution
of urban areas and can be used not only to analyze data on atmos-
pheric pollution and urban planning but also on an operational basis
in the control of atmospheric pollution.

In an area to be protected from pollutants we place a net of instru-
ments measuring the directions and the magnitudes of the mean wind
velocities, the character of the turbulence, and other meteorological in-
formation such as, for instance, the characteristics of the temperature

412575—57 20

296 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

inversion. If the expected degree of contamination is determined
before dangerous concentrations are reached, then the operational ex-
penses of many methods of pollution abatement as well as the invest-
ment in special control equipment could be greatly reduced. Evacua-
tion into the atmosphere is indeed one of the best and most economical
methods of disposing of pollutants. If we are able to determine the
periods of time when such evacuation can be made without danger,
then during those periods the use of the special equipment or special
fuel will not be necessary. It is therefore important to determine the
unfavorable conditions much more correctly than a human forecaster
is able to do, since any action to reduce the emission of pollutants dur-
ing the unfavorable time will be expensive. The meteorologist would
alert the computing center whenever there seemed to be a possibility
of unfavorable meteorological conditions. The computing center
would then take over the problem of continuously following the mean
wind velocity pattern, the turbulence characteristics, and the tempera-
ture inversion in the area. From these data the concentration of pol-
lutants which may be reached over the area will be computed. At
some chosen points of the area the concentration in contaminants will
be measured and the results relayed to the computing center to im-
prove the precision of the computation. The high-speed computation
will determine what the expected concentration distributions will be
if the operation of the sources of pollution continues without change.
If, at any point in the protected area, the occurrence of a dangerous
concentration is predicted, action would have to be taken to reduce the
emission of pollutants, It will be possible to determine which indi-
vidual sources contribute most to the dangerous concentrations, since
the computation is done by adding the effects of the various sources.
One will then find what the effects of shutting-down or reducing the
production of pollutants at some of these individual sources will be on
the predicted concentrations. As a result it may be sufficient to take
such action at only some of the sources of pollution and limit the ex-
pense and inconvenience to a minimum.

URBAN PLANNING

A growing urban area must expect an increase of atmospheric pollu-
tion unless a greater effort in its abatement measures balances the
effects of additional sources of pollution. As an example, we shall
use again Los Angeles County (or rather the mathematical model
representing the County) and forecast the mean concentration at the
California Institute of Technology for 1960 and 1980. This forecast
will be based on data concerning the future increase in population,
fuel consumption, and so forth. To simplify this computation, we
shall use the same mathematical model of Los Angeles County as we

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION—-FRENKIEL 297

TT

\\

_I\ db

YY

YMuda

NN

S S S .
ONTAR 46 sro 24 Gee 2002224
HOUR OF DAY

Ficure 18.—Estimates of hourly variation of mean concentration at the California Institute
of Technology for 1960 and 1980, for the “important” pollutants, compared with the 1954
value’ taken from figure 12. (Based on estimates of population and industrial growth
and assuming no major change in their geographic distribution in Los Angeles County
and no improvement in the pollution control methods.)

have used before. The result illustrated in figure 18 is determined for
the mean concentration of the most “important” pollutants. In this
figure, the curve for 1954 is the same as the one already shown on fig-
ure 11; the results for 1960 and 1980 assume that the abatement meth-
ods have the same efficiency as those for 1954. If we assume that the
allowable threshold concentration is, say 0.020, then the mean concen-
tration for 1960 will be larger than this allowable threshold value
between 8 a. m. and 8 p. m., and in 1980 from 7 a. m. to 3 a. m. of the
next day, as against the period of 10 a. m. to 3 p. m. for 1954. In
our mathematical model, these results correspond to the same meteoro-
logical conditions for each of the three cases. Obviously, the probable
number of days when the meteorological conditions will be favorable
for high concentrations of pollution in 1960 and 1980 will be larger

298 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

than in 1954. If the frequency and the severity of above-allowable
concentration periods should increase in the future city, then it must
be carefully considered by the city planners. Indeed, in that case, the
pollution situation is one of the parameters that must be taken into
account when projecting the population gains into the future.

The problem has some similarity to the well-known interrelation-
ship between rabbits and grass. If a large amount of grass is avail-
able, the rabbits, having sufficient food, reproduce rapidly. But, with
their increased number, they consume more and more grass and finally
lack food. This in turn results in a lower reproduction rate and a
drop in the number of rabbits. Following that more grass grows, more
rabbits appear. As a result of this process, both the amount of grass
and the number of rabbits may fluctuate over several years. In atmos-
pheric pollution, it is quite possible to have a similar problem, although
it will be affected by more than two factors.

Let us, for instance, consider the development of an urban area sur-
rounded by rural areas and let us assume that the area has at present
enough pollution to cause concern. If for some reason this urban
area attracts new inhabitants and new industries, then this will result
in an increase in atmospheric pollution. Following this increase, the
area may become less attractive to new inhabitants and the rate of
growth expected by the city planners may drop. In addition, the
rural areas may become so contaminated that a larger quantity of crops
and livestock is destroyed. Much of the necessary food, the quantity
of which increases with the population, will then have to be brought
from greater distances. This may or may not result in an increased
transportation problem, which would be followed by added pollutants.
It will, in any case, increase the living costs, which again will affect
the attractiveness of the urban area to new inhabitants. On the other
hand, some discouraged farmers may decide to give up their farms
to an industrial or residential expansion that, together with the pos-
sible growth of surrounding cities, will increase the pollution of the
urban area.

To these various effects, one must also add those that will have an
influence on the population that still remains in the expanding urban
area. The increased health hazard and the higher probability of lethal
concentrations of pollution may have disastrous consequences. Such
disasters may not necessarily result in a reduction of the population by
death, but they may cause some of the inhabitants to leave the urban
area. Although we have not included all the parameters that have an
influence on the population growth, it should be obvious that this
process is more complicated than the one concerning rabbits and the
grass. It may, however, be followed in a similar way by a fluctuation
of both the number of inhabitants and the level of contamination over

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION—FRENKIEL 299

a number of years. This discussion may or may not apply to Los
Angeles County, but it is presented at this time to indicate the need
for including in city planning an air-zoning and atmospheric-pollu-
tion control study. Although one should expect that the future will
bring many practical solutions to atmospheric pollution control, such
expectations cannot be included in a serious planning of urban develop-

ment.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author is indebted to O. J. Deters for his help in many phases of
the preparation of thismanuscript. He wishes to express his apprecia-
tion to Betty Grisamore for her assistance in the numerical computa-
tions and to Doris Rubenfeld for the preparation of the figures.

REFERENCES

1. Great Britain, Ministry of Health, Reports on Public Health and Medical

Subjects No. 95. Mortality and morbidity during the London fog of Decem-
ber 1952. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1954.

2. Great Britain, Committee on Air Pollution, Interim Report (presented to
Parliament by the Minister of Housing and Local Government, the Secre-
tary of State for Scotland and the Minister of Fuel and Power). Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1953.

. Many of these methods are reported in the Proceedings of the United States
Technical Conference on Air Pollution, L. C. McCabe, editor, New York,
1952, as well as in the general technical literature.

4, F. N. Frenkiel, Advances in applied mechanics, vol. 3, p. 61, 1958. (See also
the several references given in this paper.)

5. H. F. Poppendiek, J. G. Edinger, M. L. Greenfield, W. J. Hamming, and L. H.
McEwen, A report on an atmospheric pollution investigation in the Los
Angeles Basin, University of California, Departments of Engineering and
Meteorology, Los Angeles, 1948; also M. Neiburger and J. G. Edinger, Air
Pollution Foundation, Report No. 1, April 1954.

6. G. P. Larson, J. C. Chipman, and BH. K. Kauper, SAE Transactions, vol. 63,
p. 567, 1955.

7. W. L. Faith, Chemical Engineering Progress, vol. 51, p. 101-F, 1955; also
Air Pollution Foundation, Report No. 4, 1955.

8. A. J. Haagen-Smit, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, vol. 44, p. 1342,
1952.

9. F. E. Blacet, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, vol. 44, p. 1839, 1952.
10. A. J. Haagen-Smit and M. M. Fox, SAE Transactions, vol. 63, p. 575, 1955.
11. E. R. Stephens, P. L. Hanst, R. C. Doerr, and W. EH. Scott, Industr. and Eng.

Chem., vol 48, p. 1498, 1956.

12. W. L. Faith, Air Pollution Foundation, Report No. 2, 1954.

13. E. Marden and G. Hawkins (managers of a National Bureau of Standards
project), NBS Applied Mathematics Division, Quarterly Report, July
through September 1954, p. 3.

14. F. N. Frenkiel. Journal of Meteorology, vol. 8, p. 316 (see introduction),
1951; also Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, vol. 46, p. 206,
1956.

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Hurricanes

By R. C. Gentry ano R. H. Simpson

National Hurricane Research Project
U. S. Weather Bureau
West Palm Beach, Fla.

[With 1 plate]

INTRODUCTION

Horricanes have been very forcibly brought to the attention of a
large portion of the population of the United States during the past
few years. Hurricanes Carol and Edna successively battered the New
England coast in 1954 within a 2-week period. There had not been
a hurricane to affect this area seriously since 1944, and many of the
local residents believed that they were well outside the main hurricane
belt. The situation became worse one month Jater when Hazel brought
gale-force winds to the New England area and almost total destruction
to certain portions of the North and South Carolina beaches.

Hazel was the most severe storm to hit the Cape Fear area of North
Carolina during this century, but in 1955 within the 6-week period
from August 12 to September 19 three more hurricanes, Connie,
Diane, and Ione, entered the North Carolina coast. This made four
hurricanes that penetrated the North Carolina coast within a distance
of about 100 miles within one 11-month period. Although Hazel was
the most destructive of these four storms in North Carolina, the floods
caused by the rains of Connie, Diane, and Ione were record-breaking
for much of eastern North Carolina.

As though to show her impartiality, nature sent two violent hurri-
canes and one lesser tropical storm into the Tampico, Mexico, area
during the 1955 season. These hurricanes were Hilda and Janet and
tropical storm Gladys. The first two also laid waste much of the
Yucatan, Mexico, area.

Although the concentration of hurricane activity in North Carolina
and the Tampico area during this period was unusual, it has been
matched in other years at other places. In 1916-17, Mobile, Ala.,
was afflicted with three hurricanes, with wind speeds in that city of
107, 128, and 98 m.p.h., respectively. One of these also caused ocean

301

302 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

tides to rise 11.6 feet above normal. In 1947-48, Miami, Fla., was
battered by four hurricanes.

Hurricane Janet of 1955 was one of the greatest recorded in
meteorological history. Dunn, Davis, and Moore [7] * list the lowest
reliable sea-level land barometer readings of record in the world as
follows:

Location Date Inches
Lower Matecumbee_ Key, Fla 2.25 =. 22-5. 2-5. Sept. 2, 1935 26. 35
DSS Weal ci] Aa a ee nates ee one Regen ey hy ante at Sept. 25, 1905 26. 85
Gossack;. Australia... . oso) 2 Siete Spade Yh. oes Jan. 7, 1881 27. 00
Chetumal, Mexieo..._.-_.-_ . BOS4eS_ en Se ee Sept. 28, 1955 27. 00

When Janet passed over Chetumal the winds were measured at 175
m.p.h. before the anemometer collapsed. The wind continued to in-
crease, and the maximum speed was estimated in excess of 200 m.p.h.
Thus, Janet had the second lowest barometer reading ever observed
in the Western Hemisphere and had winds estimated in excess of
200 m.p.h.

From the meteorological viewpoint, the 1954 and 1955 seasons offer
several items of special interest: (1) The great acceleration in speed
of forward movement by Carol, Edna, and Hazel; (2) the lack of
acceleration of hurricane Ione after reaching the latitude at which
hurricanes Carol, Edna, and Hazel had accelerated so rapidly; (3)
Hazel’s and Carol’s maintenance of great intensity after moving into
northern latitudes and after traveling over land; (4) recognition that
the flood resulting from hurricane rains is the number two killer and
destroyer among the hurricane forces, ranking next to the storm surge
(the storm surge as used here refers to the rise of the ocean surface that
usually precedes and accompanies a hurricane’s passage across the
coastline), and ahead of the hurricane winds as a destructive force;
and (5) the shift in hurricane tracks from the United States Gulf coast
and Florida areas to the North Carolina-New England area.

After the 1954 and 1955 seasons, people in the northern States aban-
doned their former custom of labeling most hurricanes as Florida
hurricanes, regardless of where they originated. Figure 1 presents
the tracks of all tropical storms and hurricanes for 1947, at which
time most of the storms were concentrated in the area extending from
South Carolina to Texas. Tracks of most of the important storms of
the 1954 and 1955 seasons are given in figure 2, and these illustrate
why hurricanes are no longer automatically labeled as Florida hurri-
canes. During 1954 and 1955 not a single tropical storm of hurri-

1 Numbers in brackets indicate authorities cited in the list of references at end
of text.

HURRICANES—GENTRY AND SIMPSON 303

CANE
THAN HURRICANE
INTENSITY

uncertom

* Storm's course
© Tam,EST.position

Ficure 1.—Tracks of hurricanes and tropical storms of 1947.

cane intensity entered the United States coast from Texas, around
Florida, through Georgia, but, as mentioned earlier, six storms rav-
aged the United States coast from North Carolina to New England.
This radical shift in pattern can be illustrated by comparing figure 1
with figure 2.

Such radical differences in paths as those indicated have caused
speculation as to the possibility that the area of hurricane incidence
has shifted from southern United States to northeastern United States.
To investigate this point, research has been performed by the Office
of Climatology of the United States Weather Bureau. In figure 3,
the occurrence of tropical storms within the various coastal sections
is shown chronologically. The graphs in this figure show that more
storms have affected northeastern United States and the North Caro-
lina area the past two years than at various times since 1887. There
have been long periods when storms did not affect New England, for
instance, but there have been other periods when hurricane frequency
in northeastern United States was even greater than it was during 1954
and 1955. It is evident, therefore, that the recent shift in tracks does
not necessarily indicate a semipermanent relocation of the hurricane
alley.

304 § ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

LEGEND
-- 1954 HURRICANES
—— 1955 HURRICANES
sre" 1955 TROPICAL STORM
NLCOO TO REACH WURRICANE
WWTENSITY)

Figure 2.—Tracks of most of the important hurricanes and one tropical storm of the 1954
and 1955 seasons.

The type of damage caused by a hurricane varies with the character-
istic of the storm and the nature of the terrain affected, and results
mainly from (1) high winds, (2) floods resulting from the heavy
rains that are typical of most hurricanes, and (3) inundations caused
by the storm surge. When hurricane Janet crossed Swan Island
in 1955, all trees were blown down, and nearly every house on
the island was either destroyed or severely damaged; but not a
person was killed. Hurricane Diane caused very little wind damage,
but the floods that were triggered by the rains killed many people and
caused property damage estimated at about 1 billion dollars. The
amount of damage caused by the hurricane winds is largely dependent
on the type of building code enforced in the ravaged cities. The dam-
age from floods is usually much greater in mountainous areas than on
flat terrain. When a foot of water falls on relatively flat land, the
people are inconvenienced but few are drowned. The same amount
of water falling over a range of mountains may start a flood that will
drown people 150 miles or more away where perhaps there had been
no rain. The inundations caused by the storm surge are greatly de-
pendent upon the slope of the Continental Shelf and the elevation near

305

HURRICANES—GENTRY AND SIMPSON

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306 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

the coast. Thus, the forecasting problem varies for different areas
as well as for different storms affecting the same area.

In this paper we shall discuss some of the things we have learned
about hurricanes in the past few years, the various forecasting prob-
lems connected with storms, the research needs, and the ultimate po-
tential for making accurate forecasts of hurricane inception, intensity,
and movement.

ADVANCES IN KNOWLEDGE OF HURRICANES DURING THE PAST DECADE

When Col. Joseph B. Duckworth piloted a single-engine AT-6
aircraft into a hurricane near Galveston, Tex., on July 27, 1943, a
new era began in the collection of data about hurricanes [22]. Pre-
viously, surface ship reports were almost the sole source of data con-
cerning hurricanes until the storms approached land. Once advisories
were issued concerning an existing hurricane, surface ships tended
to avoid its path. Thus in previous years each improvement in the
hurricane warning system usually resulted in less data being available
to the forecasters and to research workers. Within a year after
Colonel Duckworth’s first flight it was routine procedure for recon-
naissance crews of the Air Force and Navy to make regular penetra-
tions of the violent storms from the Tropics. The development of
radar during World War II made available another powerful tool
for the hurricane service. Both when carried aloft and when used
from ground stations, radar equipment made possible observa-
tions about hurricanes in greater detail than ever before. Rawinsonde
equipment for measuring the winds, pressure, temperature, and hu-
midity of the air from the ground to levels above 100,000 feet have
come into widespread use in recent years. The additional data col-
lected in recent years by aircraft reconnaissance, radar observations
of hurricanes, and from an expanded network of upper-air sounding
stations have made possible increased understanding and knowledge
of hurricanes and greater efficiency of the hurricane warning
service.

We now know much more of the vertical distribution of winds in
hurricanes. Prof. B. Haurwitz in 1935 [9], after computing the
difference in air density that would be required to counterbalance the
difference often observed across a hurricane in air pressure at sea
level, deduced that intense hurricanes must extend to above 30,000
feet. This has been verified. In general the winds of a hurricane
vary relatively little from the surface up to 10,000 feet. From there,
up to 30,000-50,000 feet (depending upon the characteristics of the
individual hurricanes) the winds gradually decrease with height.
Data collected during hurricane Ione of 1955 and hurricane Betsy

HURRICANES—GENTRY AND SIMPSON 307

of 1956, however, indicated that on particular days in those two storms
the maximum wind speeds were about the same even at 20,000-30,000
feet as at the surface.

Data collected by the reconnaissance crews and by radar have dem-
onstrated that hurricanes are much more complicated than was thought
a century ago. The spiral rainband was one of the earlier discoveries
of the radar meteorologists (pl. 1). Most of the heavy rain in hur-
ricanes occurs in rainbands that spiral in toward the center of the
storm. Between the bands, rainfall is relatively light, and near the
outer edges of the storm there frequently is no rain at all between the
bands. To some extent the highest winds are also associated with
these spiral bands. Reconnaissance has also brought out the fact that
in tracking the hurricane several different kinds of centers may be
specified, and these centers do not always coincide. These various
centers are: (1) The center of the wind circulation, (2) the point of
lowest air pressure, and (3) the point around which the spiral rain-
bands or cloud streets rotate. In general, the location of these various
centers may differ by as much as 20 miles, depending upon the rate
of storm travel. Many of the earlier writers described hurricanes
as symmetrical circular storms. We know now that most hurricanes,
particularly moving ones, are not symmetrical—the winds are much
stronger in some quadrants, the rain area extends out farther in some
quadrants, there are asymmetries in the cloud structure, and all three
elements tend to be concentrated along spiral bands.

Hurricanes frequently move along an irregular path that oscillates
about the relatively straight or smooth curved path that the storms
were depicted as following in track charts prepared before the 1940’s.
The more frequent fixes obtained in recent years confirmed these
oscillations, some of which have a relatively short period of 3 to 6
hours duration, and some with a period of 12 to 36 hours. In recent
years these oscillations have been attributed to forces within the hur-
ricane (Yeh [25]).

It has been well established that the primary energy source for
hurricanes is the warm moist tropical air that is found in the areas
where hurricanes form. As this warm moist air converges in toward
the storm center, it accumulates additional latent and sensible heat
from the warm ocean surface. Near the center the air rises rapidly
(fig. 4) and most of its water vapor is condensed to liquid water,
thus releasing great quantities of latent heat. Only a small propor-
tion of the heat energy thus released is converted into kinetic energy
for driving the hurricane winds, and the mechanism for transforming
the energy still remains pretty much a mystery.

308 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

40,000'--- = Jae sce seeds wet een n+ +--+ --* 40,000

Ficure 4.—Cross section through a hypothetical hurricane showing a highly schematized
model of part of the vertical circulation.

HURRICANE FORECASTING

The forecast problem may be subdivided into six units:

. Forecasting inception.

. Forecasting the movement of the hurricane.

. Forecasting changes of intensity.

. Forecasting the rainfall resulting from the hurricane.
. Forecasting floods associated with hurricanes.

. Forecasting the height of the storm surge.

D> OP oe bo He

1. INCEPTION OF HURRICANES

During the past century, tropical meteorologists thought tropical
storms developed when there was excessive heating some place in
the Tropics. The heated air should rise and cause clouds with great
vertical development and showers. The explanation was given that
the more intense the heating, the heavier became the showers until
finally a storm formed. Close examination of the data, however,
revealed that hurricanes formed in areas where there was very little
change in the sea-surface temperatures for great distances. The
theory that hurricanes were formed by intense heat merely asso-
ciated the shower activity with the storm formation and offered no
definite mechanism for organizing the showers into a circular pattern
and furnished no means for predicting whether the tropical storm
would form. Since showers occur over the tropical oceans during
much of the year and since only a very small percentage of even
the areas of heavy showers ever develop into tropical cyclones, these
are serious limitations. Among: the first mechanisms suggested for
concentrating and intensifying the disturbed areas into tropical
storms was the Norwegian model of an unstable frontal wave. In
this model a front is the boundary surface between two masses of
air that come from different source regions and that have different

HURRICANES—GENTRY AND SIMPSON 309

densities and moisture content. Under certain conditions a wave
forms along such a boundary and if it becomes unstable it may release
enough energy to cause a storm to develop. Such occurrences are
frequently observed in middle and northern latitudes in winter. This
idea as applied to the Tropics had to be abandoned as it became rec-
ognized that true fronts seldom, if ever, exist over the tropical oceans.
Another serious limitation of this explanation was presented in a
paper by Gordon Dunn in 1940 [5], which showed that many of the
hurricanes in the Atlantic formed in easterly waves (deformations
in the steady trade-wind flow) entirely within a single air mass
where there was not even a suggestion of a front of the Norwegian
unstable frontal wave type.

It is now well known that hurricanes form only over the tropical
oceans where the water temperature is high, at least 80° and in most
cases 83° to 85° (Palmen [13] and Fisher [8]), and where showers
are occurring. The higher ocean temperatures are required for heat+
ing the air until it is buoyant and for making it possible for the air
to hold a sufficient amount of water vapor. (Warm air will hold more
water vapor than cold air; hence, warm air makes possible the release
of a greater amount of latent heat when the moisture is condensed from
the rising air.)

For a hurricane to form it is necessary to have warm moist tropical
air and to have a preexisting disturbance in the normally steady
trade-wind regime of the Tropics. These are necessary but not suf-
ficient conditions. Only a relatively small percentage of the tropical
disturbances that frequent the Caribbean area in the summer ever
reach hurricane intensity. It is obvious that something else is re-
quired. It has been suggested by various investigators, notably
Herbert Riehl [16] and J. S. Sawyer [18], that the upper-level flow
patterns furnish the key to inception. It seems rather obvious after
studying structure of hurricanes that there must be horizontal con-
vergence of the air flow in the lower levels and there must be hori-
zontal divergence of the air flow at some upper level. Professor
Riehl, in his study of formation of hurricanes, has suggested that at
about 40,000 feet there are certain flow patterns that help to evacuate
air from the incipient storm area and are conducive to the forma-
tion of hurricanes. It is hoped that the additional data now being
collected will reveal sufficient details concerning the structure and
energy processes in hurricanes to make it possible to define both the
necessary and sufficient conditions for their formation.

2. HURRICANE MOVEMENT

The theories as to what makes a hurricane move may be divided into
two classes: (1) Those attributing the movement of a hurricane to
internal forces within the hurricane itself, and (2) those attributing

310 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

the movement to external forces. In figure 5 there is shown sche-
matically the winds of a hurricane broken into three components:
(a) Those tangent to a circle with a speed ranging from 75 to 150 m.p.h.
(b) Those inward or outward from the center (in the lower levels the
winds usually have an inward component and at high levels the winds
have an outward component). The speed ranges up to 35 m.p.h. or
more in lower levels.
(c) The basic current in which the hurricane is imbedded and in which
the speed varies from zero up to about 60 m.p.h. with the average
being near 15 m.p.h.

a hinay |
A SS
oe a AA
Y 6 ETN a
\

Circular Inflow
(usually 75-150 mph) (usually 5-35 mph)
—_—_ § _

Steering

(usually 5-25 mph)

Ficure 5.—Schematic presentation of the winds of a hurricane separated into three compo-
nents. (In actual cases the strength of the various components is usually different in
the various quadrants of the storm and for different radii.)

The external forces are usually attributed to this basic or “steer-
ing” current. Since in actual cases it is very difficult to separate the
basic current from the other two components, forecasters have devised
many methods for estimating the contribution of “steering” to hurri-
cane movement. It is now generally agreed that most of the rapid
forward progress of hurricanes can be accounted for by the effects of
the basic current, and that a hurricane moves in approximately the
same direction the basic current is flowing.

To determine if the steering current caused a hurricane to move,
Mrs. Elizabeth Jordan [11], while working at the University of
Chicago, made calculations from mean data. She computed the steer-
ing current based on mean winds from an area ranging from 120 to

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—GENTRY AND SIMPSON

Radarscope showing the spiral rainbands of hurricane Connie. The dense white area in
the very center of the scope is caused by objects near the radar set. All the other white
areas indicate the presence of rain. Note that the rainbands spiral in toward the center
of the hurricane (to the left and slightly below the middle of the picture).

HURRICANES—GENTRY AND SIMPSON 311

240 nautical miles about the center of the hurricane at all levels up
to 30,000 feet. Defining the pressure weighted mean of the winds in
this ring as the steering current, she found that it was 9.7 knots in
the direction in which the average hurricane was moving. The average
speed of motion of the storms included in this study was 11 knots.
This difference is fully within the limitations of the data. Mrs. Jordan
also computed the component of the basic current perpendicular to
the main movement of the hurricanes and found it to be less than 1
knot. It follows then, in the mean, that tropical storms move in the
direction and with the approximate speed of the steering current
when the steering current is defined as the pressure weighted mean
flow from the surface to 300 mb.

The internal forces result from interaction of the other two circu-
lations, namely, the tangential and radial components of the winds,
with each other and with the basic current. Asymmetries of the
circulation about a hurricane and small-scale circulations imbedded
within the hurricane wind field also contribute to the movement of
the hurricane as a part of the internal forces. Since the tangential
and radial components of the wind vary from time to time and differ
in various sectors of the storm, their interactions build up forces which
could reasonably be expected to cause changes in the direction and
speed of movement of a hurricane. Low-level wind data and radar
observations of hurricanes indicate that locations of areas of maximum
mass convergence in the lower levels vary considerably with respect to
the hurricane center from storm to storm and from time to time in the
same storm. It has been calculated that the hurricane that passed
over southern Florida and New Orleans, La., in 1947 drew 2 to 3
billion tons of air per minute into the hurricane circulation through
the lower levels of the storm and presumably returned the same
amount of mass to the surrounding atmosphere after expelling the
air from the storm at high levels. It should not, therefore, be assumed
a priori that the internal dynamics of the storm itself play an insignifi-
cant role in the over-all physics of hurricane movement.

Let us discuss two of the internal forces that have been investigated.
Even a casual inspection of hurricane tracks will reveal that most of
the storms have some northward component. This suggests some in-
ternal force. Dr. C. G. Rossby [17] argues that the northward accele-
ration can arise from the variation of the coriolis forces across the
width of the storm. (The coriolis is an apparent force caused by the
movement of air across a rotating spheroid and varies directly with
the sine of the latitude.) In general, the northward acceleration ac-
cording to the formula developed by Rossby will be greater, the more
intense and the larger the hurricane. Dr. George P. Cressman [4]
estimated that the magnitude of this northward force would probably

412575—57——21

312 |§ ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

vary from one-half to 2 knots per day for the size storms that occur
most frequently in the Atlantic. He further estimated that for the
very large typhoons that sometimes occur in the Pacific the magnitude
of this acceleration might be as much as 814 knots per day. Mr. Ando
in Japan made a statistical study and found that, on the average,
intense typhoons move faster to the north than weaker typhoons.

Dr. Tu-Cheng Yeh [25] has described another internal mechanism
that results from the fact that superposition of a vortex on a steering
current is nonlinear. This fact becomes manifest through small oscil-
lations with amplitude of 0.5° to 2° of latitude and with a period of
12 hours to 2 days for the normal range of the observed winds, ac-
cording to Dr. Yeh. Yeh has developed formulas for computing both
the amplitude and the period of oscillation, and both of these quan-
tities vary with the wind speed, the size and intensity of the storm.
Post-storm analyses of many hurricane and typhoon tracks indicate
that there is some oscillation similar to the one which Yeh described.
Insufficient data have been available for fully testing the theories of
Dr. Yeh, and most of the use that has been made of his ideas in fore-
casting have been by extrapolating a suspected oscillation into the
future.

COMMONLY USED FORECAST METHODS

Statistical approach.—C. L. Mitchell [12] and I. R. Tannehill [23]
have prepared summaries of hurricane tracks by months which have
been published. José Col6n [3] has extended the work started by these
two and has computed for each 5° square of latitude and longitude the
percent frequency storms have moved along each of the 16 principal
directions. He also calculated the probability of a displacement along
the modal direction and the average speed of movement (fig.6). When
data are sparse, frequently the best forecast that can be made is one
based on charts similar to those prepared by Colon. Fortunately, in
the tropical Atlantic area where we ordinarily have very little data,
the statistical approach seems to work very well. Even when data
are available the statistics can be used as a rough guide to what a hurri-
cane is most likely to do.

Persistence of past movement.—Probably the most commonly used
method of forecasting hurricane movement is the so-called “path
method.” ‘This consists of extrapolating a hurricane movement into
the future on the basis of what has happened in the past 6, 12,
or 24 hours. Although extrapolation need not consist of projecting the
hurricane path forward along a straight line, that is the way it is used
most commonly. The “path method” integrates the effect of both
the internal and the external forces. If one may assume that the same
steering and internal forces will be acting in the next period, the “path
method” should give very good results. In this statistical work, Mr.

313

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Colén [8] has computed the probabilities that the track would not
deviate more than 10° in direction in the next 24 hours from the path
followed the previous 24 hours. He found that during most of the
hurricane season straight-line extrapolation gets results this good at
least 80 percent of the time in the area south of 20° N.

Steering —As early as the beginning of the twentieth century, we
find examples in meteorological literature suggesting that hurricanes
are steered by the winds around the Bermuda anticyclone. Only
slightly later articles were published emphasizing that hurricanes fol-
low the course of cirrus clouds moving out in advance of the hurricane
center. Edward H. Bowie [1], C. L. Mitchell [12], Gordon E. Dunn
[6], and later writers have all suggested that we use the winds around
the hurricane to estimate the future movement of the storm.

Grady Norton, formerly in charge of the hurricane forecasting office
in Miami, has been the most successful user of what he called “the high-
level steering technique.” In picking the “steering level” he would
examine the wind charts at successive levels from near the ground up
to 50,000 or 60,000 feet. Working up from the ground he chose as
the “steering level” the first one at which the vortical circulation as-
sociated with the hurricane seemed to disappear. He then would
predict that the hurricane would move in the direction in which the
winds at this level were blowing.

Many other “steering techniques” have been devised—e. g., low-level
steering, from which it is argued that the hurricane moves with the
winds at low levels; and warm-tongue steering (Simpson [20]), on
which is based the theory that a hurricane will move parallel to the
axis of a warm pool of air that usually protrudes in advance of a hurri-
cane.

AROWA technique—The most widely discussed new forecasting
method of the last two seasons was the one developed at the United
States Navy’s Project AROWA, under the leadership of Professor
Riehl and Commander Haggard [14]. This method also makes use of
“steering.” To get an estimate of the basic current, the 500-mb. (about
19,000 feet) map is analyzed. The mean wind at this level is com-
puted for an area that extends 714° of longitude east and west of the
storm center and from 5° south to 5° to 10° north of the storm center.
The storm is then forecasted to move at the approximate speed of
the wind through this area, corrected by a relatively small empirical
factor. This method has been used widely by the various hurricane
forecast centers for the last two years. Results have varied from
office to office and from storm to storm. Although the technique itself
is objective in nature the results are entirely dependent on the quality
of the analysis of the weather map at the selected level which differs
widely from one analyst to another and from one day to another, de-

HURRICANES—GENTRY AND SIMPSON 315

pending upon the amount of data available. Professor Riehl and
Commander Sanborn of Project AROWA made a series of forecasts
during the 1955 season in which they found that the average error for
47 forecasts made 24 hours in advance was 63 nautical miles. These
results are somewhat better than those obtained using the AROWA
technique at the various hurricane forecast offices.

Numerical prediction—During 1955 and 1956 extensive tests were
made using numerical prediction techniques to forecast movement of
hurricanes, and these forecasts have competed in quality with those
made by other methods. Forecasts made by the numerical prediction
technique in current use are also based on a form of “steering.” This
technique has the advantage over many of the others, however, in that
it is purely objective. As improved and more realistic mathematical
models of the wind circulation become available for use in numerical
prediction, there should be continued improvement in forecasts made
by this method.

SPECIAL PROBLEMS IN FORECASTING HURRICANE MOVEMENT

So long as the hurricane continues to move along the same path at
approximately the same rate of speed, either the persistence of the past
movement or the statistical method of forecasting usually gives good
results. Unfortunately, in the areas near the United States coast,
hurricanes frequently change their direction of movement and will
often accelerate or decelerate in their rate of forward movement.
Hurricane Carol of 1954 and hurricane Ione of 1955 are two storms
that illustrate one of the problems continually facing the forecaster.
While hurricane Carol was located south of Cape Hatteras, N. C., it
had a net forward speed of less than 3 m.p.h. over a period of 60
hours. Then, within a period of a few hours it had accelerated until
it moved at a rate of about 40 m.p.h. Hurricane Ione, by contrast,
moved toward the coast of North Carolina at a rate of 15 to 20 m.p.h.
until the time it crossed the coastline. Instead of accelerating, as
hurricane Carol had done, it slowed down, made several loops in its
course, and had a net forward speed for several hours of only 2 to 3
m.p.h. Whereas hurricane Carol had moved in the direction be-
tween north and north-northeast at about 40 m.p.h. from the vicinity
of Cape Hatteras, N. C., to Long Island, N. Y., hurricane Ione turned
suddenly toward the east and east-northeast as it left the coast of
North Carolina just a few miles south of Norfolk, Va., and moved out
into the Atlantic ocean.

Figures 7 and 8 are surface maps of hurricanes Carol and Ione when
they were near Cape Hatteras, N. C. An inspection of these maps
will reveal few clues as to the widely different types of movement that
were to follow. It was pointed out earlier that we have learned that
the movement of hurricanes is largely controlled by the flow of air

316 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Ficure 7.—Surface weather map at the time when hurricane Carol was accelerating rapidly.
Within a few hours the storm was moving north-northeastward about 40 m.p.h.

around them, up to comparatively high altitudes. To illustrate the
point, figure 9 shows the 300-mb. map (about 30,000 feet) when Carol
(shown by tropical storm symbol 6) was located east of Jackson-
ville, Fla., and was moving slowly. At the 300-mb. level the winds
usually blow in a direction approximately tangent to the contour lines
and vary in speed inversely with the space between the contour lines.
From the contour lines we can deduce that the air currents around the
hurricane were very weak and variable in direction. If the hurricane
had been farther south in the moderate easterlies, then about 20 m.p.h.
at Havana, Cuba, it would have moved faster. Figure 10 shows the
300-mb. map at the time when Carol was moving northward at about
40 m.p.h. The close spacing of the contour lines indicate that the
wind should be strong southerly all around Carol. At Washington,
D. C., winds were about 55 m.p.h. at 31,260 feet, and at Caribou,
Maine, they were south 35 m.p.h. at 19,000 feet. The long, heavy
arrow in figure 10 extending from Cape Hatteras, N. C., through New
Hampshire into Canada shows part of the track of Carol.

HURRICANES—GENTRY AND SIMPSON 317

Sit
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2G A
Le\\ (|
=7))

Ficure 8.—Surface weather map at the time when hurricane Ione was moving very slowly
toward the east-northeast.

The effect of the upper air flow on the movement of hurricane Ione
is shown in figure 11. At the time the map was made, hurricane Ione
was beginning to move toward the east-northeast. The contour lines
indicate a strong flow from the west only a short distance north of
hurricane Ione and this indicates that hurricane Ione could not move
very rapidly toward the north. (The wind direction and speed in
knots are indicated on the map for Washington, D. C., Portland,
Maine, and Nantucket, R. I. Several hours earlier when the storm
center was still over North Carolina the high-level circulation was not
as well defined and it was not obvious in which direction Ione would
move.) A few hours after the time of the map, hurricane Ione drifted
far enough north to be affected by the strong winds blowing toward
the east-northeast and accelerated rapidly in forward movement.

3. INTENSITY

The third major forecasting problem for hurricanes is that of fore-
casting intensity, which to some extent, overlaps the problem of fore-
casting inception. As used here, forecasting of inception refers to

318 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

28 AUG. i954

Ficure 9.—The 300-mb. contour map when hurricane Carol was nearly stationary east of
Jacksonville, Fla. (See tropical storm symbol $.) This map portrays the pressure dis-
tribution at about the 30,000-foot level. The wind flow is usually almost parallel to the
direction of the contours (counterclockwise around the high pressure [H]) and the wind
speed varies inversely with the space between the contour lines.

the transformation of a disturbance in the Tropics into a tropical storm
that has a vortical circulation, maximum wind speed of at least 40
knots, and a center in which the winds are relatively calm. The wind
speed, however, is more likely to be at least of hurricane intensity, that
is, 75 m.p.h., before the end of the inception period. Forecasts of
intensity are those made after the tropical storm has formed and has
already become a menace to the life and property of communities that
stand in its projected path.

In the hurricane service, warnings are ordered for an area at any
time when the winds are expected to reach hurricane force. No
stronger warnings are issued regardless of how much the wind speed
is expected to exceed 75 m.p.h. The amount of damage that can be
done, however, varies considerably with the intensity of the storm.

HURRICANES—GENTRY AND SIMPSON 319

1500 Zz
Si AUG. 1954

Ficure 10.—The 300-mb. contour map when hurricane Carol was centered over eastern
Long Island and moving rapidly northward. (For further explanation see legend of

Fig. 9.)

This is particularly true because the force of the wind increases not
with the speed but with the square of the speed of the wind; for
example, winds of 150 m.p.h. exert four times as much force as winds
of 75 m.p.h. A hurricane in which the maximum wind speed is only
75 m.p.h. may do relatively little damage except in exposed areas and
to the weaker varieties of trees and shrubbery. Winds of 150 m.p.h.
will, however, tear away and batter most anything that is not securely
attached to some sturdy structure. Winds of 200 m.p.h. will do great
damage to all except the very strongest of buildings. If it were
possible to forecast intensity of hurricane with more accuracy and
with greater precision, it should be practical to issue grades of
hurricane warnings.

We have had many examples of hurricanes changing intensity
within a period of 24 hours. In 1935 a small hurricane started forming
in the Bahama Islands area. By September 1 this storm was believed

320 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Ficure 11.—The 200-mb. (about 40,000 feet) contour map when hurricane Ione was begin-
ning to accelerate toward the east-northeast. Wind direction and wind speed (in knots)
are indicated at three stations near the hurricane center (see tropical storm symbol §).
The heavy arrow indicates the past and future movement of the storm.

to have reached hurricane intensity ; by September 2 the center passed
over the Florida Keys with the lowest central pressure that has ever
been recorded at sea level in the Western Hemisphere, 26.35 inches of
mercury. Hurricane Janet of 1955 has already been listed as one of
the most severe storms of the century. The eye of this hurricane
passed just south of the Island of Barbados on September 22. It was
described as an immature hurricane with a very narrow band of
hurricane winds around the eye. The hurricane reconnaissance plane
that observed the storm at this time reported that the wall of cloud
around the eye was only 5 miles wide but the turbulence was very
severe. Maximum winds were estimated as 110 to 120 m.p.h. on the
south shore of Barbados, but the wind speed dropped off very rapidly
20 miles out from the edge of the eye. According to Dunn, Davis, and
Moore [7], hurricane Janet proceeded on a course generally toward
the west in the eastern Caribbean for the next several days with some

HURRICANES—GENTRY AND SIMPSON 321

actual decrease in intensity. On September 23 the central pressure
was 996 mb. (29.41 inches) and maximum winds 90 m.p.h.

During the early hours on the 24th, according to the Navy recon-
naissance plane, Janet never presented a good center definition and it
is not certain if the center was found. Late in the afternoon, one
very strong spiral weather band was found although the central pres-
sure remained about the same. At 8:30 E.S.T. on September 26,
Lieutenant Commander Windham with crew of eight and two news-
paper men reported at latitude 15°40’ N. and longitude 78°02’ W.
that they were about to begin penetration of the main core of the
storm. No further report was ever received from this plane. Janet
had become a very severe hurricane. The Navy reconnaissance plane
at 10:40 E.S.T. on the 27th reported that the lowest pressure was 938
mb. (27.70 inches) and maximum winds in excess of 115 m.p.h. by a
large and uncalculable amount. Janet passed over Swan Island
during midday with winds estimated at 200 m.p.h. The hurricane
center reached Chetumal, Mexico, about 1: 00 a.m. local time, Septem-
ber 28. It was still a very concentrated storm with winds reaching
hurricane force only about 2 hours before the arrival of the eye,
according to the description of Dunn, Davis, and Moore [7]. In
Chetumal the barometer reading of 27.00 inches was recorded in the
eye of the hurricane. In Corozal, British Honduras, only a few miles
from Chetumal, the barometer fell 2.24 inches in 2 hours and 10
minutes. The anemometer at the airport terminal building at
Chetumal registered 152 knots or 175 m.p.h. before it collapsed. The
wind later increased and the maximum is estimated in excess of 200
m.p.h.

Hurricane Diane in 1955 is a good example of both rapid intensifi-
cation and also rapid loss of intensification. On August 11, the first
aircraft reconnaissance of Diane reported that the lowest pressure was
1,004 mb. (29.65 inches) and that the maximum winds were 45 m.p.h.
This was approximately the same maximum wind speed that had been
reported by ship observation on the previous day. During the night
the storm changed direction from a northwest course to a northeast
course and intensified rapidly. The reconnaissance on the 12th re-
ported that winds had increased to 125 m.p.h. and the central pressure
had deepened to 975 mb. (28.78 inches). After the 13th, the storm
began to fill and the intensity decreased. When the center passed
inland near Wilmington, N. C., early in the morning of the 17th, the
highest sustained wind reported was 50 m.p.h. at Hatteras, N. C., with
gusts up to 75 m.p.h. at Wilmington, N.C.

What are some of the things that can cause a hurricane to change
intensity? It is well established now that if cold or dry air is drawn
into the inner circulation of a hurricane, or if the hurricane goes over

322 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

rough terrain, the storm will lose intensity; and if the terrain is very
mountainous the lower levels of the hurricane’s circulation may be
completely disrupted.

The fuel that supplies the energy of a hurricane is the warm moist
air that is found in tropical oceans. This explains why introduction
of cold dry air to the inner core of the hurricane’s circulation can
cause the hurricane to weaken. It does not explain, however, why
some hurricanes will barely reach hurricane intensity even though
both types remain over the warm tropical oceans for long periods.

Two types of air circulation are required to keep a hurricane going:
(1) Inward-directed flow in the lower levels, and (2) outward-directed
flow in the upper levels that evacuates the air from the hurricane.
To produce intensification of a storm and to provide lower pressure
in the center it is necessary that more air be evacuated from the top
than is brought into the hurricane circulation at lower levels. It is
quite probable, therefore, that a key to the intensification of a hurri-
cane is in the upper levels of the troposphere. Most of our ideas as
to what will cause a hurricane to intensify or to weaken are based on
theoretical rather than empirical deductions because of lack of suf-
ficient data to prepare accurate weather maps at the higher levels.
Dr. Herbert Riehl, University of Chicago, in private discussions, has
expressed the idea that a hurricane is more likely to intensify if the
circulation at high levels is such that the air coming out of the hurri-
cane can be rapidly removed from the tropical area. Further intensifi-
cation is much less likely and, if it does occur, will proceed much more
slowly in cases of sluggish circulation at the higher levels.

After a hurricane moves into middle latitudes the warm air of the
storm is frequently brought in contact with a colder air mass. This
will usually change the character of the hurricane, and it sometimes
occurs in such a manner that the storm reintensifies with middle lati-
tude characteristics where the energy is derived from the potential
energy made available by the juxtaposition of two air masses of dif-
ferent densities. This was the case when hurricane Hazel moved into
Pennsylvania in 1954.

4, RAINFALL

Rainfall associated with hurricanes causes more damage and kills
more people than any other hurricane force except the storm surge.
Hurricane Diane became the first billion-dollar hurricane in the his-
tory of the United States, largely because of the floods following the
rains associated with it. One hundred eighty-four people were killed—
mostly drowned. The floods following the passage of hurricane Hazel
of 1954 over Haiti were estimated to have drowned several hundred
people. Likewise, several hurricanes entering Central America and
Mexico during the past decade have each drowned over a hundred

HURRICANES—GENTRY AND SIMPSON 323

people, according to estimates appearing in the press. During the
1955 season the floods caused in Mexico by hurricanes Hilda and Janet
and tropical storm Gladys are reputed to have inflicted upon Tampico,
Mexico, its greatest natural disaster.

To many people, rainfall is the most sensational result of a hurri-
cane. Rainfall accompanying hurricanes and tropical cyclones is
nearly always heavy and frequently torrential. At Baguio in the
Philippines, in July 1911, 46 inches of rain fell in 24 hours during the
passage of one tropical storm. In the United States the heaviest rain-
fall during such a storm was 39.7 inches, which fell during one 48-hour
period at Thrall, Tex., during the storm of September 8-10, 1921.

The quantity of rain that can fall from one slow-moving tropical
storm almost staggers the imagination. In hurricane Diane of 1955,
over 16 billion tons of rain fell, according to rainfall estimates pre-
pared by Schoner and Molansky [19], who also estimated that over
30 billion tons of rain fell during the passage of hurricane Connie.
Thus, approximately 46 billion tons of rain fell during the two
storms.

Many of the heaviest recorded rainfalls have been in storms of
less than hurricane intensity. Even in storms that were hurricanes
at one time, the heaviest rainfall frequently occurs after the winds
are no longer of hurricane intensity. This was the case with hurricane
Diane of 1955. Although at one time while it was still at sea the
highest winds in Diane were 125 m.p.h., the maximum measured
winds along the shore when Diane moved inland were 74 m.p.h. in
gusts at Wilmington, N. C. As Diane moved farther inland the
winds further decreased, and as the gales subsided, so did the public’s
concern with the storm. Diane moved northward across North
Carolina and Virginia and into Pennsylvania before turning eastward
for the coast—then came the deluge! The torrential rains from Diane
fell on grounds still saturated from the rains of Connie. From the
Poconos of Pennsylvania to southeastern New England rain in excess
of 8 inches was reported at many places. The greatest amount—over
19 inches—fell in the highlands northwest of Hartford, Conn. All
this rain fell long after Diane had ceased to have winds of hurricane
force [24].

Rainfall around a tropical storm is usually distributed asymmetri-
cally. This is particularly true when a hurricane is moving. Accord-
ing to Dr. I. M. Cline [2], very little rainfall occurs in the rear half
of storms moving inland on the Gulf or south Atlantic coast of eastern
United States. The heaviest rainfall usually occurs in the right front
quadrant of the tropical storm, according to Cline. There are excep-
tions, of course. As a hurricane moves inland, heaviest rainfall fre-
quently occurs far in advance of the storm. This is particularly true

324 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

when there are orographic features that cause air in advance of the
storm to flow upslope; or when there is a dense air mass several
hundred miles in advance of the storm, which acts as a wedge for
the warmer moist air around the hurricane to flow up and over.

L. Hughes [10], using mean wind data for a number of tropical
storms, after making reasonable assumptions about the amount of
moisture that would be carried into storms at low levels, computed the
intensity of rainfall that should be expected in hurricanes. The values
computed by him are such that if a hurricane passed directly over a
station while moving in a straight line there would be a total rainfall
of about 11 inches in 48 hours. This appears to be a reasonable value.
Cline [2] and other investigators have found 8 to 10 inches occurring
frequently under similar conditions in the Atlantic and Gulf storms.

5. FORECASTING FLOODS ASSOCIATED WITH HURRICANES

The problems associated with forecasting floods from hurricane
rains may be summarized as: (1) Forecasting the path the hurricane
will take; (2) the distribution of rainfall around the hurricane; (3)
the effect on the rainfall of upslope motion caused by the air in ad-
vance of the hurricane flowing up over a mountain or up over a colder
denser air mass; (4) the amount of runoff that will follow the rain-
fall; (5) the rate of movement of the hurricane; and (6) the intensity
of rainfall associated with the hurricane and the various upslope mo-
tions given to the air mass in advance of the hurricane.

A good illustration of the necessity for forecasting the amount of
runoff to be expected occurred in the 1955 season. Hurricane Connie
gave as much rain as hurricane Diane in some of the areas that were
afflicted by the death-dealing floods following the passage of Diane.
In general, however, the floods following Connie were not very dan-
gerous. The rains from Connie did, however, almost completely satu-
rate the ground. When Diane followed soon after, nearly all the rain
that fell was available for runoff and the excess water soon caused
mountain streams to rise above the banks and to sweep everything
before them.

6. STORM SURGE

The storm surge is the greatest killer and greatest property de-
stroyer associated with hurricanes. In areas where hurricane building
codes have been rigidly enforced for many years, relatively little dam-
age is done by hurricanes to buildings away from the waterfront.
Even hurricane Janet at Chetumal, Mexico, in 1955 did relatively little
damage to solidly constructed concrete houses. In areas near the coast
that are exposed to the storm surge, the force exerted is almost irre-
sistible. Recorded history of tropical cyclones reveals many instances
of cities and towns being inundated. At Santa Cruz del Sur, Cuba, in
November 1932, approximately 2,500 lives were lost out of the total

HURRICANES—GENTRY AND SIMPSON 325

population of 4,000. At Galveston, Tex., in 1900, the center of the
hurricane crossed the coastline southwest of Galveston. According to
Dr. I. M. Cline [2], the weather observer, “the water rose at a steady
rate from 8 p. m. until about 7:30 p. m. when there was a sudden rise
of about 4 feet in about as many seconds. I was standing at my front
door, which was partly open, watching the water which was flowing
with great rapidity from east to west. The water at this time was
about 8 inches deep in my residence and a sudden rise of 4 feet brought
the water above my waist before I could change my position.” Ap-
proximately 6,000 persons lost their lives in this inundation of Gal-
veston. Examples of storms which have done great damage from the
storm surge in recent years are hurricane Carol of 1954, the New Eng-
land hurricane of 1938, and the Florida Keys hurricane of 1935.

The high seas associated with the approach to the coast by a hurri-
cane are caused largely by the depressed air pressure, the wind force,
and certain amplification factors. The air pressure in the center of a
hurricane is frequently as much as 2 inches of mercury below normal.
The decreased weight on the ocean surface will allow the ocean surface
to rise approximately 1 foot per inch of mercury deficiency in air
pressure. As the hurricane-force winds move across the surface of
the water they induce currents in the ocean that can result in the
accumulation of excess water when the hurricane approaches the
coast. Neither the deficiency of air pressure nor the piling-up of water
along the coast by the wind-driven currents will account for the ex-
tremely high tides sometimes observed with hurricanes, There are
several theories to account for and explain the amplification of the
storm surge while the hurricane is crossing the continental shelf, but
they are relatively untested and the final answer may yet have to be
determined by researchers. There has been great improvement in the
forecasting of storm surges in the last two years and the work now
being done by several groups gives promise of great progress in the
next few years.

RESEARCH NEEDS

At the present time we need more information on almost all facets
of hurricanes and tropical cyclones. We need good physical explana-
tions of how hurricanes develop, how they move, why they intensify or
weaken, and we need to know more about the structure of hurricanes.
In recent years, aircraft reconnaissance of hurricanes has greatly in-
creased our knowledge of the structure of the storm. Even yet, how-
ever, we need much more knowledge of the detailed structure, the
areas of inflow and outflow in the hurricane, the structure of the
eye, and the mechanisms by which it is maintained.

Great progress has been made in developing methods for forecast-
ing hurricane movement. Most of these forecast methods have been

326 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

empirical in nature and it is only in the last two years that promising
semiobjective methods have been developed. It is reasonable to be-
lieve that if we can first fully understand the mechanism of how hurri-
canes move, it will be possible to make more rapid progress in develop-
ing improved methods in the future. At the present time most meth-
ods used for forecasting either inception or intensification are very
hazy and show relatively little skill when used under operational
conditions.

While the possibility for eventual control of hurricanes is probably
many years in the future, any rational approach to research on this
problem is dependent on first acquiring much more knowledge of
their structure and dynamics. The forces released in hurricanes are
so much stronger than any of the forces that man can bring to bear
against the hurricanes, it is not practicable for us to attempt control
by any direct method. The only possibility for controlling either the
movement of the hurricane or its formation is first to find some mecha-
nism in the hurricane itself that man can use to make the hurricane
control or deviate itself. That is, man must search for power brakes
or power steering mechanisms in the hurricane structure that man can
activate and thus eventually cause the hurricane to move along a cer-
tain path or to weaken and dissipate.

ULTIMATE POTENTIAL FOR FORECASTING

The development of high-speed computers has made possible the
use of numerical techniques in forecasting. Experimentation during
the last 2 or 3 years leads one to believe that ultimately it will be
possible to make forecasts of the movement of hurricanes for 24 to
48 hours in advance with such accuracy it will enable the forecasters
to issue hurricane warnings for coastal areas with more precision.
This should make it possible to warn people in relatively restricted
areas if they are to be affected by hurricane force winds within the
next 24 hours and to omit warnings for all people who are very far
removed from the threatened areas. It should make possible the
alerting of specified coastal areas 48 hours in advance of the possi-
bility of hurricane winds within the specified period without having
to alert practically the entire United States coast. One of the pur-
poses of the present research program is to determine precisely what
data are needed for making successful hurricane forecasts. Once
this is determined it should be possible to collect the required data
with less effort than is being expended at the present time in gather-
ing reconnaissance data and other information for use in hurricane
forecasting.

10.

11.

13.

14.

15.

16.

ike

18.

HURRICANES—GENTRY AND SIMPSON oar

REFERENCES

. Bowrt, Epwarp H.

1922. The formation and movement of West Indian hurricanes. Bull.
Amer. Meteorol. Soc., vol. 3, pp. 95-96.

. CLINE, I. M.

1926. Tropical cyclones. 301 pp. New York.

. CoLé6n, José A.

1953. A study of hurricane tracks for forecasting purposes. Month.
Weather Rev., vol. 81, pp. 53-66.

. CRESSMAN, GEORGE P.

1952. Northward acceleration of typhoons. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc.,
vol. 33, p. 248.

. DUNN, GORDON BE.

1940. Cyclogenesis in the tropical Atlantic. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc.,
vol. 21, p. 215.

1951. Tropical cyclones. Comp. Meteorol., pp. 887-901.

. DUNN, Gorpon H.; DAvis, WALTER R.; and Moors, Pau L.

1955. Hurricanes of 1955. Month. Weather Rev., vol. 83, pp. 315-326.
FisHER, Epwin L.
1956. Hurricanes and the sea surface temperature field. ‘Techn. Pap.
No. 1, Hurricane Project, Dept. Meteorology and Oceanography,
New York Univ.

. HAURWITZ, BERNHARD.

1935. The height of tropical cyclones and of the “eye” of the storm.
Month. Weather Rey., vol. 63, pp. 45-49.
HuGHEsS, LAWRENCE A.
1952. On the low-level wind structure of tropical storms. Journ.
Meteorol., vol. 9, pp. 422-428.
JORDAN, ELIZABETH S.
1952. An observational study of the upper wind-circulation around
tropical storms. Journ. Meteorol., vol. 9, pp. 340-346.

. MircHELL, CHARLES L.

1924. West Indian hurricanes and other tropical cyclones of the North
Atlantic Ocean. Month. Weather Rev., Suppl. No. 24, pp. 1-47.
PALMEN, ERIK.
1948. On the formation and structure of tropical hurricanes. Geo-
physica, vol. 3, pp. 26-88. Helsinki.
Progecr AROWA, BUREAU OF AERONAUTICS.
1955. Prediction of tropical cyclone tracks. Second Res. Rep., Task 12.
RIEHL, H.
1950. A model of hurricane formation. Journ. Appl. Phys., vol. 21,
pp. 917-925.

1954. Tropical meteorology, pp. 332-334. New York.
Rosssy, C. G.
1948. On displacements and intensity changes of atmospheric vortices.
Journ. Marine Res., vol. 7, pp. 175-187.
Sawyer, J. S.
1947. Notes on the theory of tropical cyclones. Quart. Journ. Roy.
Meteorol. Soc., vol. 73, pp. 101-126.

412375—57——22

328 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

19.

20.

21,

23.

25.

ScHoner, R. W., and Motanskxy, 8.
1956. Rainfall associated with hurricanes. Preprint Rep. No. 3, Na-
tional Hurricane Research Project.
SIMPSON, RoBERT H.
1946. On the movement of tropical cyclones. Amer. Geophys. Union
Trans., vol. 27, pp. 641-655.
SuMNER, H. C., and O’ConNEL, THoMasS J.
1955. Hurricane rains cause devastating floods. Weatherwise, October,
pp. 124-126.

. TANNEHILL, IvAN Ray.

1955. The hurricane hunters, pp. 90-102. New York.

1956. Hurricanes. 308 pp. Princeton Univ. Press.

. WEATHER BuREAU, U. S.

1956. Hurricane rains and floods of August 1955—Carolinas to New
England. Weather Bur. Techn. Pap. No. 26. Washington, D. C.

YEH, T'u-CHENG.
1950. The motion of tropical storms under the influence of a super-
imposed southerly current. Journ. Meteorol., vol. 7, pp. 108-113.

Reprints of the various articles in this Report may be obtained, as long

as the supply lasts, on request addressed to the Editorial and Publications
Division, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 25, D. C.

Plantlike Features in Thunder-Eggs
and Geodes’

By Rotanp W. Brown

U. S. Geological Survey

[With 6 plates]

Lone aco, according to legend, the angry gods on Mount Hood and
Mount Jefferson in the scenic Cascade Range of Oregon fought a
titanic battle during a violent storm. Amid flashes of lightning and
peals of thunder the opposing artillerists hurled thousands of round
rocks at one another across the intervening 60 miles. Many of these
thunderstones fell, far wide of the intended targets, over a large area
to the east of the mountains. The embattled gods presumably obtained
these missiles by robbing the nests of thunderbirds. Consequently,
when retrieved today they are popularly called thunder-eggs (Renton,
1951, p. 172), although they are not egg-shaped but roughly spherical
and quite variable in size. Vivid myth aside, the plain fact is that
these thunder-eggs, or spherulitic geodes as they are known among
geologists, are restricted to the weathered outcrops of a prehistoric
(probably late Oligocene or early Miocene) lava flow, which is now
a rhyolitic, welded tuff in whose glassy matrix they originated, with-
out benefit of thunderbirds, as everyone familiar with them in the field
knows. Moreover, closely similar specimens occur under somewhat
comparable circumstances at numerous other localities not only in
Oregon but in distant parts of the world.

The occurrence, appearance, and origin of thunder-eggs have been
discussed more or less adequately by amateur rockhounds and pro-
fessional petrologists (Dake et al., 1938; Renton, 1951; Ross, 1941).
Therefore, I shall here refrain from unnecessary repetition of com-
monly known details but shall deal particularly with a pseudobotani-
cal phase that, at least among collectors of gem materials, has aroused

*Publication authorized by the Director, U. S. Geological Survey. Grateful
acknowledgment of help through discussion is hereby accorded to Robert L.
Smith, U. S. Geological Survey; E. P. Henderson, U. S. National Museum; and
French Morgan, 2601 Brentwood Road, NE., Washington, D. C.

329

330 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

considerable interest and speculation—the plantlike structures some-
times seen in the interiors of these intriguing objects. This study is
based on the large Hess collection of specimens and sections received
by the U. S. National Museum in 1955.

THE FRANK L. HESS COLLECTION

On his many pleasant visits to my office, the late Frank L. Hess,
formerly of the U. S. Geological Survey and Bureau of Mines, was
enthusiastic in discussing the so-called “mosses,” “algae,” and other
phenomena seen in sections of some thunder-eggs (pl. 3, fig. 1; pl. 4,
figs. 14; pl. 5, figs. 14; pl. 6, figs. 1-4). He was particularly attracted
by those from the Priday (now Fulton) ranch near Antelope, Oreg.,
because they are unusually well formed and are well known as col-
lector’s items among lapidarists. Along with others (Benn, 1955,
p. 8), he maintained that the slender filaments, threads, strands, moss-
like dendrites, fringes, plumes, sheets, ribbons, and branched tubules,
found in an infinite variety of form and color in the opal, agate, and
chalcedony of these sections, represent species of algae. Strangely,
neither he nor anyone else, so far as I know, made the equally possible
suggestion that they might be the hyphae and mycelia of fungi. His
interest in the algal hypothesis was so devoted that, in an effort to
establish its truth or falsity, he spent innumerable hours in his home
laboratory cutting and polishing hundreds of sections from specimens
he himself had collected or had received from friends, among whom
the chief contributors were C. H. Robinson, Sr., Puyallup, Wash.,
French Morgan, Washington, D. C., Aaron Waters, then at Stanford,
Calif., and John L. James, Tonopah, Nev. These sections, according
to his and Mrs. Hess’s wishes, have now passed through my hands for
study. Mr. Hess left no manuscript but many uncoordinated and
sometimes fanciful notes bearing on this material. For example, his
notations include brief comparisons with living algae, names for “new
species,” and two frequently recurring adjectives he used to indicate
the light requirements of the two large groups of “algae” he recog-
nized: photophile (light-loving) and scotophile (darkness-loving).

Although I repeatedly and firmly stated to him my disbelief in the
algal nature of the lifelike filaments and hinted that other observers
(Dake et al., 1938, p. 196; Renton, 1951, p. 176) concurred in my view,
Hess continued to seek confirmation of his opinion and thought he
had found that support in the replies he received from students of
living algae to whom he sent sections for examination. Here, for
the sake of definiteness, it is necessary to remark that the Hess material
is clearly of two distinct kinds: sections of spherulites derived from
volcanic rocks, and sections of authentic algal nodules, without fila-
ments, derived from sedimentary rocks. His reluctance or inability

THUNDER-EGGS AND GEODES—BROWN 331

to distinguish between them is the reason for the marked but friendly
difference of opinion we held regarding their origin and meaning.
The algal specimens cut from pillars or cylinders that for years
had been erroneously called geyser cones, as I have already explained
(Brown, 1949), originated by the deposition of lime incident to the
life processes of algae around woody snags lodged along the shores
of Eocene and Miocene lakes in Wyoming and Nevada. Hess sent a
batch of sections of this Nevada material to a noted algologist and
received in reply the correct information that algae indeed were in
large part the cause of the laminated effects there seen. Whether
or not he sent sections of the igneous spherulites to the same or other
students of algae I do not know. Be that as it may, he felt sufficiently
encouraged to believe that algae also were responsible for the filaments
seen in thunder-eggs. My purpose now is to define my position about
these colorful and fascinating plantlike objects; and I hope to do
this without blemishing Hess’s memory or ruffling the feelings of those
of his rockhound friends who believe as he did about these things.

FILAMENTS IN THUNDER-EGGS NOT ALGAE

The advocates of the algal theory to explain the “growths” in
thunder-eggs deceive themselves in two ways. First, they mistake
striking but superficial lifelike resemblances for the real thing. Yet,
so closely do these filaments imitate natural growths that self-decep-
tion about them is understandable and pardonable, especially for
persons untrained in botanical identification. Observant examina-
tion of the delicate filaments with a good hand lens or a binocular
microscope shows that when well developed they are tubular. They
are not segmented or jointed, that is, with cell after cell in linear
rows, as they should be were they the filaments of fresh-water algae.
Exceptions among such algae are the partitionless greenhouse Vau-
cheria and the parasitic Phyllosiphon, but neither of these in other
fundamental respects is comparable to any filaments seen in thunder-
eggs. Significant also is the fact that no spores or other reproduc-
tive structures have been recognized as such among the supposed
algal filaments.

Unlike those of algae the filaments in thunder-eggs are individually
very variable in diameter and in erratic branching (pl. 5, fig. 4; pl. 6,
fig. 3). They thicken and thin irregularly in an unalgalike manner
throughout their extent; and their most notable surface feature is
a more or less conspicuous, although sometimes much subdued, warti-
ness and tumescence (pl. 5, fig. 4; pl. 6, fig. 2) that gives them the
appearance of microscopic intestines (pl. 4, figs. 3,4). These minute
swellings along their length indicate that the filaments and their
branches developed in successive pulses at their free ends.

332 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Second, the proponents of the algal theory overlook or minimize
two important conditions in the geologic origin and occurrence of
thunder-eggs that affect adversely the interpretation of the filaments
as algae. All students of igneous rocks agree that spherulites of
the kind that become thunder-eggs are born in a hot extrusion of sili-
ceous, eruptive material from a volcano or volcanic vent soon after the
flow comes to rest but before it becomes rigid and before prismatic
structures develop. This chemically complex mixture of minerals, liq-
uids, and gases may congeal more or less quickly into obsidian, perlite,
or vitreous, welded tuff. Thus the emplacement and early stages
of the lava require a temperature so high and sterilizing that no algae
or other forms of life can survive in the resulting spherulites or their
cavities. Moreover, the incipient thunder-eggs are buried and com-
pletely enclosed by surrounding matrix so that no sunlight what-
ever can penetrate and relieve their pitch-darkness. Hence, even if
it be granted that the temperature of the lava after the cavities are
formed becomes low enough to permit algae to enter, no algae under
this unfavorable light condition can be expected to survive therein,
for all algae require some light, much or little, as the case may be.
I conclude, therefore, that the physical features of the filaments and
the geologic conditions accompanying their origin forbid their iden-
tification as algae, mosses, or any other organisms.

THE PSEUDOALGAE, CHEMICAL GARDENS

If the filaments are not algae but inorganic structures, what is their
nature and genesis? An intelligible answer to this question demands
first a closer inquiry into the origin of the cavity fillings in which
the filaments are found embedded. These parts of thunder-eggs are
chiefly chalcedony and in section are variously shaped, either geometri-
cally regular or grotesque and fantastic (pl. 1; pl. 2; pl. 3, fig. 1; pl. 6,
figs. 1,4). Much depends upon the direction of cut, and the kind of
figure expected can often be confidently predicted before cutting by
studying the ridges on the surface, for these are the outward ex-
pression of the internal angular projections of the “stars,” “cubes,”
and other forms. After all the external altered matrix is removed
many of these chalcedonic interiors look like cubes with hopperlike
cavities for sides (pl. 3, fig. 3), often with a ball at the center of one
side and an opposing socket at the other. The thunder-eggs con-
taining such figures (pl. 1, fig. 1; pl. 3, fig. 2) seem to show that the
vitreous lava when still sufficiently soft was pulled or forced apart,
for little effort of imagination is needed to collapse the boundaries
of the cavities so that the arch of the ball, for example, will receive
the opposite socket, and other features of the outline fit roughly into
place. Nevertheless, as in other complex matters, the doctors disagree
about the method of origin of the cavities, some claiming expansive

THUNDER-EGGS AND GEODES—BROWN S55

gases as the cause, some the relief of hydrostatic pressure and tension,
and still others the recrystallization of the original material of the
spherulite followed by formation of a “mud,” desiccation, and shrink-
age. All apparently agree that in general the evolution is from a
solid spherulite (see Renton, 1951, fig. 2, p. 172) to a lithophysa or
rock bubble (see Stearns and Isotoff, 1956, pl. 2, fig. 3), sometimes
sheared (pl. 1, fig. 2), and finally the filling of the cavity with silica
minerals. The process may not have followed a universal rule in each
instance but may have differed considerably according to accompany-
ing physical and chemical circumstances. Thus, in many thunder-eggs
the original spherulitic center remains intact as a small nucleus or
ball and the cavity lies to one side of it (pl. 3, figs. 1,2). In others the
nucleus was obviously disrupted, the separated segments still showing
the original radial arrangement of the crystalline matrix (pl. 1, fig. 2).
The best analogy, but not necessarily explanation, for the resulting
shape of the cavity, is by Iddings (1888, p. 263): “ . . . the central
mass of the more open [ones] appears to have shrunken and cracked
apart like the heart of an overripe watermelon.” From these dif-
fering views one may draw the conclusion that perhaps before a final
statement can be made more field observations and laboratory work
are needed to check or imitate the natural effects.

As to how the filaments themselves originated and became embedded
in chalcedony at least two known phenomena point to explanations.
These are the natural helictites sometimes seen in caves and other
sites, and the so-called chemical gardens grown in the laboratory.

Natural limy helictites (not stalactites or stalagmites) are moder-
ately small, irregular, twisted, tubular structures that develop from
cave ceilings, walls, and sometimes stalactites. They grow at their
free ends, being fed by internal solutions flowing distally from the
points of attachment. Thus, so far as method of growth is concerned,
they are not quite the same kind of thing as salt and ice ribbons
(Brown, 1946), which grow from their bases. Natural helictites can
be imitated artificially with simple, chemical apparatus (Huff, 1940).

Did the filaments in thunder-eggs arise like natural helictites by
growing out from the walls into empty cavities? Renton (1951, legend
to unnumbered figure, p. 175) virtually concluded that they did, but
he overlooked the threads subtly concealed within the “stalacites” he
described as hanging from the roof of the original cavity and inferred
were later embedded in agate that filled the cavity from below. Yet,
on the following page he reversed himself and said: “The writer be-
lieves that most of the ‘moss’ seen in thunder-egg agate entered the
original cavity from below and the mineral bearing solutions [that
became ‘moss’] were injected into a silica gel filled cavity...”

Here the unknown intrudes itself. Assuming an empty cavity to
begin with, how long after its formation did it remain empty, except

334 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

for air or some other gas? If the gas were in part steam, as seems
plausible and likely, condensation began when the lava cooled suffi-
ciently, and the cavities became moist but may not have filled up im-
mediately with watery solutions. Granted such conditions, it is easy
to visualize filaments growing as helictites from the moist walls of
the unfilled cavities. Perhaps some did so; but, compared with the
rather simple natural helictites, the thunder-egg filaments, in their
great variety and delicacy, their intricate interconnecting branching
networks (pl. 5, figs. 3, 4), and in other features to be discussed, give
the definite impression that they did not originate as helictites but
grew from any part of the surrounding wall into solutions that, early
or late, filled the original cavities.

This probability leads to a consideration of the properties and be-
havior of artificial chemical gardens, special kinds of which are called
silicate gardens. Anyone with a few chemicals and the application
of care and patience can produce these interesting, beautiful, and
instructive cultures. For example, pour some waterglass or sodium
silicate (many other media are now known to be usable) into a beaker.
Then drop into the solution small grains of metallic salts, such as those
of calcium, cobalt, copper, iron, manganese, nickel, uranium, and
others. The more soluble the salt the quicker the result. Shortly, the
garden will start to grow, the “seeds” sprouting tubular branched or
unbranched filaments remarkably similar to the growths in thunder-
eggs. These and other chemical gardens have been known for a long
time and have been quite ardently investigated, fairly well illustrated,
and satisfactorily explained (Gradenowitz, 1907; Leduc, 1911; Lillie,
1917, 1922; Lillie and Johnston, 1919; Hazelhurst, 1941). In his book
The Breath of Life, John Burroughs (1924, p. 167) refers to these
experiments: “The chemists have played upon this tendency in the
inorganic to parody or simulate some of the forms of living matter. A
noted European chemist, Dr. [Stephane] Leduc, has produced what he
calls ‘osmotic growths’ from purely unorganized mineral matter—
growths in form like seaweed, polyps, corals, and trees.” Aside from
the light these experiments shed on the plantlike structures in thunder-
eggs, they provide stimulating comparisons with some of the growth
forms and processes in plants and animals and possibly contain clues to
the origin of life itself (Leduc, 1911; Lillie, 1922; Thompson, 1948).
Through all the recent investigations of these chemical precipitates has
run a persistent attention to the electrical factors and effects.

SEQUENCE OF EVENTS IN THUNDER-EGGS

That the genesis of the pseudoalgae in thunder-eggs is comparable
to that of silicate gardens rather than to helictites seems believable,
for it is in accord with all the known facts. In defense of this conclu-

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BROWN PISA
MPS

7

(See Explanation of Plates, p. 339.)

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BROWN PLATE 2

(See Explanation of Plates, p. 339.)

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BROWN PEATEs

(See Explanation of Plates, p. 339.)

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BROWN PLATE 4

(See Explanation of Plates, p. 339.)

PLATE 5

1956.—BROWN

SMITHSONIAN REPORT,

339.)

ates, p. 33

(See Explanation of Pl

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BROWN PLATE 6

(See Explanation of Plates, p. 339.)

THUNDER-EGGS AND GEODES—BROWN 335

sion, however, I am frankly unable to explain fully all the chemical
details attending their development. As no two specimens are exactly
alike, different chemical situations and reactions very likely prevailed
at different rates and times. Nevertheless, a generalized picture can
be drawn delineating the probable order of events. Consider, for ex-
ample, the section on plate 4, figure 1, which is similar to Renton’s
unnumbered figure (1951, p. 175). The photograph was taken by
transmitted light, thus making the chocolate-brown outer matrix ap-
pear black. Within this is the irregular, squarish figure that outlines
a cross section of the original cavity, now filled with chalcedony, hor-
izontally banded below but unbanded above. A number of filaments
hang from the upper wall and bound areas of concentric ringed effects,
and some arise from the lower wall. Both the upper and lower fila-
ments penetrate the horizontal strata of chalcedony, as do also some
shown in plate 6, figure 1, passing through the left end of a thin white
band of opal. Further, it should be noted that a narrow, clear (white)
zone makes a halo for the filaments and continues around the boundary
of the square but is not trespassed by the horizontal strata of the chal-
cedony. From these particulars it is possible to conclude that in this
specimen the sequence of events was roughly as follows: First came
the cavity, by one or another of the methods previously enumerated.
The cavity was surrounded by a chemically complex matrix that,
perhaps when still warm, underwent chemical changes as a concom-
itant of the circulation of connate as well as surface waters. These
waters, having picked up mineral reagents, including salts of iron and
manganese, and various silicates, passed through the porous walls or
seeped in through cracks, infiltrating and filling the cavity, the solu-
tion becoming a colloid or gel. According to gravitational and per-
haps electrical factors, such suspended, minute globules of mineral
matter as were present or were formed, arranged themselves below in
clear and dark stratified, horizontal layers, the upper part of the solu-
tion remaining relatively pure and not visibly layered. Then, as soon
as the chemical condition of the gel became suitable, there grew into it,
from the supply of salts along the walls, the filaments that are now
erroneously called algae. These pseudoalgae shot up rapidly in pulses
by chemical precipitation (probably as iron hydroxide and silicate),
osmosis, and diffusion. During this process, around each filament
there was generated a sharply defined field of chemical or electrical
influence that not only cleared the immediately surrounding gel but,
so to speak, held at arm’s length at a fairly uniform distance any sus-
pended globules of mineral matter, thus creating around each filament
a transparent halo, the gel outside the halo remaining more or less
translucent and, where it contained dark mineral particles, becoming
concentrically zoned in the manner of Liesegang rings (Liesegang,

336 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

1907). Here, also, the concentricity of the rings was influenced in
some way by the presence of the filaments, for the curves of the rings
parallel those of the filaments faithfully. It seems clear, therefore,
that the filaments originated after and not before the cavity was filled
with the gel.

How long the gel in this thunder-egg remained in that state is
problematical, but eventually some as yet unknown condition initiated
the transformation of the soft gel into cryptocrystalline agate and
chalcedony, thus embedding the fragile filaments in a hard matrix and
preventing their destruction by earth movements. A binocular micro-
scope reveals that the fibroid crystals of the chalcedony are now
arranged radially with respect to the filaments as centers. Apparently
not much happened internally to this specimen subsequent to the events
just outlined. Externally, it remained a roughly spherical, ridged
object in the enclosing tuff until it weathered out as a familiar
thunder-egg.

Allowing for variations, the geological story of all thunder-eggs is
similar to that just given. Some of the variations need description
because they supply, as it were, a supplement to the story. Consider,
for example, the section shown in plate 1, figure 1. Here the central
white part is solid quartz enclosed by dark chalcedony. In plate 2,
figure 1, and plate 3, figure 4, the central parts have unfilled cavities
attractively studded with quartz crystals. In these instances probably
some change in alkalinity stopped the formation of chalcedony and
started the crystallization of quartz, which proceeded until all the
remaining silica was used up. This final step may leave a crystal-
lined geode filled with water; but there may be no water left because
fracturing subsequent to the completion of the geode permitted it to
escape. In plate 3, figure 4, the divergent angle between the layers of
chalcedony indicates that the rock mass containing the geode was tilted
after the first layering ended. In some plume agates, notably those
in possession of A. W. Hancock, Portland, Oreg., the plumes occur in a
series of conditions from complete burial in chalcedony to perfect
exposure in partly filled cavities. From these examples one might get
the casual impression that the plumes developed in the manner of
helictites in caves and that the silica came in later but did not embed
all of the plumes. Such appearances, in my opinion, are deceptive.
The more probable likelihood is that the cavities were originally filled
with a gel solution and that the plumes grew normally in it but that
the gel became too dilute or leaked out before it could be transformed
into chalcedony, thus leaving some plumes partially or whoily exposed.

This explanation of the pseudoalgae in thunder-eggs may, in part,
also apply to some of the “mosses” in the well-known moss agates.
No one, to my knowledge, however, has seriously claimed that these
“mosses” represent former living organisms.

THUNDER-EGGS AND GEODES—BROWN 337

As with many other natural phenomena, the attempt to explain
origins, although satisfying in general terms, may leave large areas of
doubt concerning details. Thus, with reference to the pseudoalgae
of thunder-eggs, it is desirable to know more definitely what chemicals,
what electrical factors, what temperature and pressure, how much
time, and what subsequent changes, if any, are involved in their devel-
opment. Suitable experiments in a well-equipped laboratory might
supply enlightening information.

REFERENCES CITED
BENN, JAMES H.
1955. The mineralogy of fossils. Rocks and Minerals, vol. 30, pp. 3-20.
Brown, RoLtanp W.
1946. Salt ribbons and ice ribbons. Journ. Washington Acad. Sci., vol 36,
pp. 14-16.
1949. Algal pillars miscalled geyser cones. Ann. Rep. Smithsonian Inst.
for 1948, pp. 277-282.
BURROUGHS, JOHN.
1924. The breath of life. Wake-Robined. New York.
DakgE, H. C.; FLEENER, FRANK L.; and WILSON, BEN Hur.
1938. Quartz family minerals. New York.
GRADENOWITZ, ALFRED.
1907. Ledue’s artificial plants and cells. Sci. Amer., vol. 96, pp. 234-236,
figs. 1-11, March 16.
HAZELHURST, THOMAS H.
1941. Structural precipitates: the silicate garden type. Journ. Chem. Ed.,
vol. 18, No. 6, pp. 286-289, fig.1. (See bibliography.)
Horr, L. C.
1940. Artificial helictites and gypsum flowers. Journ. Geol., vol. 48, pp.
641-649.
Ippines, J. P.
1888. Obsidian Cliff, Yellowstone National Park. 7th Ann. Rep. U. S. Geol.
Survey [1885-1886], pp. 255-295.
1899. The rhyolites. U.S. Geol. Survey Monogr. 32, pt. 2, pp. 356-432.
LEDUC, STEPHANE.
1911. Mechanism of life. London.
LIESEGANG, R. E.
1907. Ueber die Schichtungen bei Diffusionen. Leipzig.
LILLIE, RALPH S.
1917. The formation of structures resembling organic growths. Biol. Bull.,
vol. 83, pp. 135-186.
1922. Growth in living and non-living systems. Sci. Month., vol. 14, pp.
; 113-130.
LILLI£, RALPH §., and JOHNSTON, Hart N.
1919. Precipitation-structures simulating organie growth. II. Biol. Bull.,
vol. 36, pp. 225-272, pls. 1-7, 30 figs.
RENTON, J. LEWIS.
1951. Some notes on thunder-eggs. Mineralogist, vol. 19, pp. 171-177,
12 figs.
Ross, CLARENCE S.
1941. Origin and geometric form of chalcedony-filled spherulites from
Oregon. Amer. Mineral., vol. 26, pp. 727-732.

338 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

STEARNS, HAROLD T., and Isotorr, ANDREI.
1956. Stratigraphic sequence in the Eagle Rock volcanic area near American
Falls, Idaho. Bull. Geol. Soc. America, vol. 67, pp. 19-34, pls. 2-5.
THompson, D’ARcy W.
1948. On growth and form. Cambridge, England.
WricuHt, F. EB.
1915. Obsidian from Hrafntinnuhryggur, Iceland: its lithophysae and sur-
face markings. Bull. Geol. Soe. America, vol. 26, pp. 255-286,
12 figs.

THUNDER-EGGS AND GEODES—-BROWN 339

EXPLANATION OF PLATES
Piate 1

1. Section of a thunder-egg from 16 miles northwest of Del Norte, Colo. The elliptic,
original nucleus lies below the triangle. Inside, a dark rim of chalcedony encloses a white
patch of quartz.

2. Perlite from 5 miles south of Buchanan, Oreg., containing a number of thunder-eggs.
The original spherulitic nuclei were disrupted and sheared before being filled with chalced-
ony (white). Collected by French Morgan, Both figures natural size.

PiatEe 2

1, 2. Thunder-eggs from the Priday (Fulton) ranch near Antelope, Oreg. The angular
figures are surrounded by a chocolate-brown matrix. Inside they are opal, chalcedony, and
quartz. Natural size. Figure 2 collected by C. H. Robinson, Sr.

PuaTE 3

1, 2, 3. From the Priday (Fulton) ranch near Antelope, Oreg. 1 and 2 show chalcedony
occupying cavities that were eccentric to the spherulitic nuclei (eyes). If the brown matrix
were removed from figure 2 the remaining chalcedony would look somewhat like that in
figure 3, with a ball on the top side.

4. Geode from 25 miles southwest of Blythe, Calif. The center is studded with quartz
crystals. Below, the layers of chalcedony lie at different angles to one another and indicate
that the lava enclosing the original cavity was tilted at least twice. All figures natural size.

Piate 4

1, 2. From the Priday (Fulton) ranch near Antelope, Oreg. ‘The photograph of the sec-
tion shown in figure 1 was taken by transmitted light. Pseudoalgae from above and below
penetrate the layered chalcedony. Continuous around the wall and the filaments is a halo
of transparent chalcedony (white). Liesegang rings appear between the filaments in the
upper part of the figure. Natural size.

3. From Hog Creek, 9 miles northwest of Weiser, Idaho. This section shows that after
the pseudoalgae had formed, portions of their substratum loosened and floated in the gel.
Natural size. Collected by French Morgan.

4. Righthand part of figure 3, magnified 10 times., The filaments look like small intes-
tines.

Puate 5

1, 2. Filaments and plumes in thunder-eggs from Priday (Fulton) ranch near Antelope,
Oreg. Natural size.

3. From a lava flow 17 miles south of Alpine, Tex. Only a color photograph could do
justice to this section. It shows an intricate network of minute filaments that developed
from several centers as indicated by the arched curves. Natural size. Collected by Frank
L. Hess.

4. Lefthand part of figure 3, magnified 10 times, It shows the irregularity in thickness
and branching of the pseudoalgae.

PuaTeE 6

1, 3,4. From the Priday (Fulton) ranch near Antelope, Oreg. Figure 1 shows the pseudo-
algae in cobweblike sheets and fringes. Some filaments pass through the lefthand end of
the opal (white) band, evidently having grown when the band was still a gel. Figures 1
and 4, natural size; figure 3 magnified 10 times.

2. Locality doubtful, but from the color of the filaments and general appearance of the
matrix, apparently Hog Creek, 9 miles northwest of Weiser, Idaho. Natural size.

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Exploration for the Remains of Giant
Ground Sloths in Panama

By C. Lewis GazIn

Curator, Division of Vertebrate Paleontology
United States National Museum
Smithsonian Institution

[With 8 plates]

Unvoustepty the giant ground sloths of prehistoric time in the
Western Hemisphere had no peer among mammals of great bulk in
their grotesque unwieldiness and sluggishness of habit. They rivaled
the mammoth and mastodon in body size (pl. 1) but, of course, did not
otherwise resemble them, and certainly could not have kept pace in
their movements. It would seem impossible that they could have
survived and evolved in any reasonably competitive atmosphere or
environment. Clearly, the explanation is that together with other
edentates—the armadillos, glyptodons, true anteaters, and the some-
what more closely related slow-moving tree sloths of tropical
America—they underwent their principal or later development and
specialization in South America, isolated from the more highly com-
petitive herbivores and especially the more aggressive predators, such
as the wolves, pumas, and saber-tooth cats of the north.

About the beginning of the ice age or Pleistocene time, the northern
and southern continents became joined by a land bridge, probably at
about the present Isthmus of Panama, or possibly nearer Colombia,
permitting rather extensive migrations of Jand animals. At that time
many of the more progressive northern types such as the horse, llama
and related cameloids, mastodon, and various carnivores and rodents
invaded South America, whereas opossums, porcupines, capybaras,
toxodons, and several kinds of edentates, including ground sloths,
succeeded in making their way north. Ground sloths, glyptodons
with their turtlelike armor, and strange rhinoceroslike toxodons,
however, did not survive the Pleistocene. Toxodons did not get north
of Central America but certain of the smaller kinds of ground sloths
established themselves as far north as Pennsylvania and Idaho. One
of these, Megalonyx, from a cave in West Virginia, was first described

341

342 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

by Thomas Jefferson. The giant sloth forms, however, as well as the
glyptodons came only as far as the southern row of States. Probably
the best preserved remains of the giant form found in the United
States (now in the National Museum) were encountered over 100 years
ago at Skiddaway Island on the coast of Georgia. This animal was
named Megatherium mirabile by Joseph Leidy, another early paleon-
tologist, often referred to as the father of American vertebrate
paleontology.

DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION IN PANAMA

Discovery of remains of the giant ground sloth in Panama, virtually
on the land bridge joining the two continents, was evidently made
quite independently by various people and at more than one locality.
The earliest record with which the Smithsonian Institution was
directly associated pertained to the finding of teeth and fragmentary
bones at a place called El Hatillo just outside the town of Pesé in
the province of Herrera. These were found by an engineer, Caley
Johnson, and sent to the National Museum in 1915 by our colleague
James Zetek. They were identified by the former assistant curator of
vertebrate paleontology, Dr. James W. Gidley, as belonging to the
extinct sloth Megatherium. I had the good fortune to be shown this
locality by Sr. Guillermo Arjona, then (1950) Governor of the province
of Herrera, who was involved in the original discovery and recalled as
a boy having seen there a number of very large bones. Another fossil
site, near but on the opposite side of Pesé, which seems also to have
been known for many years by the local people, is on the finca of the
local hotelkeeper, Sr. Pablo Aued. Sr. Aued was a little uncertain
as to the exact date, but it may have been about 1915, or possibly
earlier, that fossil bones were collected on his ranch by a Frenchman
(whose name he did not recall). The materials excavated were
understood to have been shipped to France.

Although the Pesé localities were earlier known, it remained for the
people of Oct to direct full attention to the discovery of “fossil bones
of gigantic animals” at La Coca, about 4 miles northwest of Oca, also
in the province of Herrera. Credit for the La Coca discovery has been
given Manuel Valdivieso, a “campesino” of the Oct district who
directed several of the townspeople to the occurrence in July 1949.
The remains collected at that time, under the enthusiastic leadership
of Joaquin Carrizo, manager of the Posada at Oct, were placed on
display at the hotel. The discovery was given considerable publicity
in the Panama press and some of the early speculation attributed the
remains to dinosaurs. An interesting account of the find, by Dr.
Rodrigo Nufez, was published in the August 1949 issue of the
Panamanian magazine L’pocas.

PEARED

1956.—GAZIN

SMITHSONIAN REPORT,

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OM ‘pray 9Y2 JO apis ay} UO sada ay Jo UOIIsod Moy AJOA 9Y1 AION “podiy & Jo 8a] PAlyi ay} pawsoF YoryA [v2 oatsseur
siy uo paddord ‘uontsod sunus 10 7ys1dn uv paunsse Apuanbosy oy ivy sisos8ns Awoieue [PI9J9Ys oyi FO yon “ype
7997 ZT ANOGe oq OF PoieUrliso st [VUTUY dy) IJ9] OY Ye UMOYs oInIsod ay1 UT “wWNasnyA] [eUONeNY “Sg *—) OY UI sTeLIOIeUF
urTUvUeUe Worf WeYs] “gq euUsIMET Aq UONvIOIsAY “voTIaUTY [eotdoxy Jo ‘(qneyrg) muorsn4s UWN1LIY OWL T “YIOTS URIS YT,

SMITHSONIAN REPORT,

1956.—GAZIN

PLATE 2

Skeleton for the most part of a single, particularly large individual of Hremotherium rusconii (Schaub)
from El Hatillo, near Pesé in Panama.

Although this is an oblique view in which the lengths of
limb bones are shown much foreshortened, some conception of size may be gained from the table
top which is 20 feet long by 8 feet wide.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—GAZIN PLATE 3

1. Northerly view of La Coca occurrence near Oct. Remains of Eremotherium and Toxodon
were found in the superficial soil and gravel preserved on a small spur of the general

terrace level and currently above the spring which may have attracted and mired the
animals before the drainage had cut to a lower level.

2. Southerly and closer view of excavation at La Coca. The underside of the partially
plastered block of bone and matrix in the foreground has been turned up and is being

trimmed before completing the plaster and burlap jacket. Visitors include both local
and Canal Zone friends.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—GAZIN PLATE 4

1. El Hatillo locality near Pesé. View westerly across muddy flats below spring, shortly
after fossil bones had been located in place. Much of the area shown in this photograph
had been gone over carefully in the search for the source of bone fragments earlier reported.

eS

2. A northerly view across E] Hatillo site as the 1951 excavation progressed toward the
spring from the north. Center of spring area is located in swampy ground around bush
in center foreground. Later excavating to the right and above spring demonstrated
the further occurrence of bone, but of much poorer quality than that encountered below
and to the left.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—GAZIN PLATE 5

1. Pearce (left) has shown one of the natives, Marteo, the technique of coating all exposed
bone surface with tissue paper and an aqueous solution of gum acacia before the plaster
of paris jacket is applied. The gum acacia hardens the surface and the paper prevents
the plaster from adhering too securely to the bone so that it can later be removed.

2. Pearce here is demonstrating to two of our helpers the procedure involved in bandaging
a block of bone and matrix with burlap strips which have been dipped in plaster of paris.
After the top coat has set, the block is cut loose, turned over, trimmed down, and the
bottom surface plastered.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—GAZIN PLATE 6

1. Blocks in various stages of removal at the El Hatillo excavation. ‘These include the
pelvis and two blocks of vertebrae and ribs belonging to the skeleton of the large individual
of Eremotherium shown in plate 1. Dr. White (left) is undercutting the pelvis so the
plaster jacket will bind while Juan Franco is coating exposed bone with paper. Viviano
Valdevieso is further undercutting the third block so that it can be turned over.

2. At another place in the El Hatillo excavation a block containing a scapula and some
limb and rib material of the sloth is being turned over and removed from the quarry
permitting the bottom surface to be trimmed and plastered under less cramped condi-
tions. Several other partially defined blocks of bone-bearing matrix can be distinguished
in background.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—GAZIN

PEATEs?

1. The wall of the excavation as it neared the spring in 1951. Seepage at this point was
particularly annoying. ‘The bone layer in this vicinity was approximately 7 feet beneath
the surface and resting on a slightly more consolidated bedrock of decomposed volcanic
material that, in contrast to the overlying mud, appeared to be undisturbed.

2. Our native crew at the close of the 1951 season. Most, though not all, of these were the
men we started with. ‘They are standing over a part of the excavation after it had been

filled and the ground leveled so as to prevent the accumulation of stagnant water, im-
portant in mosquito control.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—GAZIN PLATE 8

1. The 1951 collection from El Hatillo beside the schoolhouse at Pesé, boxed and waiting
arrival of the truck and crane for transportation to Pier 18 at Balboa.

ati:

2. The U. S. Air Force truck and crane that came to our rescue in 1950. Seventeen boxes
were built and packed behind the Posada de San Sebastian at Ocu and the combined La
Coca and El Hatillo collections of that year weighed over 6 tons.

GIANT GROUND SLOTHS—GAZIN 343

The attention of Dr. Alexander Wetmore, at that time Secretary of
the Smithsonian Institution, was directed to the Océ discovery by
several of our friends in the Canal Zone, apparently first by Kenneth
W. Vinton, a science teacher at the Junior College. A preliminary
investigation of the occurrence was made for the Smithsonian Insti-
tution by Assistant Secretary John E. Graf, and arrangements were
made with the Panamanian Government, through the kind offices of
Dr. Alejandro Mendez, Director of the National Museum of Panama,
and Prof. Max Arosemena, then Minister of Education for the
Republic of Panama, for a Smithsonian party to carry on excavation
work at this site. We are particularly indebted to Dr. Mendez for
his very helpful cooperation and kindly personal interest, as well as
the never-failing enthusiasm which he showed for the progress and
results of our work during the two field seasons.

Dr. T. E. White of the Smithsonian’s River Basin Surveys accom-
panied me on the first expedition to Panama, and we arrived there
early in January 1950. We were given a most royal welcome at the
Posada in Octi and every effort was made by the townspeople to
facilitate our work and make our stay as pleasant as possible. The
actual digging began at La Coca on January 19, but as the occurrence
was not of great extent, by February 3 we had it completely worked
out (pl. 38). During this time, we were assisted by the discoverer,
Manuel Valdivieso, or from time to time by his brother Viviano,
and by Juan Franco, a campesino who learned the work quickly and
proved particularly helpful to us. Altogether we removed 36 blocks
of material from La Coca, each securely encased in a jacket of plaster
of paris reinforced with burlap. Through the kindness of “Chin”
Carrizo, we were permitted to store our collection, as it accumulated,
in a storeroom at the Posada in Octi.. Following the La Coca work
we turned our attention for a couple of weeks to various reports of
other places where fossil bones were supposed to have been seen, but
most of these proved to be rumors without foundation in fact. Never-
theless, one promising lead remained, and about the middle of Febru-
ary, by arrangements made sometime earlier during one of the fiestas
in Oct, we were accompanied to the El Hatillo locality about a mile
west of Pesé, as mentioned above, by the Governor of the province,
Sr. Guillermo Arjona.

Some difficulty was encountered at first in locating fossil remains;
however, after extensive probing with picks and shovels (pl. 4, fig. 1)
the source of the material was located at the periphery of a mud deposit
in the vicinity of a large and swampy spring. ‘The bones were found
to occur at the bottom of the mud near contact with the underlying
bedrock, close to the surface at the periphery but increasing in depth
toward the spring. Excavation was carried on at El Hatillo with the

412575—57——23

344 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

help of six campesinos, two of these being our Ocuefio helpers, Juan
Franco and Viviano Valdivieso, brought with us to show the new
men the various techniques and procedures they had been taught.

Eighty-five plaster-encased blocks were taken up at the new locality
(pl. 6), the relative position in which each occurred having been care-
fully plotted so that the significance of association might be worked
out later in segregating the materials by individuals as far as possible.
By the first of April there seemed no likelihood of completely exhaust-
ing the occurrence before the beginning of the rainy season, so work
was discontinued with the expectation of returning the following
year. The collection that had been accumulating in one of the rooms
of the alcaldia in Pesé was hauled by truck to Octi where the com-
bined collections were boxed for shipment. Much appreciated help
was obtained from the U.S. Air Force as General Beam of the Carib-
bean Air Command came to our aid, furnishing a truck and crane
(pl. 8, fig. 2) to get our 6-ton collection transported to the docks at
Cristobal.

Most of the La Coca collection was prepared and restored in Wash-
ington, D. C., during the following year, so that at the time of our
return to Panama in 1951 we were able to ship back the better part
of the sloth material from that locality for exhibition in Panama’s
museum. With regard to materials that we hoped to exhibit in the
U. S. National Museum it was our plan to select from the more ex-
tensive £1 Hatillo collection the best association of materials believed
to represent a single individual, adding to this skeletal elements of
comparable size from the same locality, completing, for purposes of
a free mount, what is known as a composite skeleton. It was to assure
ourselves of an adequate representation of the material for this pur-
pose that we returned to Pesé in 1951.

During the second season’s work, which lasted from near the end
of January to the latter part of March, I was assisted by Franklin
L. Pearce, now chief of our laboratory of vertebrate paleontology.
With the help of six of the local campesinos (pl. 7, fig. 2), some of
whom worked for us the previous year, we drained the small lake
which had formed at the old pit at E] Hatillo, and by starting new
excavations at various places in the vicinity of the spring we were
able to determine approximately the extent of the bone deposit. Work-
ing in from the northerly margin (pl. 4, fig. 2) toward the old excava-
tion we systematically covered most of the profitable ground and
recovered most, if not all, of the worthwhile remaining fossil mate-
rials. Additional fossil bones were detected in the mud deposit some-
what higher and to the east of the spring, but these were found for
some reason to be much more poorly preserved and not worth taking
up, a condition rather similar to that noted for the material observed
at Finca Aued.

GIANT GROUND SLOTHS—GAZIN - 345

Our second season at EK] Hatillo was made particularly difficult by
the continuous battle against water seeping from the spring. Evi-
dently the dry season, which lasts from January to about April or
May, was this year preceded by more rainfall than the year before.
The situation greatly jeopardized our use of plaster of paris, but
by diligent bailing it was possible to keep the partially prepared
blocks of bone and matrix free of excess water sufficiently long for the
plaster of paris and burlap bandages to set (pl. 7, fig. 1). The col-
lection which included over 100 plaster-encased blocks, filled 13 large
boxes and was found to have an aggregate weight of about 314 tons.
Again with the help of the U.S. Air Force, our collection (pl. 8, fig. 1)
was transported to the pier at Balboa.

The success of our second expedition may be measured by the fact
that the additional materials obtained made it possible to select two
composite skeletons, based largely on the remains of single individuals,
representing mature animals rather near the upper (pl. 2) and lower
limits of size. There still remained a rather impressive surplus of
skeletal material which has been restored and returned to Panama to
join the Oca collection in the museum at Panama City.

TAXONOMIC HISTORY

There would seem to be little or no doubt but that the correct name
for the giant Panamanian sloth is Hremotherium rusconii. The tax-
onomic history of this form is rather involved and makes an interest-
ing story in itself. The species was first described by the Swiss
paleontologist Schaub in 1935 from the province of Lara in Venezuela.
He referred it to Cuvier’s (1796) genus Megatherium, so well known
in the Pleistocene of Argentina, but questioned the possibility of its
representing Paramegatherium as a subgenus. Without reference to
Schaub’s work on the Venezuelan material, Spillmann in 1948 de-
scribed a skull and other material from Pleistocene deposits on the
peninsula of Santa Elena in Ecuador as the new genus and species
Eremotherium carolinense. Shortly afterward (1949), but evidently
without knowledge of Spillmann’s publication,? Hoffstetter, working
in Ecuador, described additional material from the Santa Elena penin-
sula which he referred to Schaub’s species Af. rusconii, but gave it the
new generic name Schaubia, At the same time he described somewhat
smaller material as the new species Schaubia elenense. Discovering
later that the term Schaubia was preoccupied for a genus in the cat
family, he substituted (1950) the name Schaubitherium. Following

1 Spillmann’s paper, published in Vienna, though bearing the date 1948 on the
cover is described in a preface as ready for printing in 1945 but held up owing to
war conditions. However, it was not received in the library of the U. S. Geologi-
cal Survey until 1951; hence some question might arise as to the actual date of
publication.

346 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

eventual distribution of Spillmann’s paper, Hoffstetter, in his memoir
on the Pleistocene mammals of Ecuador published by the Geological
Society of France in 1952, revised his allocation of the megatherid
sloths to Hremotherium carolinense Spillmann and Lremothertum
elenensis (Hofistetter). He regarded the larger of the two, 2’. caro-
linense, as distinct from Venezuelan Z’, rusconii essentially on the basis
of geographic separation.

In the meantime de Paula Couto in Brazil called attention in a note
published in Hoffstetter’s 1949 paper to the possibility of “Jf.” rus-
coniz being a synonym of &. laurillardii, a species also having had a
complex and confused history, originally described by the Danish
paleontologist Lund in 1842 from caves in Minas Geraes, Brazil.
Nevertheless, as indicated by Hoffstetter, the type specimen described
by Lund consists of two small teeth, scarcely larger than tapir molars,
which are evidently immature and clearly inadequate for diagnostic
purposes, hence should probably be ignored or the name Af. laurdllardit
be left as a synonym of M/. americanum as treated by Winge. In 1954
de Paula Couto retained both Spillmann’s and Hoffstetter’s species,
as well as Schaub’s, and named a new subgenus and species, /’. pseud-
eremotherium lundi, on the basis of a composite skeleton from the
state of Bahia. I suspect that a single tropical species is represented,
as suggested by the Panamanian materials; on the other hand, de
Paula Couto’s allocation of Leidy’s Megatherium mirabile from Geor-
gia to Hremotherium seems valid and the species may well be different.
In this case the Georgian species name would be much the oldest per-
taining to L’remotherium.

FAUNAL ASSOCIATION AND RELATIVE AGE OF OCCURRENCES

Although representation of the faunas associated with Lremothert-
um at the two principal localities is very sparse, the evidence suggests
that the two assemblages were not the same, and may not have been
entirely contemporary.

At La Coca, near Oct, representation of two or possibly three indi-
viduals of Hremotherium was associated with the rather scant limb
and certain other fragmenta] materials of two individuals of 7oxodon,
the large rhinolike notoungulate characteristic of the Pleistocene of
South America. No other forms were represented at this excavation.

The El Hatillo excavation near Pesé, on the other hand, uncovered
portions of certainly no less than eight, and probably more than a
dozen, individuals of the gigantic Lremotherium, including five com-
paratively good skulls, but with these there was no trace of 7’oxodon.
However, there were found associated skeletal portions of a single in-
dividual of the mastodon Cuvieronius, characterized by tusks having
enamel developed in a spiral form. Further representation of the

GIANT GROUND SLOTHS—GAZIN 347

assemblage, the balance of the collection, is a rather insignificant quan-

tity of material contained in a single collection drawer and consisting

of isolated teeth, portions of jaws and other determinable bone frag-
ments. The El] Hatillo fauna and the material representing it may be
listed as follows:

Pseudemys, sp.—turtle carapace fragments.

Cairina moschata (Linnaeus)—muscovy duck; distal end of ulna.

Eremotherium rusconii (Schaub)—giant megatheriid ground sloth; the great
bulk of the collection, although a part of this material may represent a some-
what smaller species described by Hoffstetter as Hremotherium elenense, if
this can be regarded as distinct.

Cf. Glossotherium tropicorum Hoffstetter—broad-snouted mylodont sloth; a
lower jaw portion with the greater part of three teeth.

Scelidotherium?, sp.—a long-snouted mylodont sloth; two cheek teeth.

Hoplophorid?, possibly Lomaphorus, sp.—a glyplodont sloth; a single hexagonal
scute.

Glyptodon, sp.—a large edentate with a turtlelike carapace; two caudal vertebrae
and several scutes with typical rosette pattern.

Neochoerus cf. robustus (Leidy)—giant capybara; a maxillary portion, frag-
ments of a cheek tooth, and a segment of an incisor.

Cuvieronius, probably C. hyodon (¥ischer) (=J/. andiwm Cuvier)—the South
American mastodon; several portions of one individual including two badly
worn last molars and sections of the tusks.

Equus, sp.—horse, possibly belonging to subgenus Amerhippus; three isolated
upper cheek teeth, an incisor, and a toe bone.

Tayassuid, gen. indet.—peccary ; canine tooth.

Odocoileus, sp.—deer; small horn.

The E] Hatillo assemblage corresponds rather closely to the Carolin-
ian upper Pleistocene fauna described by Hoffstetter from the Santa
Elena peninsula in Ecuador. The Santa Elena fauna is better known
in number and kinds of animals represented, as well as by the quality
of the remains encountered in all but the giant sloth. The representa-
tion of Hremotherium is in no way comparable to the magnificant
series of specimens obtained at E] Hatillo. A similarity in the faunas
exists also in the absence of any representation of the peculiar ungulate
types, such as the toxodonts, which were so characteristic of earlier
stages of the Age of Mammals in South America.

The dearth of forms encountered at La Coca, on the other hand,
with only Zremotherium and Toxodon represented, is very like that at
El Totumo in Venezuela where Schaub reported only d/egatheriwm
(this is Lremotherium), Stegomastodon, and Toxodon. I strongly
suspect that the La Coca and El Totumo occurrences are a little earlier
than those at El] Hatillo and Santa Elena, although the evidence is
not positive, and that Z’owodon became extinct between the times
represented.

The relatively greater age for the La Coca occurrence in comparison
with that at E] Hatillo would seem further indicated by the physio-

348 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

graphic relations. At La Coca the remains were preserved on the
upper surface of a low terrace (pl. 3). The materials were here
found weathering out of the thin superficial remnant of mud and
gravel, and the spring associated with this occurrence and possibly re-
lated to the entrapment is now flowing out from the steeper slopes
below the terrace top. This suggests that the shallow ravine below
the terrace has been cut since the fossil accumulation was formed. At
i] Hatillo the picture has a more recent look in that probably there has
been less change in the physiography since accumulation of the fossils.
Although the surface has a fair slope, the site (pl. 4) is currently a
bog and the bones were found near the surface at the periphery of the
mud deposit associated with the spring, up to depths of around 7 feet
(pl. 7, fig. 1) toward the center of the area where flow of water was
greatest. It is of further interest to note that although boggy condi-
tions prevail at the present time, no remains of domestic animals were
found, such as dogs, oxen, pigs, and poultry—somewhat surprising
considering that the immediate area apparently has been well settled
for nearly 400 years.

DESCRIPTION OF THE GIANT SLOTH EREMOTHERIUM

Like Megatherium, Eremotherium is truly a ground sloth of tre-
mendous bulk. It may be compared in size with a mammoth or masto-
don but with, of course, rather striking differences in form and rela-
tive proportions. The length of the animal’s body, for example, was
much greater than that of the American mastodon, with a very much
smaller head, a longer neck, and a long and massive tail. The length
of the vertebra] column in a particularly large individual measured
over 16 feet (pl.2). The hindquarters were particularly robust. This
is shown in the striking increase in the size of the vetebrae from the
neck back to the sacrum, and the hindlimbs, though a little shorter than
in an average-size mastodon, were of much greater width. The femur,
for example, while nearly a yard in length, is a few inches shorter
than in the mastodon with which comparisons were made, but is 19
inches across the distal portion—more than twice that in the mastodon.
The comparable parts of the forelimb of the sloth are a little longer
than those of the hindlimb but relatively slender by comparison.

The skull of Lremotherium is about 2 feet long with a comparatively
slender snout and rather fantastic processes or bony projections on
the arches (fig. 1). The animal had no tusks, but there are five long
crowned teeth above and four below, averaging about an inch and a
half in diameter. The teeth are of a grinding type with two trans-
verse wedgelike crests on each.

As in other ground sloths the feet of H'remotherium possessed long
powerful claws (figs. 2-6 and pl. 1). In locomotion the forefoot car-

GIANT GROUND SLOTHS—GAZIN 349

ried its weight on the “knuckles” with the distal extremities of the
metacarpals resting on the ground and the palm and the claws turned
inward (see figure at right, pl. 1). The hindfoot was turned so that
in locomotion the weight was carried along the outer side of the foot
with the plantar surface and claw of each likewise turned inward (see
figure at left, pl. 1). The length of the hindfoot from the bony core of
the claw to the heel in one animal measured 36 inches (figs. 4 and 5),
possibly the greatest for any kind of land animal.

Ficure 1.—Skull (U.S.N.M. No. 20872) associated with large skeleton of Eremotherium
rusconit (Schaub) from E! Hatillo shown in plate 2, and lower jaws of skull returned to
Panama. Note fantastic projections of the zygomatic arch and extremely low position of
orbital rim indicating location of eye about on level with teeth. About )¥ natural size.

Detailed comparison of the skeletal remains of Fremotherium with
those of the earlier known Megatherium of Argentina has brought out
several features that indicate clearly that Hremotherium is a distinct
genus, characteristic, as noted by Hoffstetter, of the more tropical
regions of the Americas. In comparing the skulls one notes that the
palate and lower jaws did not extend so far forward from the position
of the teeth and that the eyes or orbital margins were noticeably lower
than in Megatherium, about on a level with the grinding surface of
the upper teeth (fig.1). Also the lower jaws, though deep beneath the
teeth, were not nearly so much so as in Megatherium and the longi-
tudinal profile of the lower margin was not nearly so convex down-
ward. A more detailed comparison of the skulls has been made by
Hoffstetter, and certain characteristics of the appendicular skeleton
were noted by him, such as the form of the femur. To this may be
added that the articulating surface on the head of the femur, for the
acetabulum or hip socket, faces more proximally with a more pro-
nounced saddle between the head and greater trochanter. Moreover,
Owen’s (1860, pl. 38) illustration of the femur of Megatherium shows

350 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Ficure 2.—Right forefoot (U.S.N.M. No. 20872, reversed from left, and composite only
in part of carpus) of Eremotherium rusconii (Schaub) from E] Hatillo. Note absence ot all
but a vestige of second, as well as first, digit or toe (on right side of foot). About 1/8
natural size.

Ficure 3.—Right forefoot of Megatherium americanum Blumenbach (after Richard Owen)
from Argentina. Note presence of complete and well-developed second digit or toe (on
right side of foot). Only the first digit is vestigial. Slightly less than 1/8 natural size.

a better defined digital or trochanteric fossa, or a less deflected greater
trochanter as noted by Hoffstetter.

Probably the most significant difference that distinguishes
Eremotherium from Megatherium lies in the structure of the manus
or forefoot, not previously noted because of the incompleteness of
earlier described materials of Lremotherium. In Megatherium the
forefoot has four toes or digits (fig. 8). The second, like the third
and fourth, is equipped with a well-developed claw, as shown in Owen’s
illustrations. Moreover, the first and second phalanges of this toe
are separate as in the fourth digit, not co-ossified as in the third. The
pollex or “thumb,” though, is represented by but a “nubbin” of a bone,
a much-reduced first metacarpal. Hremotherium, however, has only
three fully developed digits (fig. 2). The wrist bone, known as the
trapezoid, normally adjacent to the proximal end of the second meta-
carpal, is apparently fused in Hremotherium with both the first and
second metacarpals, and the second digit is otherwise represented
by only a small vestige of a bone, probably the first phalanx, as indi-
cated by a small facet on the distal surface of the fused elements.

GIANT GROUND SLOTHS—GAZIN 351

Since the fifth digit, which is invariably next to the ground, lacks a
claw in both genera, Zvemotherium has but two claws on the front
foot, a distinction rather paralleling that between the living two-
and three-toed tree sloths of Central America.

Ficure 4.—Right hindfoot (U.S.N.M. No. 20872, partially composite among smaller tarsals,
and phalanges of fourth and fifth digits restored) of Eremotherium rusconii (Schaub)
from E] Hatillo. Proximal or inner margin of foot which turns upward in walking. About
1/9 natural size.

Ficure 5.—Right hindfoot (same as fig. 4) of Eremotherium rusconii Schaub from El Hatillo,
Outer view of foot (approximately the dorsal surface of the normal mammalian foot).
Note that the hindfoot had only three toes remaining, the third to the fifth digits, and
only the upper or third had aclaw. About 1/9 natural size.

In contrast to the reduction in toes from the normal mammalian
number, a specialization regarded as advanced in character, the
Eremotherium forefoot is primitive in another respect. In certain in-
stances it was noted that the centrale, a small bone near the center of
the wrist, was distinct and not fused with one of the adjacent carpal
elements. In Mfegatherium this element has apparently not been ob-
served separate; evidently it early fused with the adjacent unciform.
Separation of this element, however, is not invariable in £7e-
motherium.

The hindfoot of Zremotherium (figs. 4 and 5) is less distinctive in
comparison with Megatherium (fig. 6). As in this genus it had but

352 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

three toes, the third to the fifth of the normal mammalian foot. Only
one of these, the inner or digit ITI, possessed a claw. Of the lost toes
only a mesocuneiform, one of the inner ankle or tarsal bones, remains.
Differences from Megatheritum would appear to lie possibly in the
shape of certain of the tarsal elements; the astragalus, for example,
the tarsal bone that articulates with the tibia, has a better developed
knoblike portion for the inner part of the “ankle joint.”

Ficure 6.—Right hindfoot of Megatherium americanum Blumenbach (after Richard Owen)
from Argentina. The knoblike process (top of foot) on astragalus is rather different than
in the Eremotherium foot. Outer view as in figure 5. About 1/8 natural size.

Ficure 7.—Right (figure on left) and left sides of an anterior dorsal vertebra of Eremo-
therium, showing a remarkable lack of symmetry or difference in development. On the
right side of the vertebra (figure on left) the pedicle or support for the arch and spine is
strikingly slender, and the upper surface of the centrum below is much more deeply
excavated. About 1/6 natural size.

An additional] feature, comment on which has not been noted else-
where for this animal, relates to the lack of symmetry observed in
dorsal] vertebrae from the third or fourth to about the sixth. In these,
the right neuropophysis or pedicle of the neural arch is much more
slender than the left (fig. 7) so that there is a much greater opening on
the right side between the arches of adjacent vertebrae. Also the top
surface of the centrum is noticeably excavated on the right, as though
the thoracic nerve on this side were much larger than on the left, or
than normal, as it separated from the spinal nerve and passed out be-
tween the adjacent vertebral arches.

GIANT GROUND SLOTHS—GAZIN aoe

These vertebrae are normally symmetrical in mammals and there is
no mention by Richard Owen of such a condition though probably
present, in dorsal vertebrae of Megatherium. <A single reference to a
similar condition was found in the case of the mylodont sloth remains
from the tar pits at Rancho La Brea in California, as described by
Chester Stock (1925). This was noted for all the second dorsal or
thoracic vertebrae and certain of the third; again the more slender
pedicle is always on the right.

Speculation as to the cause of this asymmetry may be offered but
there is no certainty that any of the suggestions made are a solution
to the mystery. The nerves and blood vessels passing between the
arches in these positions should be equally developed on the two sides.
One might be tempted to speculate on a rather pronounced unilateral
development of a certain group of muscles. The nerves emerging from
the spinal cord in this region, however, are for the most part related
to the back muscles, skin, and certain of the muscles that function in
breathing. The nerves of the brachial plexus which control the fore-
limbs generally emerge from the lower neck region and from between
the first segments of the dorsal series. This distribution in the case
of the ground sloths might have been from a more posterior portion
of the anterior dorsals, but such an implied “righthandedness” is not
reflected in the bones of the forearm.

A second suggestion, which probably does not merit serious con-
sideration, is that the branches of the spinal nerve in the anterior
dorsal region communicating with the sympathetic trunk or nerve
might have been strongly involved in an asymmetric arrangement
with, for example, the cardiac plexus. The sympathetic, as well as
the vagus, nerve patterns are notoriously lacking in symmetry, so that
it might not seem too unreasonable to suppose that a nonsymmetrical
tie-in with the spinal nerve could have developed in ground sloths.

As a remaining possibility, in contrast to the foregoing, one might
postulate suppression, through some means, of the proper functioning
of the nerves on the left side of the column. This would presumably
call for compensation through overdevelopment of those on the right.
Seeking a direct mechanical cause for possible suppression of nerves
on the left one cannot fail to note the proximity of the aorta artery
to the left of the vertebral centra. The segments of the vertebral
column involved correspond closely to the probable position of the
upper portion of the aorta descendens very near the arch of the aorta.
This in itself is not peculiar to sloths, but the rather tremendous body
bulk, coupled with the assumption of an upright posture much of the
time, lends credence to the suggestion that the pressure of the un-
doubtedly large aorta could have been responsible. Further pressure
on the thoracic cavity transmitted to the left side of the vertebral

354 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

column by the aorta would come from use of the pectoral muscles in
reaching out and pulling toward him the foliage of trees composing
his diet, while propped in a relatively erect position by his massive
tail.

SELECTED REFERENCES
HOFFSTETTER, ROBERT.

1949. Sobre los Megatheriidae del Pleistoceno del Ecuador. Schauwbia, gen.
nov. Bol. Inform. Cient. Nac. (Quito), vol. 3, No. 25, Supl., pp. 1-47,
figs. 1-10.
1952. Les Mammiféres Pléistocénes de la République de l’Equateur. Soc.
Géol. France, Mém. No. 66, pp. 1-891, figs. 1-110, pls. 1-8.
LEIDY, JOSEPH.
1855. A memoir on the extinct sloth tribe of North America. Smithsonian
Contr. Knowl., vol. 7, pp. 1-68, pls. 1-16.
OWEN, RICHARD.
1851-1860. On Megatherium (Megatherium americanum, Cuvier and Blu-
menbach). Trans. Roy. Soe. London: vol. 141, pp. 719-764, pls. 44—
53; vol. 145, pp. 359-388, pls. 17-27 ; vol. 146, pp. 571-589, pls. 21-26;
vol. 148, pp. 261-278, pls. 18-22; vol. 149, pp. 809-829, pls. 37-41.
PAULA CouTO, CARLOS DE.
1954. Megaterios intertropicais do Pleistoceno. An. Acad. Brasileria de
Cienc., vol. 26, pp. 447-463, figs. 1-4, pls. 1-6.
ScCHAUB, SAMUEL,
1935. Saugetierfunde aus Venezuela und Trinidad. Schweiz. Palaeont.
Ges. Abh., vol. 55, pp. 1-21, figs. 1-3, pls. 1-2.
SPILLMAN, FRANz.
1948. Beitrag zur Kenntnis eines neuen gravigraden Riesensteppentieres
(Eremotherium carolinense gen. et spec. nov.), seines Lebensraumes
und seiner Lebensweise. Palaeobiologia (Wien), vol. 8, pt. 3,
pp. 231-279, figs. 1-12, pls. 1 and 2.
Stock CHESTER.
1925. Cenozoic gravigrade edentates of western North America, with spe-
cial reference to the Pleistocene Megalonychinae and Mylodontidae
of Rancho La Brea. Carnegie Inst. Washington Publ. No. 331,
pp. i—xiii, 1-206, figs. 1-120, pls. 147.

The Kitimat Story’

By ANCELA CROOME
London, England

{With 4 plates]

One hundred and fifty-seven years ago, at the opening of the nine-

teenth century, aluminum was unknown. In the 1850’s a table serv-
ice that Napoleon III had made of aluminum cost more than the
price of an identical one in gold. Yet today the only metal of which
there is an annual consumption larger than aluminum is steel. Its
price naturally refiects its changed status.
- The key to this spectacular expansion was the discovery of a means
of cheap production. The ore from which the metal is obtained is
not rare—indeed it represents one-eighth of the globe’s crust—but
releasing the metal from the raw material (bauxite) proved techno-
logically so subtle that this fact alone preserved until 1886 the price
of aluminum at the level of the precious metals. The result of the
success of Charles Marlin Hall, of Oberlin, and Paul Louis Herolt,
of Paris, in reducing aluminum oxide by an electrolytic process
promptly cut the price by one-fourth. Nevertheless to exploit this
discovery fully, and to produce aluminum in huge quantities at the
lowest possible cost, required the bringing into conjunction of features
not readily found together in nature, namely, the sources of bauxite,
massive electric power, and first-class transport facilities.

The impulse and grand-scale planning of war helped to fuse these
elements into the reality of actual development projects. The last war
used up most of the aluminum that could be put on the market.
The years of cold war since, combined with a period of intensive
reconstruction and industrial expansion as well as increased civilian
need, have maintained the demand well ahead of supply. But these
conditions have quickened engineering imagination, brought into focus
parts of the world that have never been thought of together before,
and provided the colossal capital sums needed to put through develop-
ment schemes of the grandest sweep.

* Reprinted by permission from Discovery, vol. 17, No. 4, April 1956.
355

356 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Britain is currently using 252,000 short tons of aluminum per year
on new aircraft, new buildings, new electrical installations, and on
other work. To supply Britain and other countries of the free world,
the wilderness of a forbidding corner of northwestern Canada has
been tamed and harnessed in 40 months. A city of 13,000 has risen
where formerly only a few Indians wandered in summer months, and
to Canadian shores come ships with alumina, the mining and proc-
essing of which in Jamaica bring new employment to West Indians
half the world away.

The production of 1 pound of aluminum ingot requires 10 kilowatt-
hours of electricity. The electrical power consumed in producing a
ton of aluminum, it has been estimated, would meet the demands of a
normal household for 10 years.

Massive untapped reserves of electricity are nowadays rare. Within
the Commonwealth they are to be found in the few large areas re-
maining undeveloped, such as the province of British Columbia in
Canada, and in British Africa. Surveys had been made of the Tahtsa
Lake area of British Columbia, once, twice, three times, between
1874 and 1950. The acute world demand for aluminum made the
possibilities which these surveys revealed economically workable.

In 1948 the Aluminum Company of Canada started negotiations
with the provincial authorities of British Columbia, and funds were
raised for the initial capital outlay of a scheme which is expected,
ultimately, to cost in excess of £200 million. This colossal develop-
ment job was now “on.” Kitimat found itself on the map.

THE PLAN

“Kitimat” is shorthand for the whole development project. This
comprises five distinct engineering schemes and is flung across an area
more than 200 miles long. The name actually derives from the site
chosen for the smelter at the head of the Douglas Channel, a navigable
inlet running 80 miles up from the northern Pacific.

The unusual topography of this coast range of mountains has pro-
vided the opportunity which the planners of Alcan? have so boldly
seized. The crest of the range is only a few miles from the sea. More-
over, owing to heavy glacial action during the Ice Age (when the
whole of British Columbia, save the highest mountain peaks, was iced
over), long, deep, narrow valleys were scoured out on both sides of the
crest. The sea flowed into the westerly valleys to form Jong fjords;
the fjordheads (at sea level), lying within a mile or two of the high
peaks of the mountain barrier. The valleys on the eastward side
descend more gently, but the heads of the lakes approach equally close
to the crest of the mountain range. The westerly point of Tahtsa

* Alcan is the term by which the Aluminum Company of Canada is best known.

THE KITIMAT STORY—CROOME 301

Lake, at the end of a 150-mile lake chain, is only some 15 miles from
sea level (Kemano) on the other side of the mountains.

The engineers’ plan had a magnificent simplicity. The outflow of
the system of lakes would be stopped at the eastern end. Then, when
the narrow boat-shaped vessel of water thus formed was full enough
it would be forced back over its opposite “lip,” through the mountains
to the seaward side. Here, the fall of water would be turned into
power. Then the electric power in turn would be transmitted to
Kitimat itself, some 50 miles away at the head of a navigable channel
where the Jamaican oxide could arrive in ships. The power would
be used to make aluminum at Kitimat and this would then leave for
the markets of the world by water through the same sea channel.
Fight hundred and seventy-three billion cubic feet of water would
thus be turned into 550,000 tons of aluminum each year.

The successful execution of four unconventional construction jobs
was fundamental to the whole plan. The dam necessary to hold back
a 150-mile stretch of water from its accustomed canyon outlet would
be the largest rock-fill dam in the world. A tunnel running 10 miles
through the solid rock of the mountain barrier would bring water in
two 2,600-foot-head, 11-foot-diameter pressure conduits (the largest
pressure conduits known) to turbines on the other side. At the foot
of the mountain a powerhouse containing ultimately 16 of the world’s
most powerful generators had likewise to be excavated and installed
inside the mountain. And, finally, to bring the power to the aluminum
smelter, a power line carrying the largest conductors ever made must
be flung over 50 miles of ferocious snow-clad mountains. At one point
the chain of pylons rises 2,000 feet above the tree line to a 5,300-foot
pass, where 80-mile-an-hour gales rage in winter and the snow lies
20 feet thick.

The smelter alone in the project was of conventional design. It was
simply to be the largest ever built.

Of course these five main construction features of the total develop-
ment were not begun in sequence. But it is convenient to treat them
here consecutively, beginning at the stage farthest from the aluminum,
at the Nechako Canyon through which the lakes had previously been
drained to join the Fraser River. In fact the work on the eastward
dam (now to be called Kenney Dam) and the clearing of the foreshore
at Kitimat in preparation for the smelter, the building of port facilities
and a city, began almost simultaneously during the summer of 1951.

THE DAM AND STORAGE RESERVOIR

Rainfall over the watersheds draining into the long lake chain above
Nechako Canyon varies from 100 inches a year at the western end to
about 20 inches at the lower eastern end. The watershed area above

358 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Kenney Dam is practically 5,500 square miles. A further 290-square-
mile watershed, that of the Nanika-Kidprice Lakes, can eventually be
diverted into the main system. When the storage reservoir has risen
to its scheduled level it will have a capacity of 873X10°® cubic feet,
although the rise in level will only be 15 feet in the Tahtsa Lake, at
the western end. The reservoir surface area will then be 858 square
miles, double that of the original lakes; even so the depth of water at
the upstream face of the dam will be little more than 300 feet. The
full reservoir surface level will stand at 2,800 feet above sea level, with
the inlet to the power tunnel nearly 100 feet below this surface.

The Nechako Canyon site of the main dam was too deep and narrow
for the usual cofferdam procedure for drying out the channel where
the dam was to go. A new river channel was therefore drilled into
the bank upstream, carried 1,539 feet inside the mountain in a sweep-
ing arc, and the water debouched again into the river well below the
dam site. This diversion tunnel was cut and completed in two months
during the summer of 1951.

The thousand men working on this section of the development were
now able to start clearing the river bed. Canyon walls and water
channel were stripped down to the solid bedrock. A concrete slab, 150
by 82 feet and 10 feet thick, was spread on the cleared reservoir floor.
Upon this, the placement of the rock of which the dam was to be
formed began to rise on May 20, 1952.

The rock came from quarries in the surrounding mountains. Four
million cubic yards of filling rock was used. It took the 1,000-man
labor force six months to shift and place this material. At 45-second
intervals throughout those summer months one of a fleet of trucks
dumped its load on the dam, its drivers’ movements radio-controlled
from a central tower.

The construction of the rock-fill dam is of special interest in the
case of the Kenney Dam since it holds a highly critical position at the
head of a major tributary of the Fraser River. Here is the technical
description of the Chief Engineer of the Power Department of Alu-
minium Laboratories Ltd.,? F. L. Lawton, who has been closely as-
sociated with Kitimat:

. . . the load-carrying element is a heavy rock-fill thoroughly sluiced, support-
ing on the upstream slope an impervious section of rolled-earth construction en-
closed between suitable filter layers. The upper section is loaded with quarry-
run rock to retain the filter layers and impervious core, and resist wave erosion.
The impervious core extends from a cut-off trench in sound rock to near the top
of the dam.

The function of the downstream filter layers is to prevent the impervious core
material from being forced into the rock-fill by the water pressure, whereas the

3 Aluminium Laboratories Limited is a subsidiary of Aluminium Limited in the
same group of companies as Alcan.

PEATE 1

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1. Aerial view of dock and smelter, Kitimat, British Columbia. Delta King, former Sacra-
mento River stern wheeler, is at left, now used as a workers’ dormitory.
also furnish steam to heat hospital and other buildings.

2. Nechako aerial view of dam area.

PEATE S

1956.—CROOME

SMITHSONIAN REPORT,

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& as "Ek, Fy

1. Stringing of world’s largest aluminum cable proceeding along mountain section of 50-mile
transmission line from Kemano to Kitimat.

2, Kemano, Camp No. 5, Mount DuBose, Horetzky Valley, and the Jaws. This shot was
taken looking east from about 3,000 feet elevation on Mount Powell.

THE KITIMAT STORY—CROOME 359

upstream filter layers perform a similar function with respect to the upstream
blanket of quarry-run rock. The downstream filters comprise three layers; im-
Iuediately downstream from the impervious core a layer of sand % inch and
smaller; next erushed rock or gravel, 3 inches; and, finally, adjoining the main
rock-fill a layer of 10-inch selected rock. The upstream filter is similar but in
the reverse sense.

Below the impervious core, effective cut-off is assured by a grout curtain. This
was developed by grouting the upper 25 feet of rock at pressures of about 20 Ib.
per square inch, then continuing to the necessary depth by deep holes drilled
through the consolidated upper zone, using higher pressures.

Another point worth noting is that the original 1-in-1.5 slope of
the upstream face was increased to 1-in-2.5 during the model tests at
the University of California, as an additional safety measure. In
view of the dam’s elaborate and scientific packing, the claim that its
life will be measured “in geological, not historical time” is probably
justified.

On October 8, 1952, the diversion tunnel above the dam was closed
and the storage reservoir began filling. The water has been rising ever
since. The 2,800-foot-elevation level should be reached in 1957.

Coloring an account of the construction of this, the world’s largest
rock-fill dam nearly 3,000 feet up in the mountains, there should be
a sense of the acute inaccessibility of the region and the human hard-
ships that this must bring. Nechako Canyon is nearly 100 miles
from the nearest railway station. To bring the heavy equipment and
the men to the site a heavy motor road had to be driven 60 miles
through virgin country. The Canadians did this in 12 weeks flat.

THE POWER TUNNEL

The storage capacity of the reservoir permits a regulated flow esti-
mated at 6,920 cubic feet per second for the powerhouse turbines. But
first the water had to be thrust 10 miles through solid rock to reach
those turbines.

The boring of the tunnel started on October 22, 1951, from the west-
ern shores of Tahtsa Lake. On November 4 the bore into the mountain
from the seaward side began. Two further mining crews attacked
from a midway shaft driven into Mount DuBose at Horetzky Creek;
one of these crews bored eastward from this point, the other west-
ward.

Mining operations on the western mountain face were complicated
by the need to start drilling half a mile up a heavily wooded and al-
most cliff-steep slope. An overhead-cable railway solved this problem.
The cable car, weighing 9 tons itself, could convey 20 tons of machinery
or 60 men per trip.

Within the tunnel highly coordinated teamwork operating a newly
developed large-scale drilling technique chewed through the rock

4125755724

360 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

at the rate of 15-feet-plus in two hours. A tunneling team consisted
of 40 men. Ten worked on each face of the tunnel, perched on four
platforms on a movable scaffold known as a “jumbo.” Up to 100 blast
holes 15 feet deep were drilled. Then the jumbo was pulled back and
the drill holes plugged with explosive. After the detonation the
broken rock was loaded into trolleys, dragged to the entrance, and
dumped. Then the cycle would be repeated. The tunneling con-
tinued round the clock, the men working shifts, for 20 months. On
December 2, 1953, two grimy miners grinned at each other through
a jagged hole deep inside the mountain. The tunnel from the east
had met the tunnel from the west—dead on center! Three times the
world tunneling time had been cut; the final record was in 1953 when
282 feet were bored in a single 6-day week. (This was through
granodiorite, a most satisfactory material for drilling.)

The completed tunnel was 10.1 miles long with a diameter of 25
feet. A second, following the same route but 300 feet away, is
envisaged in the final development.

THE POWERHOUSE

Kemano hydroelectric powerplant is to be the largest underground
powerhouse in the world. When the full complement of 16 150,000-
horsepower generators are installed it will have a total capacity over
three times the ultimate installed capacity of Harspranget in Sweden,
the closest rival. Work on digging out the powerhouse cavern began
at the end of the summer of 1951, and this job alone took nearly two
years. The plant is nearly a third of a mile inside the mountain, so a
27-foot-wide access tunnel had first to be driven as far as the location
of the power chamber. A total of 570,000 tons of rock made room for
this. The cavern necessary to house the full eight generators envisaged
at the completion of Stage I (the “6-year plan” for the scheme) is
ample to hold the Queen Elizabeth. Today the powerhouse is 82 feet
wide and 135 high, and is 700 feet long. To install the eight more
generators allowed for in the plans the building must be cut another
400 feet into the rock. It will then be more than a quarter of a mile
long.

The Kemano generators are driven by the largest multinozzle
impulse-turbines ever devised. These turbines are vertical, single-
runner, 4-nozzle type designed to produce 150,000 horsepower at 327
revolutions per minute. They drive directly 3-phase, 60-cycle, 13,800-
volt generators rated at 122,000 kilovolt-amperes. The power from
each group of generators feeds into a bank of three single-phase
89,000 kilovolt-ampere transformers. <A 300,000-volt, 4-inch-diameter
power cable, with 60 pounds per square inch oil pressure, carries the
transformer output 2,000 feet to the surface switchyard. (This power

THE KITIMAT STORY—CROOME 361

cable is runner-up for the world record; the only larger one is the
380,000-volt cable in use at Harspranget.)

To carry out all this work a settlement of about 5,000 people was
established at the foot of Mount DuBose by 1953. Apart from the
forbidding country around, they were snug. They had their own
neat homes, schools, churches, and in the cinemas first-run Hollywood
films were screened. A 2-lane road ran 10 miles down the valley to
the anchorage on Gardner Canal —and the rest of the world.

THE POWERLINE

It is certain that without helicopters the power so boldly seized at
Kenney Dam and Kemano would never have been piped across the
mountains to the aluminum ore at Kitimat. Grit can get men so far
but it cannot swing heavy loads to an eagle’s eyrie—and this was the
sort of task that was now ahead. Between Kemano and Kitimat lie
50 miles of savage mountain country, clogged with snow and lashed
by winds that could rise to an 80-mile-an-hour gale off the sea. At one
point on the route the transmission line must go over a 5,300-foot pass,
the highest elevation in the whole project. In these conditions hun-
dreds of specially strengthened pylons had to be set up and the massive
transmission cables rigged—the biggest ever made and designed to
support a 5-inch sheath of ice if necessary. It was difficult enough
getting the men to some of the sites, not to speak of heavy equipment.

Seven helicopters were brought to Kitimat, the largest fleet to be
used for civilian purposes at that time. But there were other snags.
Carl Agar, one of Canada’s best pilots, was called west to pioneer
high-altitude landings and takeoffs. The rarefied atmosphere and
treacherous mountain downdrafts were variables that no one had ex-
perienced on this scale.

But the venture worked. In fact the helicopters became so indis-
pensable that on favorable days they flew 75 round trips on a tight
schedule—more than at the height of the Berlin airlift, as somebody
pointed out! Each machine would work on a 4-hour shift, back and
forth, back and forth, without ever touching down.

Meantime on the mudflats below at Kitimat the new aluminum
smelter had been going up, and 4 miles away the new town was rising,
a planned community scheme to house the rapidly increasing popu-
lation in the wilderness. Port facilities were also installed on the
cleared foreshore. Stalwart as these rapid achievements were they
seem dwarfed by the rest of the development story.

On July 15, 1954, the last switch was made. The power from the
lakes in the mountains began to heat the smelters. The plant was
officially opened by the Duke of Edinburgh a fortnight later and the
first ingot poured in his view.

362 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

In 1874 when the first survey of this area was made by Charles
Horetzky, surveyor of the railways, he wrote of these mountains—“A
terrible silence, broken only now and again by the dreadful crash of
some falling avalanche, reigned over this scene of desolation.” When
he led a party of three white men and four Indians through a gap in
the mountains and saw beneath the water of Tahtsa Lake like a jewel
in the waste, he was immediately struck by its “brilliant light blue
colour”—the first excitement for the eye for many weeks.

Now, 83 years later, “the terrible silence” is pierced by the high
hum of the turbogenerators and the “scene of desolation” is peopled
by a thriving community of many thousands. In 1955 (the first
complete year of smelting at Kitimat) over 90,000 tons of alumi-
num were produced. By the end of 1956, when six generators were
in operation, the output had increased to more than 180,000 tons.
And, if world demand continues to increase at its present rate, 16
generators producing power for 550,000 tons of aluminum a year may
soon be in operation.

Reprints of the various articles in this Report may be obtained, as long
as the supply lasts, on request addressed to the Editorial and Publication
Division, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 25, D. C.

Sewage Treatment—How It Is

Accomplished 5

By C. E. KEEFER

Assistant Bureau Engineer, Sewers

Bureau of Sewers, Baltimore, Md.

(With 6 plates]

Man’s pesiRre to enjoy the amenities of urban life has brought with
it many difficult problems that demand prompt and adequate solutions.
One of these, which up to about 100 years ago had remained unsolved,
related to the satisfactory treatment and disposal of municipal sewage.
Many factors were instrumental in directing the attention of legis-
lators, sanitarians, and engineers to this problem. Among these
factors were the increased use of water, which served as a means to
transport municipal wastes to the nearest watercourse, the phenomenal
growth of our cities with its concomitant increase in the volume of
municipal sewage, the growth of our knowledge of water-borne dis-
ease, and an aroused public opinion that clean watercourses are con-
ducive to the general welfare of the public.

WHAT IS SEWAGE?

The purpose of this discussion is to indicate the various methods
that are used to treat municipal sewage so that 85 or 90 percent of
the organic and suspended materials and at least 99 percent of the
bacteria can be removed at a reasonable cost. To understand how the
various treatment processes function it is desirable to know what
municipal sewage is and how it is collected.

Sewage has been defined as “the spent water supply of a community,
together with those human and household wastes that are removed
by water carriage, supplemented in some instances by street washings
and industrial wastes.” Sewage consists of the liquid discharge from

*This paper gives a brief description of the more important facilities found
in modern sewage-treatment plants. No attempt has been made to describe all
of the means available for treating sewage. Those facilities that have been out-
moded, that are little used, or that as yet have not become well-established
processes have not been discussed,

363

364 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

kitchens, laundries, and bathrooms of residences, hotels, hospitals,
schools, and business establishments. This liquid is quite frequently
augmented by the liquid wastes, usually called industrial wastes, from
various industries, such as dairies, laundries, slaughterhouses, and
food-processing plants.

The character and the strength of sewage will generally depend
upon the water consumption and the amount of industrial wastes
present. Where a city uses a large quantity of water, it often dis-
charges it into the sewers and the strength of the sewage is diminished.
On the other hand, if large quantities of industrial wastes are disposed
of into the sewers, the strength of the sewage is usually increased.

The type of sewerage system in a city will affect the character of
the sewage. There are two types of sewerage systems in general use:
the separate system and the combined system. A separate system con-
sists of two distinct groups of sewers, one called sanitary sewers and
the other called storm sewers or storm drains. Sanitary sewers re-
ceive the discharge from bathrooms, kitchens, and laundries in resi-
dences and business establishments and the industrial wastes from
food-processing plants, manufacturing plants, etc. This discharge,
called sewage, may flow either into a watercourse without treatment
or to a sewage-treatment plant. The storm sewers or storm drains
receive the storm flow from streets, sidewalks, roofs, lawns, and unde-
veloped areas. The discharge from storm drains generally flows
untreated into nearby watercourses.

The second system of sewers, which is in more general use, at least
in medium-size and large cities, is the combined system of sewers. This
system receives both the sewage from dwellings, industrial plants, and
other sources, and the rain water and surface discharge from high-
ways, roofs, and similar areas. Where the sewage from these two types
of sewerage systems has to be treated, some differences in the design
of the sewage-treatment works are necessary.

Sewage has an appearance not unlike that of dishwater, in which is
suspended a wide diversity of materials such as fruit skins, pieces of
paper, match sticks, and fecal matter. One useful measure of the
strength of sewage is the amount of suspended solids in it. The quan-
tity of suspended matter in the sewage from cities in the United States
will generally average from 0.02 to 0.03 percent by weight and the
quantity of water will exceed 99.9 percent. Although the amount of
suspended solids when evaluated on a percentage basis is small, the
total daily amount from a large city can be considerable. For ex-
ample, the suspended solids in the sewage from Washington, D. C.,
amounts to about 113 tons a day. Sewage also contains organic and
inorganic solids in solution, together with vast numbers of viruses and
bacteria. A useful measure of the strength of sewage, called the bio-

SEWAGE TREATMENT—KEEFER 365

chemical oxygen demand, is the amount of oxygen required for the
biochemical oxidation of the decomposible matter at a given tempera-
ture within a given time.

SEWAGE TREATMENT PROCESSES

The treatment of sewage can be accomplished in a variety of ways.
The type of treatment selected depends upon a number of factors such
as the relationship between the volume of sewage to be treated and the
minimum fiow in the watercourse into which the sewage discharges,
the use to which the watercourse is put, the cost, and the land available
for a sewage-treatment plant and the nearness of built-up areas to the
plant site. A low flow of sewage from a small community, discharging
into a large watercourse, may require little if any treatment, whereas
a large flow discharging into a small watercourse will require a high
degree of treatment. The use to which the watercourse is put will
have a decided bearing on the type of treatment. Where there are
shellfish areas in the watercourse or where it is used for recreational
purposes such as swimming or bathing or is a source of water supply,
a high degree of treatment is usually necessary. Where land is costly
or where expensive foundations are required to support the sewage-
treatment structures, it may be desirable to select those types of treat-
ment units that occupy a smal] area of ground. The nearness of sew-
age plants to residential or business areas plays an important role in
the type of treatment selected. Where dwellings or business establish-
ments are close to a proposed sewage-treatment plant, that type of
treatment should be adopted which will be relatively free of odors and
other nuisances.

SEWAGE SCREENS

Practically every sewage plant is provided with a sewage screen.
The chief function of screens is to remove large suspended solids that
may clog pumps and small pipes. Screens can be classified into two
types: coarse and fine. Coarse screens are made of parallel steel or
wrought-iron bars with clear openings of about half an inch or more,
whereas fine screens have openings well under half an inch.

Coarse screens can be either manually or mechanically cleaned.
They are generally placed (pl. 1, fig. 1) in a chamber or channel at
right angles to the flow of sewage in an inclined position to facilitate
ease of cleaning. Suspended solids in the sewage are caught on the
upstream surface of the screen and are raked off manually or
mechanically.

Various types of fine screen are in use. One type consists of a drum
made of bronze plates, containing perforations varying from about
one-sixteenth to one-eighth inch in width. The drum (see pl. 6),
which is rotated by an electric motor, is partially submerged with its

366 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

horizontal axis parallel with the surface of the sewage. Different
methods of cleaning fine screens have been adopted, one of which is by
revolving brushes.

Screenings, which are usually quite objectionable, are disposed of
by incineration, by burial, or by mixing with municipal garbage. One
method that has been practiced to a considerable extent for the past
25 years has been to mascerate the material in a grinding machine and
discharge it back into the sewage. This method of disposal is espe-
cially applicable where screenings from coarse screens are disposed of,
since the quantity of solids involved is small and the ground material
can be removed from the sewage by subsequent treatment processes.

A device called a comminutor, which combines the properties of a
screen and a grinder (pl. 2, fig. 1), consists of a slotted rotating drum,
installed in a sewage channel. The sewage flows through the hori-
zontal slots in the drum. Attached to the outer surface of the drum
are a series of projections, on which the screenings are caught. As the
drum rotates, it passes through the teeth of a stationary comb and cuts
up the screenings into such a size that they flow through the slots with

the sewage.
GRIT CHAMBERS

After sewage has been screened, usually the next step in the treat-
ment process consists of removing the grit in one or more tanks, called
grit chambers. These chambers treat the sewage from combined
sewerage systems, which contains considerable quantities of sand and
similar materials in the discharge from highways and unpaved areas,
and in some instances are provided to treat the sewage from separate
systems. There is a variety of designs. The size of the tank (pl. 1,
fig. 2) governs the velocity of flow of the sewage passing through it
so that the grit settles on the bottom of the tank and the lighter organic
matter passes out with the effluent. The length is such that the sewage
is retained in the chamber about 1 minute, and the traverse cross sec-
tion is usually such that the velocity of the sewage is about 1 foot per
second. The quantity of grit removed varies from abcut 1 to 10 cubic
yards per million gallons of sewage treated. Grit is disposed of by
incineration and by making fills at sewage-treatment plants.

TANKS

SKIMMING TANKS

As sewage contains considerable grease and oil, specially designed
tanks for the collection and removal of these materials have been used
to some extent. The tanks are generally small with detention periods
ranging from a few minutes to about 15 minutes. One type is rec-
tangular in plan with a V-shaped cross section. It is divided longi-
tudinally into three compartments by two vertical walls, which extend

SEWAGE TREATMENT—KEEFER 367

nearly to the bottom of the tank. Porous diffusers are provided at the
bottom of the central] compartment along the center line of the tank.
When air is blown through these diffusers, it carries any grease and
oil to the tank surface where these materials are removed manually.

SEDIMENTATION TANKS

After sewage has been screened and the grit has been removed, it is
processed to remove a considerable percentage of the suspended solids
by passing the sewage continuously through sedimentation tanks at a
greatly reduced velocity. The suspended solids settle out and are re-
moved in a variety of ways. This deposited material is called sewage
sludge.

In the United States sedimentation tanks are of such size that the
sewage is retained in the tanks for about 2 to 3 hours. During this
detention period about 35 to 40 percent of the oxidizable materials
and 60 to 70 percent of the suspended solids are removed.

Sedimentation tanks are of many different types and shapes. They
are all designed basically to obtain a reduced and uniform velocity of
flow throughout the tank, with the ratio of tank surface to tank volume
large, and to remove the sludge rapidly and in as concentrated a con-
sistency as possible. They are usually square, rectangular, or circular
in plan, with working depths varying from 5 to 6 feet for small units
to almost 14 feet for large ones. Various methods have been devised
for removing the sludge. In the older designs this was done manually.
After a tank had been in service for several days or weeks, the flow
was diverted to another tank and the supernatant was pumped or
drained off until the sludge was exposed. This material was then
squeegeed or flushed with water to a pit in or near the tank and then
removed, usually by pumping, for further treatment or disposal.

Another type of tank that still has a limited use is provided with
steep floors that slope to a sump. Frem here there is a drain pipe
through which the sludge discharges to some point of disposal.

The type that has come into almost universal use during the past
30 years is provided with mechanically operated equipment for remov-
ing the sludge either continuously or intermittently. One type of
equipment that is extensively used in circular tanks (text fig. 1) con-
sists of two trusses made of structural steel shapes suspended immedi-
ately above the tank floor and supported at the center of the tank.
Thin metal squeegees are attached to the bottoms of the trusses and
make contact with the tank floor, which slopes toward the center of the
tank. The whole mechanism is rotated slowly about the vertical] center
line of the tank, and the sludge is moved by the squeegees toward the
tank center. From here the sludge discharges through a pipe as a
result of the hydrostatic pressure of the superimposed sewage. An-
other type of cleaning equipment adopted especially for rectangular

368 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

DISCHARGE PIPE

—

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tanks (fig. 2) consists of a series of wooden flights or squeegees, the
ends of which are connected by two endless chains. The flights rest
on the bottom of the tank; and as they are moved by motor-driven
sprockets, they scrape the sludge to one end of the tank. There are
various other mechanical methods of removing sludge from sedimenta-

tion tanks, which are modifications or refinements of the two above
mentioned.

369

SEWAGE TREATMENT—KEEFER

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370 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956
CHEMICAL PRECIPITATION

At one time the chemical precipitation of sewage was extensively
adopted ; today, however, it is little used. The process consists of mix-
ing one or more chemicals with sewage to produce an insoluble or
slightly soluble floc, which enmeshes and precipitates particles in sus-
pension. The facilities required to treat sewage by this method consist
of equipment for dosing and mixing the chemicals with the sewage and
sedimentation tanks, in which the precipitated solids can be removeil.
One or more of a number of chemicals are employed in the precipita-
tion process. Those most frequently used are alum, lime, ferrous sul-
fate and lime, ferric sulfate, and ferric chloride. Using chemicals to
precipitate the sewage solids increases the amount removed and conse-
quently produces a better effluent. Chemical precipitation will remove
70 to 80 percent of the biochemical oxygen demand and 80 to 90 per-
cent of the suspended solids and bacteria, Chemical precipitation
gives a degree of treatment intermediate between that obtained by
plain sedimentation and that by oxidation processes to be described

later.
SEPTIC TANKS

A septic tank (text fig. 3) is a sedimentation tank in which the
sludge remains for a considerable time and decomposes as the result

Lffluent pipe ~~.

’ Influent pipe

Plan

4 q
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Longitudinal Section

Ficure 3.—Typical septic tank for school or factory. (Bull. 16, Engineering Experiment
Station, University of Washington.)

SEWAGE TREATMENT—KEEFER Stl

of anaerobic bacterial action. From time to time after the sludge has
digested, it is removed and disposed of. The septic tank was in-
vented by Donald Cameron in 1895 and was adopted by many large
cities. The objections to septic tanks are that they produce un-
pleasant odors and the effluent often becomes contaminated with sludge
solids, which, after decomposing on the bottom of the tank, rise to
the surface of the sewage and flow out with the effluent. They have
not been installed at medium- and large-size sewage plants for many
years. Their use has been restricted to treating the sewage from in-
dividual dwellings, small real-estate developments, schools, hospitals,
ete.
IMHOFF TANKS

An Imhoff tank (fig. 4) is a two-story tank, designed to remove
the suspended solids from sewage in an upper or sedimentation com-
partment and to provide space in a lower compartment for the di-
gestion and stabilization of the solids. The sedimentation compart-
ment is usually of such a size that the sewage takes 2 or 3 hours to
pass through it. During this detention period the velocity of the
flow is such that the suspended solids settle on the sloping floor and
slide through a slot in the floor into the lower compartment. The
solids are retained in the digestion compartment for several weeks
or months until they have decomposed and have lost much of their

Gas Vent ~ Grams

E SECTION /-/ a0 SEGHION 2-2

Ficure 4.—Typical Imhoff tank.

372 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

objectionable characteristics. In the operation of Imhoff tanks the
top of the sludge in the digestion compartment is maintained well
below the elevation of the slots connecting the sedimentation and the
digestion compartments to prevent the reentry of sludge into the sedi-
mentation compartment, which would adversely affect the clarity of
the effluent. Decomposed sludge is withdrawn from the tank through
a pipe (text fig. 4), the lower end of which terminates just above
the bottom of the digestion compartment. One distinguishing charac-
teristic of Imhoff tanks is that gas-lifted solids in the digestion com-
partment, as they float upward, cannot reenter the sedimentation
compartment and contaminate the effluent.

Imhoff tanks, which were first adopted in Germany, were a marked
improvement over septic tanks and were built at many sewage-treat-
ment plants in this country such as those serving Akron, Ohio; Fitch-
burg, Mass.; and Fort Worth, Tex. During the past 30 years, how-
ever, Imhoff tanks have been superseded by mechanically cleaned
sedimentation tanks and separate sludge-digestion tanks.

SECONDARY TREATMENT FACILITIES

In many instances the above-mentioned facilities do not furnish
the required degree of treatment. Such is the case if there is an
insufficient volume of diluting water into which the sewage effluent
discharges. The three principal types of supplementary treatment
usually called secondary treatment, are intermittent sand filters, trick-
ling filters, and the activated-sludge process. Although intermittent
sand filters were often employed 50 years ago, their present use is in
general restricted to those places where the sewage flow is quite small
and where a high degree of treatment is required. Either trickling
filters, or the activated-sludge process are widely adopted where sup-
plementary treatment is called for. The activated-sludge process is
more generally used than trickling filters where large sewage flows

must be treated.
INTERMITTENT SAND FILTERS

An intermittent sand filter consists of a bed of sand varying from
30 to 36 inches in depth. Each bed is surrounded by a low earth
embankment, and one or more pipelines with pen joints are provided
at the bottom of the beds to drain off the effluent. The raw sewage is ap-
plied, at stated intervals, to the beds to a depth of about 3 inches. The
sewage solids are strained out in the upper few inches of the bed, and
the effluent is usually quite clear with a low suspended solid content.
Between each application of sewage several hours are allowed to
elapse to permit the entry of air into the bed so that the entrapped
materials can be oxidized. From time to time it is necessary to re-
move and dispose of the solids caught on the surface of the beds.

SEWAGE TREATMENT—KEEFER 373

Although it is possible to apply untreated sewage to intermittent sand
filters and produce a good effluent, the more general practice is to
give the sewage preliminary treatment by coarse screens and sedi-
mentation tanks. Intermittent sand filters are capable of removing
as much as 95 percent of the organic and suspended solids from
sewage with the production of an excellent effluent. The disad-
vantages of intermittent sand filters are that they require considerable
areas of land where large volumes of sewage must be treated, and
they produce disagreeable odors. One of the last large intermittent
sand filteration plants in this country was in Worcester, Mass., where
74.3 acres of filter beds treated an average flow of over 4 million gal-
lons a day. They were superseded by trickling filters in 1925.

TRICKLING FILTERS

Trickling filters for many years have been and still are one of the
most important treatment facilities for oxidizing sewage. A trickling
filter consists of an artificial bed of durable material such as gravel,
crushed stone, or slag, on which sewage in the form of a spray is
intermittently or continuously applied. The sewage trickles down
over the surfaces of the stones and is collected in underdrains in the
filter bottom, from which it discharges for subsequent treatment.
The filtering medium usually varies in size from about 1 to 3 or 314
inches. Fine-grained material will produce a better effluent than a
coarse-grained medium. On the other hand filters with fine-grained
material are more liable to become clogged with sewage solids. The
depth of trickling filters varies from about 8 to 10 feet.

Several ways of applying sewage to the surface of filters are avail-
able. One much-used method consists of distributing the sewage
through a network of pipes laid on or beneath the surface. Projecting
vertically upward from these pipes are equally spaced pipes, which
are usually 3 or 4 inches in diameter and which terminate some 2 or 3
feet above the filter. At the top of each vertical pipe there is a nozzle
through which the sewage discharges in a fine spray on the surface of
the stone. Various means are used to vary the pressure in these pipes
so that sewage is applied uniformly to the filter both close to and at a
distance from the nozzles.

Sewage is also applied to trickling filters by means of rotary dis-
tributors (pl. 2, fig.2). This device consists of a vertical column, into
which the sewage enters at the bottom and isdrawn upward. Attached
to this column are two or more horizontal pipes, which rotate about
the center of the column a few feet above the surface of the filter.
Sewage flows through these pipes and discharges through a series of
nozzles on the filter. The flow from the nozzles furnishes sufficient
impulse to rotate the distributor so that sewage is applied to the
entire surface of the filter.

374 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

When a trickling filter is first put in service, purification of the
sewage is not great. However, within about a month or more the
filter media becomes coated with slime, containing a multitude of
lower forms of life such as bacteria, fungus, fly larvae, spiders, and
many types of werms. As the sewage trickles over the surface of this
slime, the carbonaceous and nitrogenous materials are oxidized by
bacterial action with the production of carbon dioxide, water, and
nitrates, and with a reduction of 60 to 85 percent in the oxidizable
matter. As the bacteria and other forms of life in trickling filters are
affected by temperature, a better effluent is produced in summer than
in winter.

The quantity of sewage that can be treated on trickling filters varies
from 1 to 2 million gallons per acre per day, up to 30 million gallons
per acre per day or more. Prior to about 20 years ago from about 1.5
to 8 million gallons per acre per day of settled sewage was applied to
trickling filters, or about 12,000 to 24,000 persons were served per acre
by a filter 6 feet deep. Experimental work and many full-scale instal-
lations have since indicated that considerably greater applications of
sewage can be made, and that by pumping back a portion of the
effluent to the filter influent much larger quantities of sewage can be
treated with no decrease in efficiency.

Trickling filters are used in many parts of the world for treating
both small and large sewage flows. During the past 20 or 30 years in
the United States, where the sewage from large cities requires sec-
ondary treatment, the trend has been to provide activated-sludge units
instead of trickling filters. The three largest trickling-filter plants in
the world are those serving Baltimore, Md.; Bradford, England; and
Birmingham, England.

The effluent from trickling filters usually contains from 50 to 100
parts per million of suspended solids. In order to remove these solids
the effluent is almost always treated in sedimentation tanks, which are
frequently called humus tanks. They generally have a detention
period of about 2 or 3 hours and asa rule are provided with mechanical
equipment for removing the sludge.

ACTIVATED-SLUDGE TREATMENT

The activated-sludge process, which was invented in Manchester,
England, consists of bringing sewage into intimate contact with air
and biologically active sludge. As a rule the sewage is first clarified
in preliminary settling tanks and then permitted to flow continuously
through aeration tanks with a detention period of several hours.
Activated sludge is added to the sewage entering the aeration tanks
in amounts varying from about 10 to 30 percent by volume, and air
is added to the mixture. From the aeration tanks the sewage and

PEATE 1

1956.—KEEFER

SMITHSONIAN REPORT,

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SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—KEEFER

1. Comminutor.

PLATE 2

2. Trickling filter equipped with Dorrco rotary distributor.

ha

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—KEEFER PEATE; 3

S % >< Sa

1. Chlorinators at sewage-treatment plant, Washington, D. C. (Wallace & Tiernan Co.)

a S

2. Covered sludge-drying beds, New Lexington, Ohio. (Lord & Burnham Co.)

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—KEEFER PLATE 4

ie

1. Oliver vacuum filter, Middletown, Conn. (Dorr-Oliver, Inc.)

2. Rotary sludge dryer, Fairfax County sewage-treatment works, Va.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—KEEFER Pe AES

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PLATE 6

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—KEEFER

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SEWAGE TREATMENT—KEEFER oo

sludge, called mixed liquor, flows to sedimentation tanks. The clari-
fied effluent from these tanks can be discharged into a watercourse,
and the settled solids, called activated sludge, is also removed. The
major portion is added to the sewage flowing to the aeration tanks,
and the remainder is treated and disposed of in a variety of ways.

The activated-sludge process has several advantages. It is free
from odors and flies, and the necessary treatment units occupy less
space and are less costly to construct than trickling filters and humus
tanks. The disadvantages of the process are that it is costly to operate,
and it is frequently adversely affected by industrial wastes in the
sewage.

Authorities differ as to how the process functions. The various
reactions involved have been stated to be biological, biochemical,
physiochemical, base-exchange and enzymic. There seems to be no
question that the bacteria and Protozoa, which are present in vast
numbers in the activated sludge, play a major role in the transforma-
tion of the nitrogenous and carbonaceous substances in the sewage into
simpler and more stable compounds. The three requirements of the
process are biologically active sludge, an ample supply of air, and an
intimate mixing of the sludge and the sewage for a suflicient time.

METHODS OF AERATION

Three methods of introducing air into sewage, to which activated
sludge has been added, are used. These are (1) mechanical aeration,
(2) diffused-air aeration, and (3) a combination of these two methods.
Mechanical aeration consists of providing mechanical means of intro-
ducing air from the atmosphere at the surface of the sewage-sludge
mixture flowing through aeration tanks. Diffused-air aeration in-
volves blowing compressed air through nozzles, perforated pipes, or
porous diffusers at some distance below the surface of the mixed
liquor.

Mechanical aeration—Many different types of mechanical aeration
have been perfected. Only two will be described. One of these, called
a Simplex aerator (text fig. 5), was developed in Bury, England.
This aerator consists of a steel cylinder, which is placed in a vertical
position on the center line of a relatively deep tank, with the bottom
a few inches above the tank floor. Attached to the top of the cylinder
at the surface of the sewage there is a rotating cone with steel vanes,
driven by an electric motor. As the cone rotates, it draws the mixed
liquid up the cylinder and throws it out over the surface of the sewage
in a spray. Oxygen is absorbed from the air by the spray and the
agitated surface of the sewage. Simplex aerators have been provided
at Princeton, Il., and Dunsmuir, Calif.

A second type of aerator (fig. 6) embodies the use of a paddle wheel
about 30 inches in diameter in the form of latticework, which is sup-

4125755725

376 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

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ported by and rotates about a horizontal shaft, extending along and
adjacent to one of the walls of an aeration tank at the surface of the
sewage. A longitudinal vertical baffle, reaching from the surface of
the sewage to a point near the bottom of the tank, is provided below
the paddle wheel and about 18 inches away from the wall supporting
the aerator. As the paddle wheel rotates, it not only breaks up the
surface of the sewage, thus exposing it to the atmosphere, but it also
imparts a spiral motion to the flow of sewage in the tank. Sewage is
drawn upward between the above-mentioned baffle and tank wall from
the bottom of the tank. The sewage then flows horizontally across
the surface of the tank in contact with the air; and after reaching the
opposite tank wall, the flow is directed downward to the tank bottom.
Aeration tanks provided with this type of aerator have been installed
at Collingswood, N. J., and Fort Atkinson, Wis.

Diffused-air aeration—Various types of compressors are used to
supply air to aeration tanks. During the early history of the activated-
sludge process single-stage piston compressors were used. At the
present time positive-pressure blowers or centrifugal compressors are
generally adopted. The advantage of positive-pressure blowers is that

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SEWAGE TREATMENT—KEEFER 377

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their capacity can be varied by changing their speed, and their capacity
remains the same even though the frictional resistance to the flow of
the air may increase as air diffusers become clogged.

Where air is blown through porous diffuser plates or tubes with
narrow air passages, it is necessary to clean the air to prevent the
clogging of the plates or tubes with foreign matter. Various methods
of cleaning the air are available, such as passing it through a multi-
plicity of overlapping oil-coated screen panels, canton flannel, or
cellulose tissue filters. The mixture of sewage and activated sludge
is aerated in long rectangular tanks, a typical cross section of which
is shown in text figure 7. Aeration tanks used in the United States
are generally designed to have a detention period of 4 to 6 hours. In
many instances they are several hundred feet long with a working
depth, which has become fairly standard in large installations, of
about 15 feet and widths varying from 20 to 30 feet or more.

Many methods have been perfected for introducing air into the
sewage in fine bubbles, one of which is to blow the air through porous
tubes or plates. Porous plates, 12 inches square and 1 inch thick, are
made of crystalline alumina or a high-silica sand. A number of the
plates are set in a row in a horizontal position in shallow cast-iron or
concrete containers with space provided for the passage of air between

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

378

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SEWAGE TREATMENT—KEEFER 379

the under side of the plates and the bottom of each container. ‘These
containers are placed in one or more rows in the bottom of the aeration
tanks adjacent and parallel to one of the tank walls. From the diffuser
containers air pipes extend from the aeration tanks to air blowers or
compressors.

When a tank similar to that shown in figure 7 is in operation, the
flow of the sewage through the tank and the upward force of the air
adjacent to one of the tank walls imparts a spiral motion to the mixed
liquor. This motion results in new sewage surfaces coming in con-
tact with the air at the tank surface, permitting the dissolving of
additional oxygen. For aeration tanks to be effective the mixed liquor
should contain an appreciable quantity of dissolved oxygen at all
times. Usually from 2 to 4 parts per million is adequate. The amount
of suspended solids in the mixed liquor resulting from the addition
of activated sludge is generally kept between 1,000 and 3,000 parts per
million. Maintaining higher percentages of activated sludge in the
mixed liquor will result in a greater purification of the sewage but
more air will be required. The amount of air used varies as a rule
from 0.5 to 1.5 cubic feet per gallon of sewage treated.

After the mixed liquor discharges from the aeration tanks, the acti-
vated sludge must be removed promptly. Conventional sedimentation
tanks, either circular, square, or rectangular, with adequate sludge-
removal equipment are usually provided. The sludge must be with-
drawn in a fresh condition, as most of it is returned to the aeration
tanks for a continuation of the treatment process.

The effluent produced by an activated-sludge plant is generally some-
what better than that from a trickling-filter plant with the 5-day bio-
chemical oxygen demand and the suspended solids averaging from 10
to 25 parts per million. The process has been adopted very widely in
this country and abroad for treating the sewage from both large and
small cities. A few of the notable installations are in New York,
Chicago, and Los Angeles.

LAND TREATMENT OF SEWAGE

The application of sewage to the land and the use of the land for
agricultural purposes is one of the oldest methods of sewage treatment,
dating back to the middle of the sixteenth century. The sewage thus
serves to fertilize and irrigate the soil. A sewage farm must be pro-
vided with the necessary pipes and ditches, and the land must be
graded to prevent the accumulation of sewage in stagnant pools. Be-
fore applying sewage to the land, it is desirable to remove a consider-
able portion of the suspended solids, which normally tend to clog the
soil. The disadvantages of the process are that large areas of land
are needed, odors are liable to be produced, and the proper treatment

380 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

of the sewage is likely to be neglected for the raising of crops. The
process is most applicable in arid countries. Although sewage farms
are used to only a limited extent in this country, they still serve to
treat the sewage of several large cities in Europe such as Paris and

Berlin.
CHLORINATION

Chlorine and chlorine compounds have been used since 1854 for the
treatment of sewage. However, it has been only during the past 50
years that chlorine has been employed extensively at sewage-treatment
plants. Except at very small plants chlorine is purchased in liquid
form in steel containers of different sizes, holding from 100 pounds to
30 tons. It is then fed as a gas in amounts that can be regulated manu-
ally or automatically by chlorinators (pl. 3, fig. 1) to any point of
application.

The following are some of the uses of chlorine for treating sewage:

1. Odor control.

2. Control of trickling-filter flies.

. Control of trickling-filter ponding.
. Reduction of biochemical oxygen demand.

. Disinfection of sewage.
. Control of aquatic life.

oO OR &

ODOR CONTROL

Chlorine has been widely used at sewage plants to control odors.
Many of the disagreeable odors are due to hydrogen sulfide. When
chlorine is added to sewage containing this gas the following reaction
occurs:

Ch+HS=2H01-+8
Chlorine can be applied to the sewage at one or more points in the
sewerage system, at the inlet to or at some point in the sewage-treat-
ment works. It is often preferable and cheaper to apply the chlorine
at one or more points in the sewerage system where the sewage is fresh
than to apply it at the sewage works where the sewage may be septic
and may contain hydrogen sulfide.

CONTROL OF TRICKLING-FILTER FLIES

Practically all trickling filters are the habitat of small flies, called
Psychoda alternata, which frequently create a nuisance in the vicinity
of sewage works. Of the many methods adopted to control them the
application of chlorine to the influent of trickling filters has proved
quite effective. A sufficient quantity is used for several hours at
weekly or biweekly intervals to reduce the adult fly population.

CONTROL OF TRICKLING-FILTER PONDING

One of the difficulties in operating trickling filters has been the clog-
ging of the filtering material with organic solids. The clogging is

SEWAGE TREATMENT—KEEFER 381

often so pronounced that it is impossible to get the sewage to flow
through the filter bed. At times it is necessary to remove the filtering
material and wash it. As this process is quite expensive, cheaper ways
of correcting the difficulty have been devised. One of these is to add
a small quantity of chlorine to the sewage being applied to the filter
bed.

REDUCTION OF BIOCHEMICAL OXYGEN DEMAND

Chlorine can be used to reduce the biochemical oxygen demand of
sewage. This reduction is probably caused by the oxidative action of
chlorine. Chlorine reacts with nitrogenous bodies to produce chlo-
rine substitution compounds, some of which are probably useless as
bacterial food and are therefore less putrescible. Every pound of
chlorine added to sewage is capable of reducing the biochemical oxygen
demand about 2 to 2.5 pounds. Using chlorine to reduce the biochemi-
cal oxygen demand is not a routine procedure, because the expense is
considerable and other cheaper methods of sewage treatment are

available.
DISINFECTION OF SEWAGE

Where sewage effluents are discharged into watercourses that are
used for bathing, for the culture of shellfish, or for sources of water
supply, chlorine is often used to disinfect the effluent. The amount
required will depend upon the degree of treatment the sewage has re-
ceived; sewage that has undergone complete treatment will require
less chlorine than that partially treated. Dosages vary from 2 or 3
parts per million up to 25 to 30 parts per million. When sewage
effluents are disinfected with chlorine, it is essential that the chlorine
be thoroughly mixed with the sewage and be maintained in contact
with it about 15 to 30 minutes. If the proper operating procedures are
followed, chlorine will kill more than 99 percent of the bacteria.

CONTROL OF AQUATIC LIFE

Where sewage effluents are discharged into some watercourses, both
the organic and inorganic matter serve as a source of nutriment for
aquatic life such as fungi and algae. These growths may become very
prolific and produce nuisances. Chlorine has been applied in a num-
ber of instances to inhibit these biological growths.

TREATMENT OF SLUDGE

SLUDGE DIGESTION

The sewage solids, which collect in sedimentation tanks, contain 90
percent or more of water and from about 60 to 80 percent of organic
matter on the dry solids basis. Within a few hours after sludge is
drawn from sedimentation tanks, it becomes highly odorous. Many
ways of treating and disposing of it are available. One method fre-
quently adopted is to store it in tanks, called sludge digesters, where

382 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

the material decomposes and eventually loses its objectionable odor.
Furthermore, the digested material can be more readily dewatered
than the raw sludge. The first digesters were open masonry tanks, in
which the sludge was stored for several months before being removed
for further treatment or disposal. The first two large sludge-digester
installations were put in service about 1911 in Baltimore, Md., and
Birmingham, England.

In the 10- or 15-year period following World War I, as a result of
considerable research, many of the factors affecting sludge digestion
were determined. These included the effect of temperature, the pH
value of the sludge, and the percentage of well-digested sludge used
for seeding purposes. As a result of this work many improvements
were incorporated in the design of digesters. These improvements
consisted of providing digesters with rigid or floating covers to collect
the sludge gas and prevent the escape of heat from the sludge, facili-
ties for heating the sludge, and equipment for mixing the tank
contents.

When sludge is maintained at a temperature ranging from 85° to
100° F., digestion can be accomplished in about 30 days. During the
past two or three years, by following certain procedures, satisfactory
digestion in about 10 days has been reported by some investigators.

SLUDGE-GAS COLLECTION AND UTILIZATION

When sewage sludge digests, it produces considerable volumes of
gas. As this gas contains from 60 to 75 percent of methane with a net
heat value of from 540 to 675 B.t.u. per cubic foot, the usual procedure
is to collect and utilize it. The quantity of gas produced, which de-
pends upon the amount of organic matter in the sludge, averages about
1 cubic foot per day per capita served by the sewage plant. The gas
is used for many purposes, the chief of which is to maintain a suitable
temperature in digesters so that the decomposition of the sludge will
continue at a rapid rate. The gas is also used for generating power,
heating buildings, incinerating sewage screenings, and drying and
incinerating sewage sludge. In a few instances the gas is sold to
municipal gasworks for general use.

Several methods of heating digesters have been perfected, one of
which consists of using the sludge gas to fire boilers and produce
steam or hot water. The hot water is pumped through pipe coils sus-
pended in the digester. Another method of heating involves the use
of a gas-fired heater, which contains a series of pipe coils. Sludge
from the digester is pumped through these coils back again into the
digester.

Sludge gas is extensively used as a fuel in internal-combustion
engines for power production. About 17 cubic feet of gas with a heat
content of 600 B.t.u. per cubic foot will produce one horsepower-hour.

SEWAGE TREATMENT—KEEFER 383

Gas engines usually operate electric generators, centrifugal sewage
pumps and blowers. Gas engines can be obtained that use either sludge
gas or oil as fuel. If there should be insufficient gas, there need be
no interruption in operation, since oil can be used. The advantages
of using sludge gas as fuel for gas engines is that considerable power
can be developed and at the same time the water used to cool the engine
can be pumped through pipe coils in sludge digesters for heating pur-
poses. Many sewage plants have been provided with gas engines.
Typical examples are the plants serving Miami, Fla., Toledo, Ohio,
and Peoria, Ill.

SLUDGE DEWATERING

As the sludge drawn from digesters contains from 90 to 95 percent
water, it 1s desirable to reduce its volume by decreasing its water con-
tent. The two most widely adopted methods of accomplishing this is
by sludge-drying beds or vacuum filters.

Sludge-drying beds.—These are level beds of porous material, situ-
ated out-of-doors and consisting usually of sand, superimposed on a
layer of gravel. Underdrains with open joints are provided under the
gravel at regular intervals. Sludge beds are generally divided by
means of wood planks or thin concrete partitions into compartments
to facilitate operating procedures. The wet sludge flows to the beds
through pipes or open channels. ‘The necessary sludge bed area, which
depends upon climatic conditions, amounts to about one square foot
per person served by the sewage works. Under favorable atmospheric
conditions well-digested sludge can be dried in about one or two weeks.
When its moisture content has been reduced to about 70 percent or less,
the sludge can be removed and another application can be made.

At many sewage-treatment plants (pl. 3, fig. 2) the sludge-drying
beds are covered with greenhouses. The advantages of this type of
construction are that a somewhat smaller drying area is needed, the
problem of odors is less acute, and some sludge can be dried in winter.

The use of drying beds for dewatering sludge has several dis-
advantages. In the first place unpleasant odors will result if the
sludge is not well digested. Moreover it is impossible to dry sludge
when the weather is very cold. Extra volume, therefore, must be pro-
vided for the storage of the sludge in tanks during the winter.

Vacuum filters—Vacuum filters (pl. 4, fig. 1) have been used for
a number of years in this country to dewater both raw and digested
sludge. The moisture content of wet sludge, which will vary from
about 90 to 99 percent, can be reduced to approximately 65 to 83 per-
cent by filtration. The amount of water removed will depend upon a
number of factors such as the type and characteristics of the sludge,
the rotating speed of the filter drum, and the kind and amount of
coagulant used.

384 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Several different designs of vacuum filters have been perfected and
are in general use. One widely adopted consists of a wooden drum that
is supported with its axis in a horizontal position in a Jead-lined steel
tank. Attached to the outer surface of the drum are a number of
narrow wooden strips, parallel with and equidistant from each other.
These strips, which divide the periphery of the drum into a number of
shallow compartments, support a coarse-mesh screen, around which a
filter cloth made of wool, canton flannel, or some synthetic material is
wrapped. Vacuum pipes on the inside of the filter drum connect each
of the compartments with an automatic valve at one or both ends of
the filter. This valve connects with piping that supplies a vacuum to
the filter cloth. Sludge enters the filter tank through a sludge supply
pipe; and as the filter drum rotates about its axis, a layer of wet sludge
about one-half inch thick adheres to the filter cloth. The differential
in air pressure between the surface of the sludge cake and the under
side of the cloth forces the water out of the sludge and through the
vacuum pipes away from the filter. By the time sludge cake reaches
the discharge side of the filter, its moisture has been greatly reduced.

One essential step in preparing the sludge for filtration is to coagu-
late it with a suitable chemical such as alum, ferric sulfate, chlorinated
copperas, ferric chloride, or ferric chloride and lime. Of these, ferric
chloride is the most effective. Another step in the preparation of
sludge for filtration, especially if the materia] has been digested, is
to remove a considerable percentage of the bicarbonates, which are
formed as the sludge digests. Since they combine chemically with any
coagulant used, it is desirable to reduce their concentration so that less
coagulant be required. The concentration of bicarbonates is reduced
by mixing the sludge with a large volume of water or sewage effluent
and allowing the sludge to settle out from the liquid. The bicar-
bonates diffuse into the water and are removed.

Sludge filtration is used in many cities in the United States. Three
of the most notable installations are in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Los
Angeles.

SLUDGE DISPOSAL

The satisfactory disposal of sewage sludge is often a vexing problem
that confronts the operators of sewage-treatment plants. In most in-
stances sewage, after it has received partial or complete treatment, is
discharged into a watercourse, which quickly removes it from its
source; it frequently happens, however, that sewage sludge remains
to plague the operator. The following are the more common methods
of sludge disposal:

1. Disposal in water.
2. Disposal on land.
3. Heat drying.
4, Incineration.

SEWAGE TREATMENT—KEEFER 385
DISPOSAL IN WATER

Where sewage-treatment plants are situated near sufficiently large
bodies of water that can dilute and carry away the sludge without
creating unsanitary conditions, this method of disposal has been
adopted with considerable success. The sludge is pumped into spe-
cially designed steamers that transport and dump it at some remote
spot. Sludge has been disposed of in this way for many years at
Elizabeth, N. J., and New York, N. Y., in this country, and in London,
Manchester, and Glasgow in Great Britain.

DISPOSAL ON LAND

The most generally adopted method of sludge disposal is to apply it
to the land, either wet or dry, raw or digested. The methods of land
application include lagooning, trenching, flowing on land, depositing
in dumps, and distributing for fertilizing purposes.

Lagoons consist of natural or artificial depressions in the ground
enclosed by earth dykes. Wet sludge in a semidigested or digested
condition is pumped into the lagoons. The disadvantages associated
with lagoons is that they occupy large areas of ground, they are fre-
quently odorous, and they are usually a temporary expedient.

Another method of disposal is to pump the wet sludge into trenches,
which are then covered with earth. After the sludge has decomposed
and the water has drained away, it is often possible to reuse the same
land.

At a few plants wet digested sludge is pumped through pipes and
channels and allowed to flow over the ground. The sludge serves
to irrigate and fertilize the soil. Any crops that are grown should
be such that they will not be contaminated by the sludge.

At many sewage plants such as those serving Baltimore, Md., and
Washington, D. C., sludge that has been dewatered on sludge-drying
beds or by vacuum filters is deposited in dumps. Sludge dumps are
unsightly and frequently produce odors; therefore, they are not looked
upon with favor by sanitary engineers.

Sludge that has been dewatered on sludge-drying beds or by vacuum
filters is widely used by gardners and farmers as a soil conditioner.
The water content of the material, which may vary from about 50 to
75 percent, is such that it can be readily applied to and incorporated
in the soil. The chief advantages of sludge are that it has excellent
moisture-retaining characteristics and contains a considerable per-
centage of humus. The nitrogen and phosphates in sludge are low.
Primary tank sludge contains about 1 to 2 percent of nitrogen on the
dry basis, and activated and humus-tank sludge contains 4 to 6 per-
cent. The phosphates in sludge vary from approximately 2 to 3 per-
cent. At many sewage plants a small charge is made for air-dried

386 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

sludge or vacuum-filter cake. In other localities where the demand is
not great, the material is given away.

HEAT DRYING SLUDGE

When sludge is heat dried, its moisture content is reduced to 10
percent or less. In this condition the material is more easily handled,
it can be used as a base for fertilizer, and transportation costs are
reduced.

Two methods of heat drying, which have been most generally
adopted in this country, involve the use of rotary heat driers and flash
driers. A rotary heat drier (pl. 4, fig. 2) consists of a steel drum with
its longitudinal axis, about which it slowly rotates, set in a horizontal
position. At the end of the drum where the wet sludge cake is added
a coal- gas- or oil-fired furnace is provided. As the drum rotates, the
wet sludge cake is lifted on the inside of the drum to such an eleva-
tion that the sludge falls through the hot gases back to the bottom
of the drum. By the time the sludge reaches the discharge end of
the drum, its moisture content has been reduced to 10 percent or less.
The outstanding rotary drier installation is in Milwaukee, Wis.
Rotary driers have also been used at Houston, Tex., Grand Rapids,
Mich., and Baltimore, Md.

The flash drying system (text fig. 8) is the second method of heat
drying sludge that has been extensively adopted. Heat, which is
generated in an oil- gas- or coal-fired furnace, is supplied to a cage
mill or flash drier. Wet sludge, to which a known quantity of pre-
viously dried sludge is added, is introduced continuously into the drier
and is intimately mixed with the hot gases by means of a rotating
cage in the drier. The mixture of sludge and hot gases flow vertically
upward through a duct into a cyclone separator, in which the sludge
is separated from the gas stream. Flash driers have been installed in
Chicago, Ill., Los Angeles, Calif., and Houston, Tex.

SLUDGE INCINERATION

One method of sludge disposal that is being more widely adopted
is burning it. The two types of incinerators most generally used are
multiple-hearth furnaces and furnaces used in conjunction with flash
driers. A multiple-hearth furnace (see pl. 5) is cylindrical in shape
with a number of horizontal hearths, spaced equidistantly apart. Pass-
ing vertically up through the center of the furnace is a motor-operated
shaft, attached to which are a series of rabble arms, suspended several
inches above each hearth. Wet sludge is introduced on the top hearth,
and as the rabble arms rotate they push the sludge from one hearth to
the next lower one. Several oil- or gas-fired burners, attached to the
side of the furnace, provide the necessary heat to initiate incineration.
The bottom hearth is furnished with an outlet for the discharge of the

SEWAGE TREATMENT—KEEFER 387

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ash. Furnaces of this type are provided at Detroit, Cleveland, and
Minneapolis-St. Paul.

The second type of incinerator combines flash-drying equipment
with facilities for conveying the dried product to the drying furnace,
where the material is incinerated. This type of incinerator is used
at Buffalo, N. Y., Washington, D. C. and Neenah-Menasha, Wis.

COMBINATIONS OF SEWAGE-TREATMENT PROCESSES

The foregoing sewage-treatment processes can be grouped in a num-
ber of ways. The processes that are selected depend upon several
factors. If the ratio of the volume of diluting water to the volume
of sewage is great, it may be that the removal of only the coarse sus-
pended materials is necessary. Should such be the case, fine screens
may suffice. Fine screens have been in service for many years at the
Canal Street plant and the Dyckman Street plant in New York City.

Where a somewhat higher degree of treatment is required, sedimen-
tation tanks are generally provided. They are preceded by coarse
screens and also by grit chambers if the sewage is from a combined
system of sewers. The use of sedimentation tanks requires facilities
to treat and dispose of the sludge that is produced. Plants of this
type serve Buffalo, N. Y., Detroit, Mich., and Washington, D. C.

388 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

A still higher degree of treatment can be attained by adding chemi-
cals to the sewage for coagulation purposes. If more complete treat-
ment is necessary, trickling filters followed by humus tanks or the
activated-sludge process may be required. If the sewage flow is small
and sufficient land is available, intermittent sand filters may be used.
Chlorine can be used in conjunction with any of the foregoing methods
of treatment to reduce odors or to disinfect the effluent.

COST OF SEWAGE TREATMENT

The cost of sewage-treatment plants depends upon a number of
factors, some of which include the cost of the plant site, the presence
of foundation problems, the types of treatment units adopted, and the
volume and character of the sewage. Plants that provide partial
treatment and contain screening equipment, grit chambers, sedimen-
tation tanks, sludge digesters, and sludge-drying equipment will in
general cost from $10 to $30 per capita served, and plants that contain,
in addition to the foregoing facilities, provision for oxidizing the
sewage either by trickling filters or by the activated-sludge process will
cost from $15 to $50 per capita served. The yearly operating and
maintenance costs per capita will usually vary from approximately
25 cents to $2.00 for plants in the former group and from 50 cents to
$4.00 for plants in the latter group. These costs do not include fixed
charges.

WHAT OF THE FUTURE?

The growth of the urban population in this country is such that the
need to build and enlarge sewage-treatment facilities and sewerage
systems will continue perhaps indefinitely. Coupled with this need
is the increasing demand by the public for clean streams and water-
courses. It is estimated (McCallum, 1955) that $5,330,000,000 will
be required within the next 10 years to keep up with this demand.

If the future advance in sewage-treatment continues as in the past,
a greater use of mechanical equipment seems likely. There are possi-
bilities that the efficiency of the activated-sludge process can be ma-
terially increased, that the time required to digest sewage sludge can
be reduced, that the efficiency of sludge filtration can be improved,
and that better ways of heat drying sludge will be developed. It is
most important that adequate funds and personnel be made available
so that research relating to sewage treatment can be continued on a
university, city, State, and national level. Much of the future ad-
vance in sewage treatment will depend on the emphasis placed on
research.

SUMMARY

Sewage-treatment processes have been perfected to such an extent
that most any degree of treatment can be obtained with a minimum

SEWAGE TREATMENT—KEEFER 389

of objectionable features and at a reasonable cost. Most modern
plants are mechanized so that a much smaller personnel is required,
and what were formerly disagreeable working conditions have been
largely eliminated. An increase in the use of such sewage-treatment
plant byproducts as sludge gas, dried sludge, and plant effluents will
most likely continue. The art of sewage treatment has reached such
a degree of perfection that there should be no excuse for the failure
tc maintain a sewage-treatment plant other than in a first-class con-
dition. The gross pollution of watercourses with untreated sewage
should be regarded with disfavor both by the taxpayer and by city
and State officials, since adequate means are available for maintaining
them in a satisfactory condition.

REFERENCE
McCatium, G. BD.
1955. 6,685 sewage plants and trunk lines will cost $5.33 billion. Wastes
Engineering, vol. 26, p. 504.

Reprints of the various articles in this Report may be obtained, as long
as the supply lasts, on request addressed to the Editorial and Publications
Division, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 25, D. C.

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Pioneer Settlement in Eastern Colombia

By Raymonp E. Crist anp ERNESTO GUHL?

[With 8 plates]

INTRODUCTION

One of the last great frontiers in the world is the vast tropical rain
forest found on both sides of the Equator in Africa and South America.
Extensive desert areas have been made fruitful as technical develop-
ments brought them life-giving water. The cold lands of Canada and
Kurasia have experienced great development during the past half
century as man became better and better equipped to cope with the
cold. Tobe sure, millions of people, engaged in agriculture and house-
hold crafts, do live in tropical lowland areas, such as the islands in the
Caribbean and the Pacific, as well as on the mainland of monsoon
Asia. But hundreds of millions of acres in the wet lowland tropics
of Africa and South America are still covered by a rank growth of
dense forest, and other millions of acres are grasslands or savannas.
These vast tracts have remained an almost 100-percent physical en-
vironment, on which man has seemed barely able to make a dent, in
contrast to the continental expanses of Eurasia and northern North
America, which are about 100-percent cultural landscape. But these

* The senior author is professor of geography, University of Florida at Gaines-
ville. His field and library work for this article was made possible by a grant
of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Observations along the
Pasto-Mocoa route and a reconnaissance trip from Neiva to Florencia were made
in 1949 while he was stationed in Popaydn, Colombia, as cultural geographer of
the Institute of Social Anthropology of the Smithsonian Institution, in charge
of its Colombian program of collaboration with the Instituto Etnolégico of the
Universidad del Cauca. The wholehearted cooperation of the junior author, in
the field, in library research, and in the organization of material is hereby grate-
fully acknowledged.

The junior author, one-time professor of geography in the Escuela Normal
Superior, later technical collaborator in the Instituto Colombiano de Antro-
pologia, and at present director of the Comisién de Planeamiento de la Seguridad
Social Campesina, Ministry of Labor of Colombia, acknowledges his indebted-
ness to those organizations in helping to make possible his contribution to this
article as well as to the geographic literature of his adopted country.

412575—57——26 391

392 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

trackless forests are gradually being penetrated and settled, along
their borders as well as along the great rivers that drain them. In
what might be called the “Wild East” of the Republic of Colombia,
there is a broad transition zone where low-lying, grass-covered plains,
the llanos, and the great rain forests of the upper Amazon and its
tributaries seem to break on the foothills of the towering Andes like
billows on a rock-bound coast. This is a sector of the vast area men-
tioned in “Partners in Progress,” the report to the President by the
International Development Advisory Board (March, 1951) :

In South America, east of the Andes, runs a 2,000-mile-long stretch of fertile
valleys and plateau land which may lend itself to development. If carried through
successfully, it would open up a new major source of food for the entire Continent,
as well as a home for settlers from the most densely populated areas of Western
Europe. (P. 38.)

This sector of Colombia has been of interest to geographers for
many years. Perez wrote almost a century ago:

What was there in the Europe beyond the Rhine in Caesar’s time? <A vast
forest unknown to the Romans, but from which later issued a horde of barbarians
who invaded and destroyed the eternal empire. Today in this same forest, now
covered with rich and populous cities, kings and emperors who govern a popula-
tion of 100,000,000 people, display their power.

It is certain that within one or two centuries Colombia will have a very large
population. Meanwhile the growing population of Pasto, Popayén, and Neiva
will push across the Cordillera Oriental; it will fell the forests, open roads,
found towns, and gradually penetrate the vast plains of the immense Amazon
Basin. (P. 441.)

The scarcity of agricultural tand in the mountain sectors of
Colombia—indeed of Andean South America—has grown ever more
acute, especially during the twentieth century. In those areas
blanketed by volcanic ash, soils were rich and deep, the inhabitants
were industrious, frugal, and prolific, and the ownership of land was
the summum bonum. Land was rarely bought or sold; it was divided
equally among the numerous heirs each generation, with the result that
plots became so small as to be uneconomical to work and not productive
enough to support the owner and his family. Thus land hunger in
the mountainous sectors became acute.

In other parts of Colombia, both in hot country and in cold country,
much land formerly intensively cultivated has been incorporated into
large estates devoted to cattle grazing? At the same time the intensive
agriculturalists have had to move ever higher into the mountains onto

* Perez, Felipe, Jeografia fisica i politica de los Estados Unidos de Colombia,
Bogota, 1862.

* Crist, R. E., The Cauca Valley, Colombia, land tenure and land use, 118 pp.,
Baltimore, 1952 ; The personality of Popayén, Rural Sociology, vol. 15, pp. 184-135,
June 1950; Fixed physical boundaries and dynamie cultural frontiers: A con-
trast, Amer. Journ. Econ. and Sociol., vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 221-230, April 1958.

EASTERN COLOMBIA—CRIST AND GUHL 393

the steeper, less fertile sectors, until even the poor areas were taken
up. Then these people, face to face with hunger, were forced to
migrate or perish. The great estates absorbed very few of these
docile, submissive workers, and even those few at ridiculously low
wages. Many of these uprooted workers sought employment in the
mines or on the highways under construction in various parts of the
country; still others were willing to venture into the virgin country
to the east and south of the great wall of the Cordillera; it is with
these latter that this paper will in large part be concerned.

Over a period of many years field investigations have been carried
out in the transition zone between the Andes and the lowlands to
the south and east, in Venezuela, in Colombia, and in Bolivia. Some
of the results of these studies have been published in various journals.*
It is proposed in this paper to make a preliminary survey of actual
settlement in the Republic of Colombia of the eastern slopes of the
Cordillera Oriental and the adjacent plains, or llanos.

Although there are many passes across the Cordillera Oriental,
the observations on which this paper is based were made largely
along those highways that are the most significant, actually or po-
tentially, in giving access to the sectors of lowland eastern Colombia
tributary to the Orinoco and to the Amazon. Field studies were also
made along the mountain front itself, as well as on the great plains,
or llanos. The sectors served largely by the highways listed below
will be discussed :

Bogota-Villavicencio.
Neiva—Florencia.
Sogamoso—Agua Azul.
Pamploma—Rio Frio.
Pasto—Mocoa.

THE BOGOTA-VILLAVICENCIO HIGHWAY

CLIMATE

Most readers are more vividly aware of climatic conditions if they
know some details about day-to-day temperatures, rainfall, humidity,
and winds than if they see “fossilized” weather on a climatic map.
Hence some introductory remarks are in order on the elements of
weather and climate of Villavicencio, a typical “gateway-to-the-llanos”
town.

“Crist, R. E., Along the Llanos-Andes border in Zamora, Venezuela, Geogr.
Rev., July 1932, pp. 411-422; A cultural traverse across the eastern and central
cordilleras of Colombia, Bull. Pan American Union, March 1942, pp. 132-144;
Bolivia—iand of contrasts, Amer. Journ. Econ. and Sociol., vol. 5, No. 3, pp.
297-325, 1945; Along the Llanos-Andes border in Venezuela—then and now,
Geogr. Rev., April 1956, pp. 187-208.

394 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

The rainfall at Villavicencio, 500 meters above sea level, is high,
with an average for the 6-year period (1941 through 1946) of 4,670
millimeters (184 inches). It is fairly well distributed throughout
the year, with more than 400 millimeters a month from April through
November. The evaporation rate is high and the runoff rapid, and
one does not feel any marked oppressive humidity. ‘Temperatures
at night are about 70° F. and the maximum day temperatures fluctu-
ate between 86° and 93° F.5 Thus cool evenings and nights follow
hot days in pleasant succession, and the annoyances that are thought
of by so many people as being synonymous with a tropical climate
are minimal.

Precipitation at Buena Vista, 1,200 meters above sea level but only
6 kilometers from Villavicencio, is 6,400 millimeters, or just twice
that received at Puerto Lopez, 75 kilometers east of Villavicencio,
which is the head of navigation on the Meta River.

From the Venezuelan frontier southward and westward to the
Macarena Massif (some 50 miles southwest of Villavicencio), stretches
of savanna alternate with densely forested areas. From the Macarena
mountains to the border with Ecuador, the entire area is forested.
This steep-sided block-fault mountain seems to lie in a zone with a
climate transitional between that of the Orinoco area, where the wet
and dry seasons are marked, and the Amazon region in which abun-
dant precipitation falls throughout the year; ° further, although itself
uninhabited and located in a sector where there are at present no
permanent settlements, impressive petroglyphs are to be seen that
have been carved in hard quartzite.’

SOILS

The extremely sandy, permeable soils of many of the foothills and
of the alluvial fans laid down by intermittent streams have been used
largely as open range for what too often is rangy scrub cattle. Pros-
pects for crop production on such soils are poor. However, low
yields of dry rice could probably be obtained. In general it would
probably be best left as rangeland on which improved pasture could
be introduced. It might be mentioned, however, that many of our
concepts of geography, acquired in middle latitudes, may be subject
to revision. Marked and rewarding changes might perhaps be inau-
gurated in the cropping practices of these soils if the annual savanna
fires are prevented, if the hard crust is broken up by deep plowing,

5 Bates, Marston, Climate and vegetation in the Villavicencio region of eastern
Colombia, Geogr. Rev., October 1948, p. 570.

6 Philipson, W. R.; Doneaster, C. C.; and Idrobo, J. J., An expedition to the
Sierra de la Macarena, Colombia, Geogr. Journ., vol 117, pt. 2, p. 191, June 1951.

*Gansser, August, Altindianische Felszeichnungen aus den kolumbianischen
Llanos, pp. 85-98.

EASTERN COLOMBIA—CRIST AND GUHL ~: 395

and if animal fertilizer, phosphates, nitrates, lime, and trace elemerits
are used wherever necessary.

Usually just beyond the front ranges or foothills there is a zone
of predominantly light-textured alluvial soils, with occasional belts
or strips of heavy-textured soils, and the vegetation grades from low
rain forest to bunch grass interspersed with scattered brush and small
trees. These soils are generally of dark color to a depth of a foot or
more, and the water table seldom falls to more than 3 feet below the
surface even in the dry season; they are cleared and prepared for cul-
tivation with relative ease. With good crop adaptation and manage-
ment these moderately fertile soils would be very productive. At
present, yuca, corn, and plantains are generally very successful on the
better types of this soil. Much of the rice cultivation around Villavi-
cencio is on the deep soils of this type, and any substantial expansion
of rice production will probably be brought about through mechani-
zation and the introduction of chemical fertilizer on this same type.
Peanuts would probably do very well on the better drained soils of
this type. Those phases of this soil type that are light in texture and
poorly drained have been largely used for pasture on a rather empirical
basis. If attention were paid to improving both pastures and live-
stock, production per unit area would surely be greatly increased.
Sugarcane is grown, mainly for local use. Yields are fair and replant-
ing is usually done after three or four years of ratooning. The use of
a soil-building crop, adjusted to this climate, in a crop rotation would
certainly increase productivity of many of the crops now being grown
on these soils. Between Villavicencio and Puerto Lopez the extensive
treeless sectors of claypan soils, underlain by an impermeable layer,
would seem to be ideal for the large-scale production of paddy rice if
abundant chemical fertilizer were used.

The deep, well-drained, medium-textured, fertile, alluvial soils in
heavy rain forest are well adapted to the production of plantains,
corn, yuca, vegetables, citrus fruits, and improved pasture for cattle.
These soils of sandy loam have a pH content of 6.0 to 7.0 to a depth
of 3 feet or so. At present, one of the limiting factors in developing
this kind of land for large-scale commercial agriculture would be the
expense involved in clearing. However, the labor and time of the
pioneer with a machete are his own, so he does not count the cost.
With reasonably good soil management this kind of land is extremely
favorable for cultivated crops for a period of years; even without the
use of fertilizers it will not deteriorate rapidly.

The soft shales and limestones in the vicinity of Céqueza, on the
Bogoté-Villavicencio highway, make an excellent soil, on which live
in dispersed settlements a dense population. This area was originally
peopled by settlers from mountain slopes higher up and still receives
recruits from there in spite of the fact that this sector in turn, owing

396 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

to population pressure, supplies recruits for the settling of the pied-
mont forest and of the llanos at lower elevations. In somewhat the
same manner Yankees migrated from New England at the same time
that French Canadians migrated to New England, for living condi-
tions that seemed grim to Yankees seemed rosy to French Canadians.
Once the motor highway was constructed across the mountains, from
Bogota to Villavicencio, that “gateway-to-the-llanos” town began to
flourish. The piedmont forest was soon cut away and land-hungry
settlers entered the great plains themselves.

For centuries the vast grassy plains, or lanos, of Colombia, like
those of Venezuela, have been ideal for the extensive grazing of cattle.
However, with the construction of the Villavicencio-Bogoté motor
road, intensification of agriculture is possible over large areas, rice is
being grown as a cash crop, and land values are increasing. Rice pro-
duction for the local market began about 40 years ago, during World
War I, when there was an influx of immigrants, mainly from Caqueza.
and Quetame, where population pressure had built up. During the
twenties, there was vigorous trade between Villavicencio, Caqueza, and
Bogota, in spite of the appalling state of the mule trail. The highway
between these towns—the result rather than the cause of settlement—
was completed between the years 1932 and 1936 and was later ex-
tended to Puerto Lopez on the Meta River. With its completion there
was a second wave of immigration, and rice became an increasingly
important crop when it could be sent by truck to the Bogoté market
at a handsome profit. The immigrants spread over the area of fine-
textured alluvial soils between the Guatiquia and Guayuriba Rivers.
Here they could grow dry rice (secano), mostly on plots of from 5 to
10 acres in size. A few farmers cultivate from 100 to 250 acres. The
crop is harvested and sacked by hand, and then transported by pack
mule to one of the rice mills in Villavicencio (pl. 1, fig.1). Farmers’
lots vary in size from 1 or 2 muleloads to as much as 150. In the mill
the crop is dried, threshed, hulled, and sacked. Then it is piled neatly
on a platform where it is tested by buyers, loaded on trucks, and
shipped to Bogota,

A third wave of immigrants has been arriving in the Villavicencio
area since the political disturbances between 1950 and 1953. Most of
these recent comers are from Tolima and Caldas. It is indeed fortu-
nate that this third wave of immigrants, and the second wave to some
extent, is able to enjoy the advantages of certain modern public health
measures. A vigorous health campaign has all but wiped out malaria,
once the scourge of this fertile area. To appreciate the significance
of this change one has but to read the accounts of travelers a generation
or two ago: ®

* Rice, Hamilton, Further explorations in the northwest Amazon Basin, Geogr.
Journ., vol. 44, No. 2, August 1914.

EASTERN COLOMBIA—CRIST AND GUHL 397

Villavicencio is no place for persons of nervous temperament, nor are the people
whom one begins to meet a day before the town is reached [over the trail from
Bogota] pleasant to look at, with their lemon-tinted, gaunt, emaciated faces and
hands of horribly lethal thinness. (P. 140.)

Traveling in this sector is even today not without its hazards. Even
the main road to the southwest, between Villavicencio and San Martin,
is graveled only part way. The forest has been cut away and corn,
yuca, plantains, and rice are grown for the Bogota market. The
bridge for heavy traffic across the Humadea River has been under con-
struction for years. Motor cars or empty trucks can cross the narrow,
shaky suspension bridge, but loaded trucks must be unloaded and their
cargoes carried across. Each handling, of course, increases the price
the consumer must pay for his foodstuff (pl. 2, fig. 1). While waiting
for the station wagon to cross the bridge we visited with a family,
originally from Tolima, who had settled in good faith on what they
understood was state-owned land (terrenos baldios), on which they
had built a clapboard-roofed house and cleared plots for their cash
crops (pl. 1, fig. 2).

They are now engaged in a dispute with a person from San Martin
who claims that the land legally belongs to him, and who has a paper
(escritura) to substantiate his claims. Of course, he had never done
anything himself that would give the land value; he merely shows up
to take advantage of the fruits of the labors of others. The woman of
the house is the mother of 10 children, three of whom are grown and
work their own plots of land in this sector. All her children are liv-
ing. The public health factor is extremely important. Whereas a
generation or so ago half or more of the children would die in infancy,
now a much higher percentage lives to maturity. And the child bear-
ing days of this particular woman are probably not over—as the local
idiom has it, she still has “la casa ardiendo”—roughly equivalent to
“still going strong.”

Many of the mountaineers who came into this area to work as
laborers when the highway was under construction cleared land and
settled on it after the work was completed. Many of them are now
planting coffee and cacao, which will make them a tidy income later.
They grow rice, corn, and yuca as subsistence crops; any surplus finds
a ready market.

San Martin was founded by the Jesuits as a mission in the seven-
teenth century, yet 40 years ago it consisted only of “rambling houses
and a half-completed church built around an enormous plaza.” ® But
there is good reason why the village did not prosper. In 1912 Hamil-
ton Rice, a medical doctor, found the tertian form of the malarial
parasite, sometimes in conjunction with the subtertian, in all the 250

* Rice, loc. cit., p. 142.

398 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

cases of adults and children whose blood he examined. His picture of
the tiny struggling village is indeed pessimistic :

San Martin, with its innumerable puddles, ditches, and foul house yards is a
prolific breeding ground [of the malarial mosquito], and, owing also to the
existence there of an especially virulent form of malaria which the rubber-col-
lectors and muleteers bring in from the adjoining swamp district, the town has
a notoriously and deservedly bad reputation. The town carpenter, whose most
lucrative business is the making of coffins, and who thus serves as the only avail-
able bureau of vital statistics, assured me he made from two to three a week, but
added, with a grim smile, that many have no pesos with which to pay and are
buried without boxes. (Loc. cit., p. 142.)

San Martin has experienced rapid growth during the past genera-
tion. It would not be recognized by those who saw it 30 years ago.
The best-selling item in the large drugstore is face cream, closely
followed in importance by nail polish and lipstick! Safety-razor
blades are sold at the rate of slightly over 3,000 a month. Many
migrants pass through here on their way south and west, to areas
as yet unsettled, particularly around Boca de Monte, 8 miles south
of San Martin (pl. 2, fig. 2). This village, only a few years ago a
cluster of palm thatch huts literally at the edge of the forest, as the
name implies, is now a thriving center, owing largely to the arrival of
some 300 people from Armenia (Caldas). ‘These settlers told of the
grim struggle for existence in their former locale, where land is scarce
and hopelessly subdivided into plots so small as to be uneconomical,
and where wages are pitifully low; they have brought with them their
seasoned habits of frugality and hard work, and have carved farm-
steads out of the public lands on which corn, yuca, and plaintains are
grown for home use, and rice for the market (pl. 3, fig. 1). As the
edge of the forest recedes the name Boca de Monte will have a signifi-
cance more historical than actual (pl. 6, fig. 1).

The Ariari River southwest of Villavicencio is the boundary line
between conservatives and liberals, who have a fierce and deadly hatred
of each other. To quote a normally mild-mannered bus companion:
“Tt is necessary to kill a lot of people, but those who should be killed
are the ones who are ordering people killed.” The conservatives on
the left bank have the road, but the liberals on the other side have the
good land. These enemies are trying to cooperate enough to put up
across the river a cable, which can be used by both factions. Perhaps
if the federal government built a road and a bridge the political
hatred, reminiscent of the religious intolerance and intervillage feuds
of the Near East, would die down somewhat. The serious workers do
want peace and work, rather than fighting and revolutionary activity.
Everyone was happy that the coup d’état (June 1953) of President
Rojas Pinilla put an end temporarily to fratricidal strife and opened
the way for productive effort again. Some there were who had ac-

EASTERN COLOMBIA—CRIST AND GUHL 399

quired the habit of stealing rather than working, during the years of
civil strife, but fortunately they were rapidly returning to the good
old-fashioned custom of hard work.

THE NEIVA-FLORENCIA HIGHWAY

During the war with Peru in 1932, when the most deadly enemy
proved to be the diseases so often associated with the Tropics, Co-
lombian Amazonia assumed great importance for the nation. The
national government hastily planned roads into a vast tropical area
that had been so long neglected as to create serious differences of
opinion as to just where the international boundary line should he
drawn. The road as originally planned was to run from Neiva to La
Tagua on the Caqueta River, via Florencia and Tres Esquinas, the
latter town at the junction of the Caqueta and Orteguaza Rivers.

FLORENCIA

In the last decade of the past century, gatherers of wild rubber and
quinine made clearings along the Orteguaza and Hacha Rivers on
which they planted yuca, corn, and plantains. Shortly after this a
clearing was made for the planting of cane, and a still was set up for
distilling raw rum. The first settlement was called La Perdiz, but the
name was soon changed to Florencia. Then depression struck the
wild-rubber and quinine industry and very shortly all that remained
of Florencia was the name.

The town of Florencia was officially founded in 1908 when 37 of the
principal settlers agreed to construct their houses in accordance with
a map drawn up by the Capuchin priest, Father Fidel de Montclar.

The highway reached Florencia from Altamira in 1932, at the time
of the war with Peru. The construction of the road meant that this
potentially rich area became economically tributary to a hinterland
from which it attracted immigrants and to which it could ship its
products. In this instance the highway was the cause rather than the
result of settlement.

The people who actually settle on the land are the advance columns
who make it possible for the bridgeheads along the piedmont to sur-
vive. The highways and rivers are the arteries along which flow
people, the lifeblood of any area. A major factor that animates the
heart that pumps this blood is demographic pressure. The more one
sees of active, voluntary colonization the less faith one can have in
settlement projects sponsored by the government. For one thing
government agents, representatives, or inspectors, are little interested
in going to zones in which actual pioneering is taking place. They
want to “inspect” areas that are already equipped with airstrips, hotels,
or guest houses, and other modern conveniences. In several places it

400 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

was pointed out to me that “no one from the government ever comes
out here. A man from Bogota might spend the day in Florencia be-
tween planes, but we never see him!” The bus drivers were amazed
that I should want to go to Montajita, the end of the line.

In the environs of Florencia, with a radius of 8 to 10 miles, the forest
has been cleared away and permanent pastures have been established.
This area has been settled long enough so that trees and stumps have
all completely decayed. However, from Venezia southeastward to
Montafita the country has been cleared much more recently; dead
trees are still standing in the fields and not all of the felled trees have
rotted away. The foothills of the mountains look as if they had had
a very irregular “soup bowl” haircut.

SOILS

The soils between Florencia and Montafita, in the areas with almost
no gradient as well as on the slopes of the low hills, are fine-textured
but fairly well drained. Those southwest of town, on the road to
Belén, are poorly drained. Ponds of water, some small, others acres
in extent, stand in the pastures for days after each rain. They dry up
only when there is a week or so without rain.

MONTANITA

Montaiita itself, 20 miles southeast of Florencia, is in an area of
rapid colonization. It was just a group of houses (caserio) till 1940
when a central square, or plaza, was laid out where meat and other
products were brought in for sale. The case of Mr. Mufioz is typical
(pl. 5, fig.2). He had settled on a piece of land half a mile from Mon-
taflita when he came to this sector in 1922. The whole area was in
forest at that time, and tied to the outside by a very poor mule trail.
He worked on the telegraph line for four years while clearing land for
pastures and food crops. By now he has some 300 hectares cleared—
75 where he lives and 225 on the trail to the village of Puerto Rico.
The farmer is self-sufficient as far as basic foodstuffs are concerned.
He has 1144 hectares of plantains, one-half hectare of yuca, and one-
quarter of sugarcane. The cane continues to produce enough sweet
juice each year for household use, although it has not been replanted
in 30 years. The soil is good, but not so good as it isin Huila. It is
especially poor in calcium, and deficient in nitrates and phosphates.
Fertilizers would be a great boon, but chemical fertilizers are too ex-
pensive, and animal fertilizer is not collected. The existence of vast
areas of unoccupied land means that ranchers are not interested in
intensification in the use of land already cleared to the extent of stall
feeding of soilage crops in order to make use of the stable manure for
restoring the fertility of fields under cultivation. Citrus fruits would
do well, but no one plants or tends them systematically. Vegetables

EASTERN COLOMBIA-——CRIST AND GUHL 401

are little planted or used. There is plenty of meat available, a little
milk, but practically no cheese.

The son-in-law of the rancher, Mr. Diaz, was worried about the gen-
erally inadequate diet and its relationship to death-dealing diseases,
such as malaria, or paludismo (almost any fever goes under this
name), and to tropical anemia, caused in large part by hookworm in-
festation. Mr. Diaz himself had had yellow fever and was very near
death’s door, but had recovered—thanks, he felt, to the fact that he
had always had a fairly adequate diet. He hoped that some kind of
extension service, which would bring farmers advice on agriculture
and on diet and health, would be inaugurated by the federal govern-
ment. But he was not too hopeful. He did mention a case of the
unexpected consequences that can come from man’s interference with
the natural environment. In the days of banana-patch plumbing, the
well-drained area of Montafiita and vicinity was relatively free of
mosquitoes. However, the construction of privies has meant the crea-
tion of stagnant pools of water in which mosquitoes find an ideal
built-in breeding place. The result is a plague of those pests and a
high incidence of malaria. In spite of this hazard, however, everyone
seemed happy to be in this pleasant spot. “The climate in Huila may
be more salubrious, but here it is easier to make a living,” commented
the head of the house. And those born and brought up in this part
of Colombia are in love with everything about it and have no desire
to go anywhere else. The oldest son had returned to Huila for his
bride, but he had no desire to stay there. Ali the women seem extraor-
dinarily fertile. The man of the house told me of the wonderful
remedies to be found in the forest, particularly for such indispositions
as a “touch of fever,” or constipation, or a bilious attack (quina [wild
quinine], mochilita, and higuerén, in that order).

The influence of a highway is felt over a wide zone. For example,
the small village of Puerto Rico, northeast of Montafiita, and San
Vicente del Caguan, a good day’s horseback ride beyond, both formerly
shipped their products by mule train across the mountains to Algeciras
and Neiva. However, with the extension of the road from Florencia
to Montafita, the commercial activity of Puerto Rico is oriented in
the direction of the end of the truck route at Montafita. The produce
from San Vicente, however, still moves over the mountains by mule-
back to Algeciras.

LARGE ESTATES AND SMALL CLEARINGS

Southeast of Florencia, at the confluence of the Orteguaza and
Hacha Rivers, the extremely wealthy Lara family has bought an estate
of some 15,000 hectares of land, on which several thousand head of
steers graze. They got government land cheap, tied to a well-popu-
lated hinterland by a fairly good road. The investment is bound to

402 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

increase in value. They have a small port on the estate, called Puerto
Lara, to which settlers from downriver bring their produce in great
dugout canoes, or bongos. Bags of yuca, corn, rice, and plantains,
along with fattened hogs, chickens, exotic birds, sewing machines, suit-
cases, and household effects, are here transferred from the dugouts to
trucks for shipment to Florencia, Neiva, or even Bogota (pl. 5, fig. 1).
Some canoes were loaded entirely with huge planks of mahogany and
tropical cedar. The dugouts are no longer paddled by hand. Every
one of them has a little outboard motor attached to it, and this means
a relatively cheap and rapid means of transport for both goods and
passengers. The head of canoe navigation on these rivers running
from the eastern Andes into the llanos is now, thanks to the internal
combustion motor, easily reached by people living 50 miles or more out
on the plains. When canoes had to be paddled by hand the settler had
to live within 10 or 15 miles of the head of navigation. One settler
on the Rio Pescado, 25 airline miles away, brought two immense hogs,
fattened on corn and yuca, to be loaded on the truck and marketed in
Florencia (pl. 4, fig. 1). It would have been impossible to transport
them by dugout canoe when the trip was measured in days instead of
hours. About 80 percent of the settlers who are establishing their
beachhead farms on the rich vega, or natural levee land, along the
rivers are from Huila. This man with the fat hogs for sale originally
came from Armenia, Caldas, 17 years ago. He has some good pastures
on which he would like to fatten cattle, but he has been unable to find
any lean steers for sale.

FOOD CROPS AND VILLAGE TRADING TECHNIQUES

The frontiersman in the Andean foothills plants his patch of yuca,
corn, or plantains, depending on the local climatic and edaphic con-
ditions, and on the starch to which he has always been accustomed.
However, the favorite starch food for the dweller of the llanos is the
topocho (Musa paradisiaca L.), a small eating and cooking banana
that is resistant to high winds, drought, and lack of care. Rice and
corn are frequently planted between the rows. When harvested, the
rice is kept in sacks in the loft while the ears of corn are tied in pairs
by the husk and hung near the roof over the open kitchen fire. This
protects it from weevils. Once a topocho patch is started it continues
to bear for years; it is bread, the very staff of life, for the Ilanero.
When grated and dried in the sun it is used in making fecula for feed-
ing small children; green or ripe it is used at every meal—boiled,
baked, roasted, or fried. The topocho is also used as chicken and hog
feed, and is fed to work animals and milk cows. The leaves are used
as Wrapping paper in an area where that commodity does not exist.

In the tiny stores on the streets nearest the public market an infini-
tesimal amount of goods is sold each day—possibly not more than 5

EASTERN COLOMBIA—CRIST AND GUHL 403

pesos’ worth. However, it is impossible to get at the real economic
life of most storekeepers in terms of statistics. Books are simply not
kept. Further, urban and rural functions are so tightly interwoven
that it is next to impossible to unravel the individual strands. For
instance, Maria Vermeo has a plot of 10 hectares (“more or less”) of
land 2 miles west of Florencia. She raises corn, plantains, yuca, rice,
and sugarcane, and grinds her cane and makes crude sugar in a primi-
tive trapiche, or mill. She also has 10 milk cows. Two of her sons
have a tiny store on the plaza where they buy, sell, and trade chickens,
hogs, eggs, plantains, or anything that comes along. They take one
meal a day at the Tolima Hotel, owned by a cousin, to which their
mother purveys firewood, milk, crude brown lump sugar, and cooking
bananas. Hogs on Dofia Marfa’s farm are fattened on the slops from
the hotel. But statistics of any kind are lacking wherewith to analyze
the economic lives of these people, most of whose activities cannot be
tabulated by IBM machines. Some 80 to 90 percent of rural Latin
Americans live what are to them very satisfactory lives, completely
beyond the realm of statistics. Although from the point of view of
classical economic theory they do not exist at all—a fact that adds zest
to the study of man’s incumbency on the earth in that whole vast cul-
tural area—Latin Americans are making increasingly efficient use of
their human and natural resources.

FOREST SETTLEMENTS

On the weekly flight from Florencia to the frontier military post
of Puerto Leguizamo, on the Putumayo River, the only intervening
stop is at Tres Esquinas, where the Rio Orteguaza joins the Caqueta.
Colonists have penetrated the heavy forest on a wide front south and
east of Florencia as far as the point where the Rio Pescado empties into
the Orteguaza. From there on to the Putumayo one flies over con-
tinuous treescape with a totally unlived-in aspect. Tres Esquinas,
Puerto Leguizamo, and La Tagua on the Caqueta, are typical of settle-
ments made for strategic purposes along rivers. The river bank is
cleared for a half mile or so on either side of the settlement, but only
a few hundred yards behind the settlement the dense forest swallows
up a trail or a road and holds sway in all majesty. Such settlements
have no hinterland, and hence contrast sharply with the settlements
at the foot of the mountains, such as Florencia, Mocoa, or Villavicencio
that do have a hinterland, and are tied to it by a highway. For even
a poor road is better than no road at all. Landslides can and do block
passenger and truck traffic for days at atime. However, the caravans
of cars and trucks thus blocked do eventually get through, even in the
rainy season, and even if truck drivers have to help run bulldozers and
bus passengers, in relays, have to help push the bus or shovel earth

(pl. 3, fig. 2).

404 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

THE SOGAMOSO-AGUA AZUL HIGHWAY

It should always be kept in mind that a highway is built and is
used for two-way traffic. If, for example, a road is built from a densely
populated sector, X, to a frontier zone, Y, in which a sparse population
is precariously established, the road can be a boon to the people of
Y, for they can now send produce to, and import goods from, X.
However, if an epidemic should break out, or if the political situation
should become menacing, or if other physical or man-made catastro-
phes should arise, then the role of the road is reversed, as it were.
That is, people will use it to flee from Y in order to achieve the relative
safety of X, and Y will be drained of its inhabitants. A case in point
is the area south and east of Sogamoso, a prosperous urban center set in
a valley worked by thousands of industrious small-plot agriculturalists.
The highway connecting this mountain center to the Manos crossed
the high, cold paramo country around Lago de Tota, where the inhabi-
tants earn the barest of livings by grazing sheep on the bleak mountain
sides or by growing tiny patches of potatoes. Only very gradually
had this hard-working population begun to seep over the mountains
to the llanos, along the precipitous trail used for walking rangy steers
from the great plains to market. The road was a boon to the area;
settlers came in in greater numbers, army posts were established in
Pajarito and in Agua Azua, and what had formerly been almost ex-
clusively a cattle trail became a busy highway with thriving two-way
traffic. Then came the civil disturbances—the years of la violencia,
as the internecine strife is referred to locally. Rival factions engaged
in indiscriminate killing. Many people on both sides lost their lives,
many more took to the wilder, more rugged terrain and waited for
the storm to blow over, but an even greater number very early in the
struggle reached the comparative security of the large cities by simply
using the highway. Thus the area was effectively drained of a great
number of its hard-working, peace-loving inhabitants. Only in 1953
and especially during 1954 were they beginning to come back.

To be sure, many of the settlers left the mountains for the eastern
frontier zone for social and political rather than purely economic
reasons. They sought a new world in which to enjoy freedom from
societal restraints rather than a geographic frontier in which to work
out their economic freedom. But their very cultural heritage militated
against their being able to take full advantage of the resources offered
by virgin, unsettled territory. A reflection of this situation was the
revolutionary movement in the eastern Ianos during the years 1950-53,
one of the most significant sociological phenomena in the Western
Hemisphere during recent times.

EASTERN COLOMBIA—CRIST AND GUHL 405

A COLOMBIAN PIONEER

All over the world there seems to be a rural exodus, a kind of tidal
wave of human beings leaving the land for urban agglomerations,
large or small, that grow by accretion. However, a reversal of this
process seems to be taking place in various parts of Colombia, particu-
larly in the transition belt between the vast plains of alluvial depo-
sition and the massive Andean wall. To be sure, many of the settlers
entering this zone have been pushed off the land, either from large
estates or from plots too small to support a family. However, a large
part of this wave of migrants is made up of former urban dwellers,
men who have made their living as artisans or as industrial workers.
It can become so difficult to make a living in urban agglomerations
that they cease to grow by accretion—indeed they may, and do, supply
the recruits for pioneer fringe settlements. The pioneer settlers are
to a great extent mountaineers, rural or urban, who hail from those
regions of cold, rugged terrain that are feeling the effects of the con-
tinued and increasing pressure of population upon the land resource.
Competition for jobs is extremely keen and the struggle for mere
survival is grim.

In order to pinpoint this colonization and to hoist it out of the realm
of mere statistics, detailed notes were taken on one family that might
be considered typical.° Tiberio Valderama Gallo is an Antioquefio
who, with his wife and family, is working out his salvation as a pioneer
in the foothill area south of Sogamoso. As a young man, still a
bachelor, he left his native province for the Chocé, where he worked
as a mechanic, or at any work he could find, in connection with a
mining enterprise. He saved little money but saw some of the country.
In 1935, at age 25, he married Maria Sanchez, age 18, who had had
some experience as a nurse. Then for eight years he worked as a
carpenter in the province of Antioquia and in the cities of Zipaquira
and Sogamoso. His memories of the back-breaking, soul-depressing
labor were still vivid. He kept longing to get out of this treadmill
into something where he would be independent. The opportunity
seemed to present itself when a “voluntary” contribution was asked
from the workmen on the occasion of the marriage of the daughter
of the owner of the small factory in which he was working. He spoke
of the poverty of the workmen, of the relative affluence and economic
security of the “patron,” and he rebelled at the thought of having to
pinch a contribution out of the bellies of his family, which by then
(1942) consisted of five children, in order that the sleek, fat daughter

10 Detailed studies by social anthropologists are yet to be made of social stratifi-
cation and value systems in the pioneer zone and in the sectors from which the
pioneers are coming. It is to be hoped that this virgin field will soon find
workers.

406 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

of his “patron” might have a sumptuous wedding. He left Sogamoso
with his family for the tiny hamlet of Pajarito, which is lost in the
midst of the heavily forested, steep mountain slopes. He left his
family in a one-room hut and went on without a cent to a plot of
ground he was to clear, near Cupiagua. He had nothing, but nothing,
he insisted, and this meant just that. For the first two weeks he lived
on cooking bananas, boiled or baked, mixed with salt—these and
nothing else. He planted small patches of corn, of bananas, and of
yuca. Meanwhile, his wife and children were living on a diet barely
able to hold body and soul together. When a temporary shelter was
built on the clearing, she sold her stockings and ironing board to get
enough to hire a pack mule on which to load her few belongings. Then
she set out on foot for the clearing. The night she arrived they ex-
perienced the worst storm of her life and spent the whole night in fear
and trembling. The roof held and it was clear on the morrow, and
both she and her husband said that, in spite of storms, they were so
glad to be here at the edge of the forest where one was independent.
The dominant motive behind the move was the unquenchable desire
for independence. He was determined to go forward, to migrate, with-
out looking back. He knew that he had burned his bridges behind
him and that it was on the frontier where he must make his living.
To be sure, he might send his family away to be educated, but he would
carve out of this wilderness the land that would support him and his
family. He was here para siempre (forever) he said, but he mused
awhile before adding, unless he found another area of colonization in
a sector with a somewhat milder climate. He has given some thought
to settlement possibilities in that sector of the mountain front between
San Martin and Florencia, one of the most attractive areas yet to be
settled in the whole country.

His wife Maria is just as determined to be independent as is her
husband. Fortunately she enjoys good health and can work 14 to 16
hours a day. She now has excellent help in her two oldest daughters,
who are up early and do a lot of the cooking, but while they were still
small their mother did all the cooking, sewing, mending, bathing of
children, and so on. Further, she did not hesitate when her husband
was away from home or busy at other tasks to do the work herself in
the small plots where yuca, plantains, and corn are grown, and to carry
the produce home on her back.

By February 1945 everyone was sick with intestinal upsets and
malaria, but Tiberio had to go out, alternately shivering with chills
and burning with fever, into the dark forest and the rocky grassy hills
to hunt for game. It was the only protective food available. The
whole family is aware of the importance to health of citrus fruits, and
parents and children alike consumed quantities of lemons from several

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—CRIST AND GUHL PEA WE at

" De. Sw & 5
Seen
at

1. One of the rice hullers in Villavicencio. ‘The growing of rice is now commercially possible,
as a result of the highway connecting it to Bogota.

2. A former road worker, originally from Huila, who has settled near the Humadea River.
He married a local girl. Later his sister and her husband, from Huila, joined the family
group.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—CRIST AND GUHL PEA Ene,

1. ‘Transshipping cargo by hand across the Humadea River on the frail suspension bridge.

2. The sea of natural grass just north of Boca del Monte, a typical view of the llanos, or
grassy plains.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—CRIST AND GUHL PLATE 3

2. A bus held up by a landslide on the Garz6n—Florencia road. Such occurrences mean
hardships and loss of time for bus passengers, and may cause substantial losses for truckers
with perishable produce.

PLATE 4

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—CRIST AND GUHL

“JSol1Of osuap jo qno 1nd yi0q ‘asnoy out fO opts styy
Pley ainqised out pue PuNoIs910F oy} ul P[e4ustoos sty YIM
‘s0ue1sIp oy ul oy[es) vUelOp[e A “If fo ssnoy Your! oY, *7

“JOJOUL plvOg No ue Aq po1omod SI
JOURS YOR “poompley jo syuryd pue “ssoy peus ef OM4
‘sulejuryd “QO11 fo perstsuos 9SeO SI} Ul O31e9 oy, “ele'y
OJIONG 1e peprojun suloq JOATIUMOP WO, SOOUBD }no0-3nq op

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—CRIST AND GUHL

PLATE 5

1. In Neiva a convoy of buses (mistos) and trucks unload rice, cooking bananas, and other
produce from the llanos.

4
i
‘
*
.
;

2. The Munoz family at Montanita. ‘The elderly couple on the left pioneered from Huila;

all the rest were born in the hot country in or near Montanita and are leading happy lives
there.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—CRIST AND GUHL PLATE 6

aly
if Q
4

1. These children of settlers who originally came from the mountain province of Huila
walk by the stalled station wagon on the way from their frontier farm to the market in
30ca del Monte. Note the turkey on the boy’s shoulder.

2. The rancher, his wife, and eight of his children as they stand between the house and the
kitchen garden.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—CRIST AND GUHL PLATE 7

1. Newly constructed hut of a recent settler on the Pasto—Mocoa road, with sacks of char-
coal ready for shipment to Pasto.

2. Sibundoy Indians at the Capuchin Mission of the same name, where they are taught
Spanish, agricultural practices, and so on. Note the many strands of beads used as an
adornment.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—CRIST AND GUHL PEAREDS

1. Home of a relatively prosperous rancher on the Mocoa road, cut out of what was origi-
nally dense tropical rain forest.

2. A crude sawmill at the end of the Pamplona—Rio Frio road, with the hut in the upper
left the only sign of human occupance.

EASTERN COLOMBIA—CRIST AND GUHL 407

old trees near the house that were bearing while I was there. For
months it was impossible to get protein, except by hunting. There was
no neighbor near enough from whom he might have obtained pork or
beef. It was then that he became most keenly aware of the importance
of an adequate diet to fortify the human body against the onslaught of
disease. Everyone became infected with malaria when the mosquitoes
got bad in the dry season, but he was able to send for plasmoquin
through a friend and thus cure the sick.

The first year he cleared 114 hectares of land during off time from
his job on the road where he earned 1.80 pesos a day. With that money
he could buy the barest essentials in Boquerén. By the end of the
second year he had cleared 8 hectares of land, had bought a milk cow
for 65 pesos, and had several pigs and 40 chickens. The cow had a
calf in two months’ time. By 1949 he had built a house and had
acquired 6 cows and 8 calves, 3 hogs, and a sizable flock of chickens.
Then came civil war, which rapidly created a social and political
climate infinitely more difficult to cope with than the natural
environment.

The scourge of the subsistence farmer or the pioneer in so many
parts of Latin America has been the recurrent revolution or actual
civil war. Colombia had been spared this curse for over two genera-
tions, but the hatred between conservatives and liberals had merely
been smoldering, and in 1948 it was to burst into flame and destroy
many thriving villages and properous farmsteads. Almost the entire
valley on the eastern side of the Andes, with Pajarito as its center,
was devastated as the bands of conservatives, the government forces,
hunted down and destroyed the liberals, giving no quarter. Many
people hid out in the forest with little shelter, almost no food, and in
constant danger of being ambushed and destroyed. Their tales of
living like hunted animals were heart-rending in the extreme. Others
returned to the cities, where life and limb were more secure than in
the villages or in the open countryside. It became unsafe in this
sector even for a conservative Antioquetio, because as the fighting
continued and the lust for blood increased in intensity government
forces were apt to shoot first and inquire into political affiliations
afterward.

So Tiberio was forced to sell the land that he had with such loving
care cleared and made productive. He received 2,400 pesos for the
cleared land and another 300 for the hogs, chickens, and corn. The
fact that, starting with nothing at all, he had been able with 5 years’
hard work, to accumulate 2,700 pesos was a great stimulus tohim. But
unfortunately he was caught again in the same urban treadmill. His
earnings as a carpenter were not enough to keep up with inflation, and
his savings dwindled rapidly. By the time the civil war was over he

412575—57 27

408 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

was again in desperate financial circumstances, leading a precarious
existence in his struggle to support a growing family with wages
lagging far behind soaring costs. By 1953 he was anxious either to
return to his former holdings or to go somewhere else where settle-
ment was active. His old farm was not for sale, and he had no money
with which to buy it, so he was glad to enter into an agreement with
the owner of 80 hectares of land near Cupiagua, whereby he could
establish his home, clear land, and harvest crops on the halves.

He came out again in 53 to build a shelter and get his food crops—
corn, yuca, and plantains—planted (pl. 4, fig. 2). He has a 4-year
contract with the owner of the land. Everything produced on the
farm, not including what is consumed by the family, is on the halves.
However, one-third of the value of permanent improvements on the
farm, such as coffee bushes and improved pastures, belong to the renter.
He already has 20 acres or so of pastures cleared and has about five
times that amount toclear. Itisslow work because he and his brother-
in-law, without money to hire men, must do it alone. Coffee will be
planted next year. He talked the language of a poet and seer as he
described the dense forest which he must first dominate in order that, a
few years hence, fine, sleek cows could pasture where now grew only
an impenetrable tangled mass of trees and vines and shrubs.

He had come out to this land without any previous knowledge of
soils, rainfall conditions, or other physical factors he must cope with.
He is experimenting steadily in his kitchen garden to find out what
food crops will do best. He grows onions, lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage,
squash, carrots, and other vegetables. Use is made of cow manure
gathered in the nearby, recently cleared pasture. Around the house
40 mango trees are just coming up from seeds. This is the type of
farmer who would and could benefit from technical assistance, prefer-
ably on a county agent basis. However, Colombians, like Latin Amer-
icans generally, have learned the hard way to distrust those who proffer
assistance. Before farmers will be receptive to a technical aid pro-
gram, even one of, by, and for Colombians, they would have to be
convinced that it was really to their interest to cooperate. This might
prove to be a formidable task.

An important factor in the success of this pioneering venture is
family solidarity. Husband and wife and children form a closely knit
unit working toward acommon goal. Dora and Soe de la Cruz do the
house cleaning and cooking. They are up at about 5 o’clock in the
morning, to build the fire in the cook shed next to the house and start
breakfast. Wood is brought in from the forest by the boys and is cut
into usable lengths and split into smaller pieces by fond, easy-going
Uncle Marco, brother of Maria, who also helps in clearing the forest.
House-cleaning tasks are performed after the menfolk have gone to

EASTERN COLOMBIA—CRIST AND GUHL 409

work and while mother is busy with her sewing. Besides the two
daughters mentioned, there are José Ceferino, Omar, Hairo Alonso,
Waldemar, Lida de la Cruz, Tiberio Agusto, Gorge Enrique, and José
Guillermo. They all have to be regularly bathed, fed, clothed and
“minded,” and those jobs take up all the available time of the mother
and two oldest daughters. Each child asks and receives his mother’s
and father’s blessing each night, and the family often reads the ques-
tions and responses of the rosario. Discipline is strict, punishment is
swift. Certain precepts are instilled into the children at an early age.
Parents must be obeyed without question; the older children do not
tease the younger ones; food is never to be wasted. When one of the
younger children, in a fit of temper, threw his food on the ground, he
was soundly spanked.

Further, the Antioquefio has the tradition of individual initiative
and of economic independence behind him. He has made his living
at his trade or on his little plot of land and has unbounded confidence
in his capacity to continue to earn his living at his own trade or oa
his own land. He has not, like the Santandereano, been tied to the
land in debt bondage till he has lost the capacity to strike out on his
own. Hestill has the will and the optimism to migrate, in the hope of
finding something better. The Antioquefo is a rugged, hard-working
realist, intent upon achieving his own independence, without govern-
ment aid in any form.

PAMPLONA-RIO FRIO

The population of the little mountain town of Pamplona and vicinity
has in recent years been subjected to the economic pull of Cuacuta.
This pull has counteracted the tendency to migrate southward and
eastward toward the llanos of the Arauca River, the boundary between
Venezuela and Colombia. The road from Pamplona to Labateca is
mainly through the narrow gorge of the Chitaga River where the
growing of crops is difficult, and even grazing does not prosper. How-
ever, Labateca and Toledo have been established on relatively fertile
alluvial terraces. These are old settlements, and the cultural landscape
between Labateca and Bata is mature—corn, yuca, plantains, beans,
and squash are the food crops, and coffee and sugarcane are grown for
cash. However, as soon as one crosses the high ridge south of Bata,
on the Margua River, one is in wild, barely settled country. A few
men are engaged in burning charcoal and in cutting trees for lumber.
Along the last 20 kilometers of road before reaching Rio Negro there
were only six huts or thatch dwellings, two of which were uninhabited.
A primitive sawmill was turning out logs (pl. 8, fig. 2). One won-
dered how the laborers operating them existed. There were no plots
anywhere on which staple foodstuffs were being grown, and there were

410 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

no womenfolk in evidence. The sector is obviously being “mined” of
its resources with no plan of permanent settlement, yet the area should
be colonized for strategic if for no other reasons. The road should by
all means be improved if settlers are to be attracted. As things now
stand an oil strike south of the Arauca River would probably mean that
that whole area would to a large extent be invaded by Venezuelans
looking for work, rather than by Colombians.

Guanapalo and Pauto were thriving economic and cultural centers
during colonial times, the epoch of greatest missionary activity. Be-
cause of their wealth and the number of their inhabitants they played
an important role in the wars which have made Colombian history.
This was a zone of great ranches and thriving towns when the rest of
the llanos was still virgin territory." Pore was the most important of
these towns and, for colonial society, its influence was greater than that
of any of the modern capitals. It is said that at one time Pore, ex-
tremely rich in cattle, had a larger population than Santa Fé, capital
of the vice royalty.

After the wars of independence, missionary activity declined in the
mountain-front sector for a hundred miles or more south of the largely
unoccupied Colombia-Venezuela frontier zone, but whether it was the
cause or the effect of lack of development it is difficult to determine.
At present Colombian nationalism is demanding that this unoccupied
area between the mountain heartland and the international boundary
be filled in, in somewhat the same manner that a boy with a suit sev-
eral sizes too large for him wants to grow up fast and fill out his
clothes. But all growth requires time. Meanwhile the boundary be-
tween Colombia and Venezuela remains to a high degree an artificial
line on a map, a broad buffer zone with little significance in reality.

PASTO-MOCOA

The road eastward from Pasto, the economic and administrative
capital of highland Nariho, can take care of vehicles of 3 tons or less;
the first 10 miles it climbs steeply through an intensively cultivated
area of minifundio to the pass known as E] Tabano (the horse fly),
the continental divide, or divorcio aquarum, the road descends even
more abruptly to the tiny village of El] Encano on the shore of the
picturesque Laguna de la Cocha—very probably of glacial origin;
at’ present a rendezvous for hardy trout fisherman. Between El
Encano and Santiago another extremely steep mountain must be
crossed, on both slopes of which the felling of trees for timber, but
particularly for the making of charcoal, is going on at a dizzy pace,

11 Cf. Platt, Raye R., Opportunities for agricultural colonization in the eastern
border valleys of the Andes, in Pioneer Settlement, Amer. Geogr. Soc. Spec. Publ.
No. 14, pp. 87-92, New York, 1932.

EASTERN COLOMBIA—CRIST AND GUHL 411

with little thought of control measures to safeguard soil and water re-
sources (pl. 7, fig. 1). Between Santiago and San Francisco, via the
village of Sibundoy, seat of the Capuchin Mission, the road hugs the
base of the steep north slope of a vast swampy basin, now drained by
the Putumayo River, that must originally have been overdeepened by
glacial action. Settlers have cleared the forest from the well-drained
and fertile alluvial fans deposited by the streams that empty into the
swamp, and have established thriving cattle ranches (pl. 8, fig. 1).

The San Francisco-Mocoa sector crosses still another high pass, the
Paramo of Bichoy, before plunging eastward through many miles of
wild, rocky country, completely inhospitable to human settlement.
From the last defile, at about 6,500 feet, one can, in clear weather, dis-
cern the great valleys of the Putumayo and Caqueta Rivers with the
tiny settlements along them; from there the road descends 1,000 meters
in 25 kilometers to Pepino, 10 kilometers from Mocoa, long the capital
of the Comisaria of Putumayo and the most important urban ag-
glomeration of the region; it has three long streets cut by six short
ones, wide and well marked out. The authorities work and live in rela-
tively commodious municipal buildings.

Puerto Limon, Urcusique, and Puerto Umbria, all are tiny bridge-
heads in the wilderness, settled mostly by hard-working people from
Narifo, Antioquia, and Caldas.

The Comisarfa of Putumayo is the home of three cultural, racial,
and linguistic groups of Indians, the Ingano, Siona, and Kofan, who
were well adjusted to their environment but whose economy and social
organization were primitive. The settlers from the mountains made
these primitive Indians work for them; they exploited them and took
advantage of them in many ways, with the result that the Indians
have fled to areas as yet untouched by the new settlers. The cultural
inferiority of those few who remain, to be seen in the Sibundoy valley
and around Mocoa, is reflected in their low social and economic stand-
ing in the community, where they are a prey to malaria, yellow fever,
influenza, and water-borne diseases, as well as to their “civilized”
fellows (pl. 7, fig.2). These primitive people are given little help to-
ward improving their agricultural techniques, although even now they
supply many of the “spearheads of penetration” with yuca, plantain,
corn, and vegetables. Nor is their artistry valued very highly, in the
making of pottery, baskets, and textiles, some of the finer examples of
which are veritable museum pieces.”

Some of the settlers who came as the Pasto—Mocoa road was opened
up had a little capital and a small fund of experience in living and in

12Chavez Milciades, La colonizacion de la Comisaria del Putmayo: un
problema etno-economico-geografico de importancia nacional, Bol. Arqueol., vol. 1,
No. 6, pp. 567-598, 1945.

412 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

making a living in frontier zones, but the great majority were men
whose only baggage consisted of their capacity for hard work. The
settlers were a heterogeneous lot, poverty-stricken day laborers, share-
croppers, or renters from the large estates in the hot lowlands or
temperate highlands; half-starved peasant proprietors of tiny, frag-
mented plots in the cold country. Here was a vast fertile country
awaiting settlement, where land could be had for the taking, for no
one owned it. All the settler had to do was to build a thatch hut, clear
a piece of forest with his faithful machete, and plant corn, yuca, and
plantains. But this was not enough to cope with the new environment.
Weakened by a poor diet the settler became a ready prey to malaria,
and to other diseases that still further undermined him. With no
capital it was impossible to buy drugs, even if they had been available.
Many of the early settlers died; in many settlements all the children
died year after year. Once sick and ailing, a worker is no longer able
to keep up the unequal struggle against the forest, to be sure, but there
would be much less sickness if public health measures were systemati-
cally undertaken to kill the vectors of tropical fevers and to decrease
the incidence of water-borne diseases. Further, cheap and easy credit
should be available to the settler, without his having to go through
endless red tape; thus he could bring his agricultural equipment and
techniques up to date and take care of his seasonal needs without re-
course to the usurer. Finally, improved roads would tie the settler
more securely to his local market and thereby to the national economy.

The Pasto—Sibundoy—Mocoa-Urcusique-Puerto Umbria road
should at the earliest moment possible be extended as far as Puerto
Asis in order to tie in with navigation on the Putumayo.

The construction of this highway was especially pushed during the
war with Peru, itself probably due in part to the neglect of this fron-
tier zone. When the treaty of peace was signed, work on the road was
abandoned; the last 25 miles of the Pasto-Puerto Asis road was not
finished. Thus an extremely fertile area, the alluvial land along the
Putumayo, does not have an outlet for its produce. Rice is reported
to give prodigious yields here, but it cannot reach its market. At the
same time there is a great demand for it in the mountains, and in
Narino a brisk contraband trade in Ecuadorean rice has grown up.

The mountainous area around Ipiales, near the border with Ecuador
is also seeking a safety valve to the east, in the form of one road via
La Victoria to connect with the San Miguel River, and another via
Puerres, which crosses a pass in the cordillera and will connect with
the Guamués River, which drains the Languna de la Cocha.

The state of Cauca has completed the road from El Bordo to
Bolivar and every effort should be made to continue this on to San
Sebastian and thence, crossing the divide, to Santa Rosa on the

EASTERN COLOMBIA—CRIST AND GUHL 413

Caqueté. Santa Rosa should then be tied to Mocoa and Puerto
Limén. This accomplished, the road following the foot of the cor-
dillera from Florencia to Puerto Limé6n, via Belén, would open up a
vast fertile area to settlement.

CONCLUSIONS

Almost three decades ago F. O. Martin * felt that the three chief
drawbacks to settlement and development of this vast region were the
lack (a) of kept-up roads and trails; (b) of a good labor force, and
(c) of community spirit. He felt keenly about the latter item, com-
plaining that “there is no community spirit among the inhabitants
in the matter of maintaining trails or in any other communal rela-
tions. Cooperation is unknown; rather, intense jealously among in-
dividuals prevails.” It has been seen that, although in Colombia as
elsewhere miracles are rare in the affairs of men, improvement has
been steady: roads and trails are being kept up and improved, and
the labor force is not only more numerous than when Martin wrote,
but it is more efficient because of a better diet and a lower incidence
of the so-called tropical diseases. The community spirit cannot be
said to have become Utopian, but it has certainly changed for the
better generally, in spite of the temporary setback resulting from the
revolutionary outburst of 1950-53. Of fewer and fewer sectors can
it be said, “settled but unexplored,” for the reality is that population
pressure in the mountain areas has built up to such an extent that
a wave of migrants is actually crossing the eastern cordillera at many
points to enter the tropical lowland. The physical climate is one
that can the more readily be coped with if collective man surrounds
himself with a favorable political, social, and economic climate.

In the words of Professor Bates, tropical forests are not unfriendly :
they are merely disinterested. It is understandable why they do seem
unfriendly when they are engaged in single combat by a lone indi-
vidual armed only with a machete, who, besides being poorly fed and
poorly housed, may be suffering from fever and intestinal ailments
and parasites. The picture changes completely when man is in cul-
tural control, as it were, and can create his own favorable habitat
as he penetrates the forest or any other natural landscape he has
decided to live in or change; a young army officer in Florencia pointed
out that any place can be a pesthole if one eats poorly and takes
none of the ordinary precautions to maintain health. He concluded
that, by merely minimizing and guarding against the bad features
of the tropical climate and taking advantage of the good ones, one
could lead a very pleasant life there. And thousands of his com-
patriots are finding this to be true, no longer regarding the forces of

“Martin, F. O., Exploration in Colombia, Geogr. Rev., vol. 19, p. 628, 1929.

414 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

nature as terrors to be placated, but rather as beneficent powers with
which man may cooperate.

There has been no steady pushing back of the frontier on a broad
front; rather the forest has been encroached upon in widely scattered
areas for the exploitation of whatever resource was most highly prized
at the time. For centuries minerals, or forest products such as rub-
ber and quinine, played that role. As the mountain population slowly
began to recognize the soil of the rain forest as an important, valuable,
exploitable resource, they were able to effect what might be termed
a “break-through” into the Andean foothills and tropical lowlands
in the Villavicencio and Florencia sectors, where they are rapidly
consolidating their gains. The temporary break-through south from
Sogamoso has been largely halted by an unfavorable political climate,
while Pamplona is not yet successfully tied to the plains area to the
south. Settlers from the mountain sectors of southwest Colombia
are in the process of effecting their break-through to the east, along
the highways mentioned, but thus far various factors have made it
impossible for them to anchor themselves by permanent agriculture
and grazing. New roads are being constructed only very slowly and
roads already open have not been too well maintained, education
and public health campaigns have been neglected, and the capacities
of the indigenous Indian population have not been fully realized.

The tragedy of the lanos is the tragedy of a frontier zone that by its
very nature is not yet able to live a life of its own, somewhat like
our own Middle West a century ago. As long as the Middle West
led a kind of colonial existence vis-a-vis the eastern seaboard it could
not work out its own regional salvation. Once it was settled by
an industrious, agricultural people, and was crisscrossed with rail-
roads and motor roads for intraregional as well as interregional trade,
it could and did develop its own complementary industrial society.
With the introduction of adequate roads and transportation facilities,
education and public health measures, and permanent rather than
nomadic agriculture by a vigorous and hard-working people, the Hlanos
may indeed experience an evolution similar in many respects to that of
our Middle West during the first half of the nineteenth century.

The densely populated Andean heartland of the nation is being
subjected to centrifugal forces that are already undermining its im-
memorial dominance. Although the center of gravity is still in the
cool to cold mountain sectors, the frontier of settlement is actually on
the march into the low-lying hot country.

The Sources of Animal Behavior?

By G. P. WELtis

Professor of Zoology
University of London

For NEARLY 20 years now I have worked on various aspects of the
biology of a group of marine worms—the polychaetes—mainly, though
not exclusively, on the members of one family. An intensive study of
that kind has its own fascination, and it becomes particularly reward-
ing if the investigator is lucky enough to find that his animals illus-
trate with exceptional clarity some principle of wide application in
biology. I believe this can be said of the behavior of my worms, and
although the belief may be merely the rosy illusion of a specialist (for
I tend to see any biological problem in worm’s-eye view), I shall try
to develop the theme here. I shall start with the only species I know
at all intimately—the common European lugworm, Arenicola marina,
and go on to certain related species and then to quite different kinds of
animals. My aim is to show that even a worm may have a useful con-
tribution to make to our understanding of animal behavior in general.

rE

The lugworm is commonly about the size of a fountain pen—though
it may be rather larger, or very much smaller. It is found at low tide
by digging in beaches of muddy sand. It lives in a fairly permanent
burrow, eating the sand, digesting some of the organic content, and
ejecting the unwanted residue on the surface. These residues collect
as a heap of sandy cylinders; most of us have walked across a flat
beach when the tide is out, and seen the little heaps in their thousands.

The lugworm’s brain is very small and its nervous system is com-
paratively simple; it leads an extremely sheltered life, surrounded by
the sand, which is at once its food and its protection from the hazards
of the world: and one might reasonably expect, from these facts, to
find that its behavior consists largely of simple responses to stimuli,
most of which come from within. For example, one might expect it

* Inaugural lecture delivered at University College, London, May 5, 1955. Re
printed by permission.

415

416 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

to start eating when its stomach is empty, to go on till the stomach is
full, and then stop; and to make the backward trip to the surface, to
shoot out a sand cylinder, whenever its rectum fills up to a certain
degree. But the facts are quite otherwise. Under natural conditions
it feeds in little bursts, each lasting for a few minutes, with rests of a
minute or so in between; and if you watch it in a glass tube of sea
water, without any sand to eat, you often see a similar alternation of
feeding movements and rest. The important point here is that each
of the outbursts subsides although there has been no satisfaction by
eating. Again, under natural conditions a lugworm moves backward
to the surface and shoots out a sand cylinder at regular intervals which
vary somewhat with the temperature and the size of the worm—com-
monly about once every 40 minutes—and the fasting worm in a glass
tube can often be seen to make similar backward trips, as before, at
regular intervals of about the normal length, even though it has no
urge in the form of residues to discharge. It looks as if the worm had
“physiological alarm clocks” in its organization which go off spon-
taneously every so often, irrespective of its needs, and compel it to
make a burst of feeding movements, or a backward trip.?

In the case of the feeding rhythm, the analysis has been pressed fur-
ther. The “alarm clock” has been located. If you remove the front
part of the gut—the esophagus—put it in a dish of sea water and watch
it carefully, you see that this little fragment of the worm has a compli-
cated automatic rhythm of its own. Fora few minutes it is vigorously
active, with waves of contraction running along it in regular sequence
from the front end to the back, then it becomes quiet for a couple of
minutes, and soon. We can distinguish two rhythms here, of different
levels—the first is that of the contraction waves themselves, and the
second, superimposed upon it, the alternating appearance and dis-
appearance of the first. It can be shown quite convincingly, by appro-
priate experiments, that this behavior of the esophagus is the cause of
the intermittent feeding of the intact worm. When the esophagus is
active, its activity spreads through the nervous system to most of the
muscles of the body, affecting them in various ways and producing
periodic feeding movements.

In writing these opening paragraphs, I tried above all to be clear,
and the resulting picture is rather oversimplified. The behavior of
the isolated esophagus is very regular and mechanical, but when it is
part of the worm its rhythm and the extent to which its activity

? Under the conditions of the lecture, it was necessary to leave out a number of
interesting points—such as the fact that each backward excursion to the surface
is followed by a spell of vigorous water pumping, or the way in which the excur-
sions can be exploited at low tide as a method of aerial respiration. Some of
these points are mentioned in the subsequently added footnotes.

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR—WELLS 417

spreads through the body can be controlled to some degree. The gen-
eral situation is roughly parallel to that of a vertebrate heart. The
isolated heart will continue to beat and so will little shreds of heart
muscle, but in the body its activity is modified by regulating nerves.
So also with the lugworm esophagus; it has an inherent rhythm which
can be regulated; but its pattern, being intermittent, is more com-
plicated, and in this case the pattern can spread through the body and
cause periodic movements of the whole animal.

These facts impressed me, when I first came across them, for the
following reason. When I was a young man I was a mechanist of the
most bone-headed type—believing that behavior was nothing more
than a series of reflexes. The animal was stimulated by the presence
of food, or an enemy, or a mate, or by some simple organic need, and
it performed appropriate deeds. If it happened to bea very intelligent
animal—as a man is, or an octopus—it could form conditioned re-
flexes, and then its reactions were more complicated. But always it
was driven, and its life was patterned, by the incidence of stimuli of
one kind or another. Presumably, as a corollary, a physiologically
satisfied animal in a homogeneous environment would do nothing at
all; but I do not remember that I worried very much about that. I
think that if one did not know what it was that stimulated a par-
ticular act, one called it a drive. Be that as it may, in the lugworm
we see something rather different. The characteristic activity pattern
of the isolated esophagus is part of its organization—if you like, part
of its structure. The rhythmic outbursts begin spontaneously, with-
out any external stimulus or any biological need; they subside without
any kind of satisfaction; and normally their rhythm plays an im-
portant part in patterning the life of the worm as a whole.’

3 The basing of the lugworm’s behavior on inherent rhythms, instead of on
simple responses to its immediate needs as they arise, has definite survival value.
The flat beaches frequented by these worms are often covered with puddles and
sheets of water at low tide. Ona sunny day this water may be several degrees
hotter than the underlying sand, and well above the highest temperatures which
the worms can tolerate. A sharp frost or a heavy downpour of rain could also
make the surface water harmful to the worms. Normally, the worm drives water
through its burrow to get a supply of oxygen; if the surface water became
dangerously hot or dilute a reflex hyperpnoea in response to oxygen lack might
be disastrous; it would be wiser for the worm to suspend its activities. When
placed in a glass tube under unfavorable chemical conditions the worm becomes
relatively inactive; but under the influence of its 40-minute rhythm it makes
periodic backward trips toward the top of the tube and generally draws a little
water along on these occasions, as if testing the surface water. We may guess
that when unfavorable conditions develop in the field, it behaves in the same
way; after the rising tide has covered the burrow again and so removed the
danger, the fact will be detected at the next testing excursion, and the worm’s full
activities will then be resumed.

418 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

At this point an obvious question arises. I have spoken of the
esophagus as a physiological alarm clock. How does the clock work?
From what kind of cellular mechanisms does its regular intermittent
pattern arise? The first step in trying to find an answer is to pull
the clock to pieces. If you cut a lugworm esophagus into several bits,
cutting either lengthways or across, you find that each of them shows
the characteristic alteration of rhythmic activity and rest, from
which it seems that the pattern is a general property of the esophageal
wall. ‘The fine structure of the wall was described by Dr. Whitear; it
contains a diffuse network of nerves which may be responsible, but
unfortunately the anatomical arrangement is not favorable to further
attempts at identifying the active structures. On the purely physio-
logical plane some light could perhaps be thrown on the nature of the
mechanism by varying the temperature and composition of the sur-
rounding fluid; and I have published some experiments along these
lines in collaboration with Miss Ledingham. But the essential prob-
lem remains unsolved. The esophagus can be slowed down by increas-
ing the amount of magnesium in the surrounding fluid, and it may then
show its outbursts of activity at very regular intervals of over half an
hour. The problem of how to construct a clock of cellular dimensions
that will tick as slowly as this is indeed an intriguing one. It is pre-
sumably related to many of the problems with which the physiologist is
concerned, such as the exact mechanism of the heartbeat. Under cer-
tain abnormal conditions a heart may beat in intermittent bursts, and
its activity pattern is then very like that of an isolated lugworm
esophagus. Perhaps when our physiologists have published all the
answers to their problems the results may be applied to mine.

With that I shall leave the Avenicola esophagus and begin to broaden
the picture, but first a word must be said about one of the experimental
methods. We are going to consider the results you get, if you observe
the behavior of 2 polychaete continuously for days or weeks on end,
and this may sound a hard thing to do, particularly if the worm is
burrowing, invisible, in sand, or living (as is the way of many species)
in an opaque tube of its own construction. In practice, however, it is
easy to persuade the worms to write down on paper what they are
doing; and possible (although more difficult) to learn to read what
they write. It all depends on the fact that they drive water through
their tubes in order to get oxygen, and often for other reasons too.
The method consists of three stages: (a) you set up a simple apparatus
which traces on slowly moving smoked paper the speed and direction
of the water currents, so that you can see how the currents vary with
time; (6) you find, in many species at least, that certain characteristic

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR—WELLS 419

patterns appear over and over again on the tracings; (¢) by special
means (such as watching worms in glass tubes) you find out what
particular activities these patterns accompany. This is the most
laborious stage, and it must be confessed that one’s knowledge of the
script of any species is never complete. But even with partial under-
standing the method is useful. One can set up the apparatus, leave it
to run for a very long period of time, and afterward read from the
tracings what has happened and when. It is worth emphasizing that
one’s interference with the worms is minimal; they are perfectly free
to move about in their tubes or burrows, and one only imposes an
imperceptibly small resistance on their water currents. One finds out,
in this way, how they behave when they are left alone.

One of the results of this method is to show that the lugworm is a
creature of moods. It has several alternative patterns, any one of
which it can write on the paper. It may behave as I have already de-
scribed, feeding in little bursts and discharging a sand cylinder every
40 minutes; these acts affect the water movements, and gives the record
a very characteristic appearance. Alternatively, it may lie still and do
nothing; or it may trace violent chaotic wiggles that I cannot pretend
to understand ; or it may trace other rhythmic patterns, without feed-
ing, that there is no time now to describe. A long-term record of its
behavior always shows these “moods,” each of them generally persist-
ing for several hours and then passing suddenly into another. The
patterns can of course be modified by external circumstances; but what
I have just said is true of worms living, as far as one can judge, in very
uniform and favorable conditions. It looks as if the lugworm’s be-
havior is mainly governed by an elaborate inherent organization, per-
haps even up to the level of the long-term changes of mood.

The same kind of thing can be seen in other marine worms. Their
activities are patterned in time, sometimes with strikingly regular
rhythms; and in some cases there are alternative rhythms and changes
of mood. A point that comes out very clearly when the tracings of
different kinds of worms are compared, is that the more regular pat-
terns are characteristic of the species. There is, for example, a family
of worms—the Sabellidae—that live in tubes of their own construc-
tion, spreading their crowns of feathered tentacles in the sea water,
and eating the minute suspended particles which these tentacles en-
trap. Water-current records of two species of this family have al-
ready been published, and I have unpublished material on two more.
All of them have complicated activity-time patterns, and—although
they all live in very much the same way—the patterns are in part
specific. Each species has its own characteristic kind of wiggle, which

420 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

it writes on the paper; just as each can be distinguished by certain
anatomical characteristics.‘
IT

I turn from the polychaetes to a group of animals that has a wider
appeal and is very much in the limelight nowadays—the birds. I am
going to suggest that much of what I have said about worms is true
in principle of birds too.

At this stage in the argument, I am reminded of a proverb that the
shrewd old Russian peasants used to say in the days before the revolu-
tion. They would peck at their fields with primitive tools, as their
fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers had done before
them; and when one suggested that more modern methods might in-
crease productivity, they would shake their heads and say: “If you
make your strides too great, you tear the seat of your pants.”

The step from worms to birds is a long one. I encourage myself
with the thought that all animals, however different they may ap-
pear, are variations on a common theme. It is, of course, the aim of
the comparative method to find out how much is variation and how
much is theme.

Probably nearly all of us have been irritated at one time or another
by the insistence with which our feathered songsters repeat their

“The “mood changes” are strikingly shown by Chaetopterus variopedatus,
which has several very characteristic and clearly contrasted alternative ac-
tivity patterns. The statement about the Sabellidae is based on published rec-
ords got from Sabella spallanzanii at Naples and Sabella pavonina at Plymouth,
and unpublished ones from Branchiomma vesiculosum at Plymouth and
Schizobranchia insignis at Friday Harbor, the latter with the assistance of LeRoy
B. Nydegger. In Myzicola infundibulum, which is referred on anatomical
grounds to a separate subfamily, no water is driven through the tube, although
there are other characteristic activity patterns.

Comparison of the two Sabella species is interesting. The tubes are found,
either attached to such submerged objects as rocks, piles and buoys, or with their
lower ends embedded in the material of the sea bottom. The ecological pref-
erence of the two species are not quite the same; S. spallanzanii occurs attached
to submerged objects or embedded in coarse sand, while S. pavonina—though it
also can occur in these situations—is especially frequent in muddy sand or in
mud. The spontaneous irrigation patterns of the former involve the propulsion
of water in both directions in turn, those of the latter in a tailward direction
only. If S. pavonina draws an irritating substance into its tube with its water
current, it can at once reverse the current and thereby take rejection action; it
is therefore capable of reversal though it never reverses except in response to
such occasional crises; the normal restriction of its behavior to tailward irriga-
tion may be correlated with its habit of colonizing muddy situations, since a
headward current, in such situations, would tend to draw in mud and clog the
tube.

This is only one example of the fact that an inherent activity pattern can be
adaptively modified, just as an anatomical pattern can.

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR—WELLS 421

songs. To hear the brilliant little song of a chaffinch, sung from a
branch just outside one’s window as one lies in bed on a sunny April
morning, is delightful. To hear it again a second time, a few seconds
later, is very well. But if the bird repeats the identical song phrase
over and over again, at extremely regular intervals of about 10 seconds,
as it often does at that season—and let us remember that 10 sec-
onds is just long enough for one’s thoughts to get nicely settled else-
where—one begins to wish that it would stop.

Such an experience impresses upon us that the singing behavior
of our common woodland and garden birds is rhythmically organized,
and we can distinguish two levels in this organization.

First, is the pattern of the individual song phrase. This is highly
specific. The biological function of song is above all to warn off
other birds of the same species and sex, and to inform them that the
singer has taken possession of the surrounding territory, which he
is prepared to defend. Evidently, the phrase must be recognizable
and distinctive of the species. There is of course a certain amount of
variation from individual to individual and from moment to moment
in any one bird, and in some cases (such as the chaflinch) there are
well-marked local dialects. Nevertheless, the songs of any one species
have enough in common to be readily identifiable as such, and a bird
can be known by its song as surely as it can by its plumage.

To some extent these song phrases are learned from other birds, to
some extent they are innate. The extent to which song has to be
learned probably varies from species to species, but the innate con-
tribution seems always to be substantial.

Dr. W. H. Thorpe has described the songs of chaffinches that were
hand-reared in soundproof rooms at Cambridge and isolated from
any contact with experienced birds since the first few days of nestling
life. When such chaffinches grow up and sing, all the finer details of
the adult song are lacking; there is, nevertheless, a rough framework
of definite structure on which they could be hung. In his own words:

The experiments with the hand-reared birds suggest that there is an inborn
basis to the song but that it is extremely generalized. Innately these birds
seem able to produce a song of about the normal length, 2-8 seconds, and
showing a tendency to crescendo accompanied by a fairly steady fall in mean
pitch . . . there is a clear tendency in some birds to conclude the song with a
single, simple note of a higher pitch than the rest.

Such a framework is, in itself, quite a complicated thing to inherit.

According to Dr. Sauer, of Freiburg, whitethroats reared in isola-
tion from the egg produce the entire song when the right time comes,
down to the finest detail.

The second level of organization is the distribution of the song
phrases in time. Many birds, when in singing mood, will shoot off

422 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

a series of little song phrases at extremely regular intervals, often
of about 10 seconds. The chaffinch is one of these, and there are many
equally familiar examples—the hedge sparrow, the yellowhammer, the
willow warbler, the robin, and so on. Even in those birds whose songs
seem, at first hearing, to consist of long ramblings rather than compact
phrases, the utterances show a more-or-less regular and characteristic
punctuation. The spacing of bird song seems to have received less
attention than the structure of the individual phrases. There is how-
ever a mine of exact information in E. M. Nicholson’s admirable book,
“Songs of Wild Birds,” and the regularity of the rhythms which his
timings reveal, in species after species, is indeed impressive.

One would expect such timing to be basically innate. Dr. Peter
Marler tells me that the chaffinches reared in isolation at Cambridge
sang at about the usual intervals. The rhythms are of course by ao
means inflexible. A chaflinch will sing at shorter intervals at one
time than at another, and for many months in the year it hardly sings
at all. Each bird has its preferred time, of day, when it sings most
frequently. In the great tit, as Dr. R. A. Hinde has recently shown,
the frequency of singing may vary from minute to minute. But
many plainly spontaneous rhythms in animals can fiuctuate and be
modified according to circumstances—the heartbeat, for example—
and these variations do not exclude the view (which I think is ines-
capable) that the timing of bird song is based on an inherent, auto-
matic rhythmicity.

The essential spontaneity of bird song is beautifully brought out
in the following passage from Mr. Nicholson’s book :

A song, in fact, needs no immediate stimulus to set it in motion (such as
fear, anger, hunger or isolation) nor does it call for any special reply. A cock
bird may sing better if more cocks are singing within earshot, but on the other
hand, he will go on singing for weeks at the right season with no other songsters
within miles of him and without a mate. We might even say that any bird sound
usually uttered in response to a specific and immediate stimulus is probably not
true song.

As everybody knows, true song is only one item in a bird’s vocabu-
lary, and most species have a wide repertory of different calls. Some
are brief outcries in response to a sudden stimulus—alarm calls at
the approach of a hawk, for example—but many of them are repeated
for considerable lengths of time in more-or-less regular rhythms, and
indicate the mood of the bird. Dr. Sauer has illustrated this very
beautifully in the case of the whitethroat, and gives many descrip-
tions of the mood notes and of the manner of transition from one mood
to another. He tells, for example, how a whitethroat in winter, sitting
quietly and singing its subdued and nearly continuous subsong, may
suddenly begin to interpolate among the song phrases the notes of
mild alarm or mild hunger, often accompanied by appropriate move-

;

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR—WELLS 423

ments, and how the new mood ¢an be heard to intensify and then fade
away again—for all the world as if the bird were dreaming of fear or
food as it sang.

There are lists of calls in Witherby’s “Handbook of British Birds,”
and the reader can hardly fail to notice a strong positive correlation
between the number of different notes assigned to each bird and the
thoroughness with which that species has been investigated. In “The
Wren,” which is not only the name of a bird but also the name of a
recent important book about it by E. A. Armstrong, that author
enumerates 14 kinds of calls and 6 kinds of song, and he writes that his
account “is over-simplified and includes only the commonest and most
significant types of utterance.” In the whitethroat, Dr. Sauer has
tabulated 25 different calls and 5 types of song; and he finds that the
whole of this tremendous vocabulary appears in whitethroats reared
in isolation, in soundproof rooms, from the egg. In his own words,
“A bird lacking all acoustical experience, utters all these sounds in
exactly the same manner, in the same phases of its life cycle and in
the same specific moods as birds in the field.”

Dr. Marler tells me that his isolated chaffinches produced all the
calls perfectly normally, except for a slight peculiarity of one note.
According to Dr. Collias, the domestic chick can emit its usual distress
and pleasure notes even before it hatches. Cool the “pipped” egg and
you hear loud, protesting cheeps from inside; warm it again, and they
are replaced by delighted twitterings.

I have talked at some length about the vocal behavior of birds
because it is so easily observed. It is in fact meant to be observed,
being a method of communication. But birds do other things besides
emitting noises. They hunt for food, they fly about, they preen them-
selves and scratch, they continually interrupt whatever else they are
doing to raise their heads and look around for possible danger. May
it not be that the patterning of these activities is largely based, as the
vocal behavior so clearly is, on complicated inherent rhythms ?

It is not easy to get clear evidence on this question. One would
expect an affirmative answer, for the following reason: the various
notes are often accompanied by characteristic movements of the bird;
and in many cases, what is characteristic is not so much a particular
posture as a particular sequence of events which appear in other con-
texts—for example, an alternate raising and lowering of the head
feathers, or a moving of the body from side to side. Voice and move-
ment are intimately entangled, and it would be strange indeed if the
type of organization that is shown by vocal behavior were strictly
limited to that one activity. There are, in fact, several published
descriptions of what appear to be inherent rhythms in nonvocal
performances. Let us consider three examples.

412575—57——28

424 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Dr. Hinde has recently described fluctuations in the frequency of
various activities, of various birds, and he remarks: “It is character-
istic of instinctive activities that they do not occur regularly but in
complex patterns of bursts.” Nest-building in the great tit, for
example “occurs not in more-or-less evenly spaced visits, but in rather
irregular bursts of visits with occasional visits between.” Of out-
standing interest are his observations on the food-begging calls of
juvenile blue tits, which are accompanied by particular movements
and attitudes. The birds were fed to capacity and then observed for
more than half an hour as they gradually became hungry again.

The record shows that the phrases come in bursts. Increased hunger results
not in a gradual increase in the rate of calling, but in an increased frequency of
bursts and an increase in the length of bursts. . . . The observations of begging

- were made under controlled conditions which were very nearly constant
throughout each experiment. It is thus certain that the fluctuations do not
depend on environmental changes.

The next two examples are of rather longer cycles. Nearly 30 years
ago, Professor Curt Richter described the behavior of a pigeon in a
cage which automatically recorded its movements. Every 20 minutes
or so, the bird left its perch, hopped around on the floor for a few
minutes, and then returned to the perch again. If corn was available,
the bird ate every time it jumped down, but the very regular rhythm
persisted in the absence of food. The outbursts of restlessness ap-
parently coincide with outbursts of contraction in the emptying crop;
and the crop may in fact play a part comparable to that of the
esophagus of Avenicola, and set the rhythm of the whole performance.

More recently Dr. Whitehouse and Mr. Armstrong, using an auto-
matic recording device, studied how a wren divided her time between
sitting on her eggs and other activities. Her day consisted of “ses-
sions” and “recesses.” The lower the temperature, the more time she
spent on her eggs, as one might expect; but the sum of a session and
the following recess was not affected. The two together occupied a
time which fell steadily during the day (quite irrespective of tem-
perature) from about 19 to 27 minutes; cold weather simply length-
ened the sessions and correspondingly shortened the recesses. This
looks like a clear case of an inherent rhythm with environmental tem-
perature playing a secondary, modifying role. Every 20 minutes or
so, some kind of “physiological alarm clock” goes off inside the wren,
and she gets off her eggs; the colder it is, the sooner she comes back.
Later in the season, when she is feeding her young, another rhythm
appears; the frequency with which she visits the nest shows a well-
marked peak every four or five hours.

The demonstration of these slow cycles would hardly have been pos-
sible without the use of the automatic recording devices, which wrote

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR—WELLS 425

on moving paper whenever the pigeon hopped on the floor of its cage,
or the wren passed through the opening of her nest. Most bird ac-
tivities would be difficult to register in this way. There are, however,
plenty of hints to be found in the literature that inherent rhythms of
quite long period are widespread in birds. Among the beautiful de-
scriptions of the herring gull’s behavior in Dr. Tinbergen’s “The
Herring Gull’s World” there are several—such as the way in which an
incubating bird will get up, as he says “spontaneously,” at intervals
of one or more hours, shift the eggs a little with its bill, and then sit
down again.

These facts and hints encourage us to believe that a large part of a
bird’s behavior springs from within—not only in reflex response to
physiological urgencies, but also in obedience to timing mechanisms
that are essentially arbitrary. As in a polychaete worm, an activity
may begin without an immediate need and subside without any satis-
faction. This arbitrariness is evident in the detailed structure of the
song. The song phrase, if it is to fulfill its biological purpose, must
be audible to other birds, it must be sufficiently directional to inform
them where the singer is located, and it must be distinct enough from
that of other species (and perhaps of other individuals) to identify
him. Beyond these requirements there is no reason why it should have
one pattern rather than another; the great variety of songs that de-
light and sometimes irritate us in spring is largely the expression of a
variety of types of innate organization. If we turn our attention to
the other notes and calls, we can hear that an individual bird is
equipped with a repertoire of alternative rhythmic patterns that
modulate or replace each other as its mood changes. All of this is
pretty obvious; the role of the more slowly moving rhythms is less so;
and to myself, at least, it is an exciting idea that changes of activity
or mood, occurring at intervals even of several hours, may often be
due to the action of arbitrary internal “clocks.” It may be that the
further investigation of this aspect of behavior, by the continuous
study over long periods of the way in which a bird’s various acts are
distributed in time, might help very materially to bridge the gulf be-
tween the province of the field observer on the cne hand and that of
the physiologist on the other.

Perhaps the average bird watcher is too much inclined to suppose
that every act a bird performs is biologically useful in itself. There
are, of course, a number of things the bird must do—eating, breeding,
and so on; but on the other hand, like any living animal, it is in a
state of organized instability, and can never be completely at rest or
even completely steady. A motionless bird, sleeping, for example,
while perched on a twig, breathes and stays upright—the latter per-
formance involving feats of equilibration which are no less consider-

426 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

able for being apparently effortless—and for most of its time the
bird does much more than that. It is so made that it must always
do something, even if it has nothing special to do, and quite a lot of
its behavior may be simply filling in time between one functionally
directed act and the next. The unceasing flow of energy must be
patterned and organized ; not every element in the design need in itself
be utilitarian.

I venture the opinion that we should diagrammatize the driving
forces behind animal behavior, not so much in terms of the familiar
tank in which water collects at ever-increasing pressure until it escapes
through a spring-guarded outlet, as of a complicated system that can
never rest but has to oscillate in one or another of a number of pre-
determined alternative rhythms. This approach might help our
understanding of many phenomena, such as the appearance of “dis-
placement activities” when a straightforward course of action is
checked for one reason or another. It would indeed be surprising if
the thwarted animal did absolutely nothing at all.

III

What we have learned from worms and birds is true of many other
kinds of organisms too. More and more instances are appearing in
the literature of the importance of inherent rhythms in behavior.
The rhythms vary greatly in tempo and complexity. The organisms
in which they have been demonstrated include sea anemones, bivalves,
insects, sea squirts, sticklebacks, rats, and medical students—to men-
tion only a few. The work on mammals is mainly concerned with
long-period rhythms, correlated, for example, with the hunger con-
tractions of the stomach or with oestrus; shorter rhythms would be
harder to record automatically, and it is worth remembering that
mammals have characteristic voice rhythms as have birds. So, of
course, have many other animals, such as frogs and fishes, grass-
hoppers and cicadas. I thought it better in this lecture not to attempt
a catalog of examples, but to make my point by concentrating on two
contrasted groups. They are certainly not exceptional in basing their
behavior to a large extent on inherent and often arbitrary timing
mechanisms.

And now a word in praise of worms. For obvious reasons, spon-
taneous behavior is most easily studied in animals that live under
sheltered and uniform conditions. The sense organs of my worms are
comparatively simple, and their way of living in burrows or tubes re-
stricts the number of disturbing stimuli which impinge on them from
without. Moreover, their activities are easy to record by the water-
current method, and they often show surprisingly normal behavior
patterns after drastic surgical operations—decapitation for ex-

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR—WELLS 427

ample; ° this facilitates a physiological approach. No doubt there are
plenty of other subjects at least as favorable to be found among the
invertebrates. The situation is vastly more complicated in a bird or a
mammal. Its activities are harder to record, its body is less amenable
to operation, and because of its restless habits and highly developed
sense organs its behavior is interfered with by the environment more
continually and in more varied ways than is that of a worm. Much of
the underlying inherent structure of its behavior can be seen, but the
experimental investigation of the timing mechanisms would be very
difficult.

I cannot resist the temptation of adding a wild little fantasy about
communication.

If you lie in a deck chair in your garden with your eyes shut and
listen to a bird—and if you know your bird as well as Dr. Sauer
knows his whitethroat—you can tell what is passing through its mind
from its calls and from variations in the timing and structure of its
song, and you can see in your own mind’s eye nearly everything it does.
Similarly, if you make a worm write its water currents on paper, and
if you know your worm, you can tell from the patterns it traces what
it is doing at any time. The two have this in common: in each case
you study one aspect only of the animal’s activities, but in each case
the behavior of the animal is so closely integrated that nearly every-
thing it does is reflected in that one. They differ in this: the voice
of the bird is a method of communication; another bird can hear what
the first one says. The usual effect of bird communication is to bring
both into the same mood. Such moods as restlessness, alarm, or lazy
contentment can spread by this means through a flock of birds so that
all are in the same condition and prepared to act in the same way—
this has been described by Professor Lorenz in jackdaws and geese, by
Dr. Tinbergen in gulls, by Dr. Hinde in great tits, and by many
others too. But take your bird and isolate it in a soundproof room
and it still continues to call and sing. The parallel with the worm is
now very close indeed, for in both cases you get the performance of
intricate spontaneous rhythms, and in both you get changes of mood.
Perhaps it is only 99 percent fantastic to say that the worm, though it
is a dumb animal and has not yet invented a way of communicating

° Sabella generally whips its head back into its tube at the approach of a preda-
tor, such as a fish; but sometimes it fails to do so fast enough, and loses not
only its head but also several segments from the front end of the body. It then
grows a new head, which can be distinguished by minor anatomical characters
from the old, and Professor N. J. Berrill has written: ‘In nature it would
seem that about half the Sevella population suffers such mutilation at one time
or another.” I found that the normal activity-time patterns (as registered by
the water currents) are hardly altered, if at all, by the loss of the front end
of the body.

428 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

with its fellows, is talking to itself. One cannot help wondering what
would happen if one could work some kind of magic spell and enable
the lugworm to detect the water currents of its neighbors. It is not
conceivable that the worms would resonate, as it were, to the same
pattern—that moods would spread across a lugworm beach, just as
they do through a flock of jackdaws? The mechanical effect on the
beach of synchronizing the efforts of all these hundreds of thousands
of little diggers might be formidable, but it would lead me too far
astray to pursue that line of thought.

I have already wandered quite far enough since my lecture began—
from worms to birds, from fact to the wildest speculation. On such
an occasion as this the speaker may be allowed to relax that caution
which normally characterizes a scientific address, and I have taken
the opportunity to make what is really a declaration of faith. I be-
lieve that the innate morphology of animal behavior is of far wider
importance than is generally realized—or, at least, generally stated—
for the principles of what I have said are already familiar furniture in
the minds of many of my hearers.

The zoologist is always concerned with organization. At whatever
level he studies his animals, he finds intricate and fascinating pat-
terns—in their gross anatomy, in their histology, even in their molecu-
lar structure. He learns also that the living body is in a state of cease-
less change—moving, growing, metabolizing, wearing out, attempting
to repair itself. The cessation of these processes is death; life is their
control; and just as the living animal patterns the molecules that con-
stitute its body into a characteristic anatomy as exactly as the assaults
and restraints of the environment will allow, it patterns the events
that constitute its behavior. It organizes itself elaborately and beauti-
fully—more so, I think, than has yet been revealed to us—not only in
space but also in time.

NOTES ON THE LITERATURE

The first part of the lecture is based on the following original
papers:
ARENICOLA
Feeding cycle: G. P. Wells, Journ. Exp. Biol., vol. 14, p. 117, 1937. Defecation
cycle: G. P. Wells, Journ. Mar. Biol. Assoc. U. K., vol 28, pp. 447, 465, 1949.
Review: G. P. Wells, Symp. Soc. Exp. Biol., vol. 4, p. 127, 1950. Additional
details: G. P. Wells and E. B. Albrecht, Journ. Exp. Biol., vol. 28, p. 41, 1951.
G. P. Wells, Journ. Mar. Biol. Assoc. U. K., vol. 32, p. 51, 1953; Quart.
Journ. Micr. Sci., vol. 95, p. 251, 1954.
Nervous system of the esophagus: M. Whitear, Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci., vol.
94, p. 298, 1953.
Action of changes in bathing medium on the esophagus: G. P. Wells and I. C.
Ledingham, Journ. Exp. Biol., vol. 17, pp. 337, 353, 1940; vol. 19, p. 176, 1942,

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR—WELLS 429

OTHER WORMS
G. P. Wells and R. P. Dales, Journ. Mar. Biol. Assoc. U. K., vol. 29, p. 661, 1951.
G. P. Wells, Proc. Roy. Soc., B, vol. 188, p. 278, 1951; vol. 140, p. 70, 1952.

I am by no means expert on the other groups mentioned. The fol-
lowing references are to works that I happen to have encountered and
enjoyed. I have deliberately avoided the complicated question of
inherent rhythms synchronized with the tidal, diurnal, lunar, or
annual cycles, on which there is an enormous literature.

Birps

B. M. Nicholson, Songs of wild birds (1936), with a chapter by Ludwig Koch.
This was published with a “learner’s set” of gramophone records. There
have been subsequent issues of bird-song records; in my opinion, the first
is still the best because of the excellence of the book.

Niko Tinbergen, The herring gull’s world (1953).

A, B®. Armstrong, The wren (1955).

Konrad Lorenz, Er Redete mit dem Vieh, den Voegeln und den Fischen (1949).
Translated as King Solomon’s Ring (1952). Jackdaws in both versions;
geese in the German only.

Song-learning in chaffinches: W. H. Thorpe, Nature (London), vol. 173, p.
465, 1954.

Whitethroats: F. Sauer, Zeitschr. Tierpsychol., vol. 11, p. 10, 1954.

Great tits: R. A. Hinde, Behaviour, Suppl. No. 2, 1952; vol. 5, p. 191, 1953.

Domestic fowl: N. E. Collias, Auk, vol. 69, p. 127, 1952. N. E. Collias and M.
Joos, Behaviour, vol. 5, p. 175, 1953.

OTHER ANIMALS

Sea anemones: E. J. Batham and C. F. A. Pantin, Journ. Exp. Biol., vol. 27,
p. 290, 1950. C.F. A. Pantin, Symp. Soe. Exp. Biol., vol. 4, p. 175, 1950.

Sea squirts: Graham Hoyle, Journ. Mar. Biol. Assoc. U. K., vol. 31, p. 541,
19538.

Fresh-water mussels: G. HE. Barnes, Journ. Exp. Biol., vol. 32, p. 158, 1955.

Cicadas: J. W. S. Pringle, Journ. Exp. Biol., vol. 31, p. 525, 1954.

Newts: H. Spurway and J. B. 8. Haldane, Behaviour, vol. 6, p. 8, 1953.

Mammals (including medical students) ; also pigeons: Curt Richter, Quart.
Rey. Biol., vol. 2, p. 8307, 1927.

GENERAL

Review of biological rhythms: Nathaniel Kleitman, Physiol. Rev., vol. 29,
No. 1, 1949.

The fourth volume in the series Symposia of the Society for Experimental
Biology (1950) is an interesting and still useful collection of different ap-
proaches to the mechanisms of animal behavior.

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Rivers in the Sea'
By F. G. Watton SMITH

Vice President and Secretary

The International Oceanographic Foundation

[With 6 plates]

THE PASSENGER aboard ship, out of sight of land, sees only the mo-
tion of his vessel through the water. There is nothing visible about
the sea surface to show whether the water itself is moving, either as a
favorable current, helping the ship’s progress, or, as an adverse cur-
rent, retarding it. Yet currents do exist in the open sea, of such power
as to make a substantial difference to the daily distance made good by
the ship and so be important to the mariner as a factor in fuel econ-
omy as well as in his navigational estimates. It is important, then, to
measure the speed of these rivers in the sea and to know how they
vary from season to season, day to day, and even hour to hour. The
ways of doing this are surprisingly varied and involve some of the
most ingenious ideas and devices in the science of oceanography.

IMPORTANCE OF CURRENTS

There are other ways in which ocean currents are important. Near
the Equator the surface of the sea gains heat from the sun, whereas
there is a heat loss at the Poles. The action of such currents as the
Gulf Stream, carrying warm water poleward, has a profound effect
upon climate and weather. The distribution of fishes is dependent
upon sea-water temperature, and is thus both directly and indirectly
related to ocean currents. Currents not only carry food in the form
of microscopic sea life or plankton but also help to distribute the fer-
tilizer materials upon which they grow. There are numerous other
problems both of scientific and practical importance which involve a
knowledge of the pattern in water movement in the sea, and today
there is the most recent one of disposing of radioactive wastes at the
bottom of ocean deeps. This requires a knowledge of how long it

*Reprinted by permission from Bulletin of the International Oceanographic
Foundation, vol. 2, No. 2, July 1956.

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RIVERS IN THE SEA—SMITH ' 433

would take for deep bottom water at any given place to reach the sur-
face. If the time is great enough, much of the radioactivity might be
lost, otherwise it would become a hazard.

GIANT EDDIES

The major currents of the world, with some exceptions, run as part
of a continuous circulation, completing a clockwise circuit in the
northern oceans and a counterclockwise one in the southern oceans. In
general, the current flowing toward the Pole on the western side of
the ocean tends to be comparatively narrow and fast, whereas the cor-
responding current on the east, flowing toward the Equator, tends to
be wide and slow. Thus the Gulf Stream, a flow of between 25 and 50
million tons of water per second, is concentrated into a fairly narrow
stream in its most westerly part, and has a maximum velocity of over
six knots at times. Having crossed the Atlantic Ocean, the stream
veers south again, off the coast of Africa, to complete the circuit.
Here, as the Canaries Current, its flow is very slow and is spread over
a wide area. The counterpart of the Gulf Stream in the North Pacific
is the Japanese Current, the Kuroshio, and in the Indian Ocean there
is the strong Agulhas stream flowing south, off the coast of east
Africa.

There are, of course, many other currents besides those which form
the major circulations of each ocean. Some are tidal, others due to
seasonal winds, to unequal heating of the water, or indirectly caused
by winds which pile the water up against the coast, thereby bringing
about a longshore current parallel to the coastline. And here it may
be said that, as a rule, the currents caused by winds do not flow in the
direction of the wind, but at an angle to it, with a right-hand twist in
the Northern Hemisphere, left-hand in the Southern Hemisphere.
Thus the trade wind of the southern North Atlantic blows from the
northeast in a southwesterly direction toward the Equator but the
north equatorial current which it drives across the Atlantic moves to
the right of the wind, in a westerly direction toward the Windward
Islands.

Although, for the most part, the ocean circulations of the two hemis-
pheres do not directly intermingle, there is a current which branches
off from the South Equatorial Current, flows across the Equator and
joins the westerly movement into the Caribbean. This transports
something like six million tons of water a second across the Equator.
There is no compensating surface current in the opposite direction,
and the North Atlantic and Polar Sea have no other outlet. Ob-
viously there must be an accounting for this net gain of surface water
by the North Atlantic, and equally obviously there must be a compen-
sating return movement somewhere. Since it does not take place at

434 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

the surface there is, as might be expected, a flow of water deep below
the surface, to the south. A number of compensating flows of deep
water are found in all of the major oceans and they, in turn, are linked
to vertical movements, the transfer of water back and forth between
the surface and the deeper layers.

SINKING WATER

The net gain of surface water to the North Atlantic is balanced by
water which leaves the surface and sinks below in areas between
Greenland and Iceland, in the Labrador Sea, and to the west of where
the Mediterranean communicates with the Atlantic. Each of these
three downward movements removes from the surface about one-third
of what the Southern Equatorial Current brings to the North Atlantic.
There are reasons for these vertical movements, based upon unequal
heating and cooling of sea water and upon evaporation and rainfall.
The hotter sea water becomes, the lighter it is, so that it tends to rise
to the surface. The cooling of sea water has the reverse effect and
gives it a tendency to sink. Evaporation of sea water at the surface,
due to winds and the heat of the sun, makes it saltier and heavier.
The addition of fresh water by heavy rains has the effect of reducing
the salinity and so causing surface water to become lighter.

SIX MILLION TONS PER SECOND

The surface of the Mediterranean Sea loses more fresh water by
evaporation than it gains from river discharge and rainfall and there-
fore becomes heavier than the water in the adjacent Atlantic. The
result is that in the Straits of Gibraltar there is a 2-knot inflow of
lighter surface water from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, and this
is compensated for by a deep subsurface flow of the heavier Mediter-
ranean water into the Atlantic. This continues to sink and joins the
deep south-flowing stream on its way to cross the Equator. A similar
amount of surface water joins the deep southward flow by sinking
off Greenland and in the Labrador Sea at places where the cold Arctic
water, meeting warmer, but saltier Atlantic waters, especially in
winter, cools the latter by mixing until the surface waters become
heavier than those below. ‘The North Atlantic loses in this way a total
of 6 million tons of surface water a second, but this amount returns
to the surface in the South Atlantic, owing to other forces, where
it exactly replaces the six million tons of water which originally
crossed the Equator to enter the North Atlantic circulation.

SOURCES OF FERTILIZER

There is another type of vertical movement in the sea. When winds
or other causes bring about a divergence of currents, water will well

RIVERS IN THE SEA—SMITH 435

up from below to fill the void. Similarly, when currents meet or
converge, there is a net displacement of water in a downward direc-
tion. Winds blowing away from a coast may have most important
effects since the water displaced offshore must be replaced from
below. The lower layers of water are often better supplied with
natural fertilizer than those at the surface so that upwellings of water
are apt to be more productive of sea life, including commercial fishes.
The west coast of Africa is a good example of such a situation. The
reverse case, when water is piled up along the shore, may result in
a sinking surface water which is replaced by less fertile surface water

from oftshore.
MEASURING CURRENTS

How is it possible to measure the rate of these various currents and
to estimate the volume of water transported? There is a wide variety
of methods available to oceanographers, some simple and some more
complicated, but the simplest are those that are based upon the meas-
urement of a drifting object. For instance, a line might be let down
to the bottom with a weight for anchor and the ship allowed to drift,
without power or sail. The rate at which the line is dragged out
would provide an approximate measure of the ship’s movement due
to the current. When Columbus, halfway across the Atlantic on his
first voyage, tried to sound for bottom he failed to find it, but the
angle at which his leadline ran out from the becalmed ship gave clear
indication that the ship was moving westward with the surface water
layer while the weighted end of the line was in a deeper, relatively
motionless layer. Today a ship may be moored to an ice flow and the
current speed measured in a similar way by dropping a weighted
line to the bottom and measuring the speed at which it has to be
run out as the ship moves within the ice and current.

CURRENTS FROM SHIP’S LOGS

A great deal of information about currents has been obtained from
the navigational records of ships, filed with the U. S. Navy Hydro-
graphic Office. From this information the monthly averages of cur-
rents are charted. Using the known speed of the ship through the
water a navigator is able to calculate what his position should be at
the end of any given period of time, assuming that no currents are
diverting the ship. At the end of this time he finds his actual position
or fix by taking bearings of a stationary light or by observations of
heavenly bodies. The difference between the predicted position and
the actual position gives the direction and speed of the current.
Today, there are more and more reliable methods of fixing a ship’s
position, even with an overcast sky, owing to the invention of Loran,
radar, and radio direction finding. Even so, this method will only

436 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

give the average current speed over a more or less extended distance
and gives no information about the actual speed of current at any one
point or about its variations.

MEASURING THE SHIP’S SPEED

The speed of a ship is measured in a number of ways. The patent
log, a propeller towed behind the vessel, clear of its wake, is attached
by a cord to an instrument that records on dials the distance traversed.
Another device, the pitot log, measures the pressure differences in tubes
projecting from the ship’s hull, and records this as speed, much as
the air-speed indicator of a plane. The Kenyon log measures speed
by the deflection of a blade projecting from the hull into the water.
And the speed of revolution of the ship’s engines and propellers may
be used to judge her speed through the water when properly calibrated
for various conditions. Most of these methods are designed for meas-
uring the comparatively high speeds of ships through the water and
are not accurate when used to measure the slower drift of ocean cur-
rents past the hull of an anchored Vessel. Special instruments have
therefore been designed for use from anchored vessels in order to
measure currents, both at the surface and at various depths below.
Lightships thus become of especial value to the oceanographer inter-
ested in currents at sea.

FLOWMETERS

Flowmeters used from stationary vessels or buoys are frequently
driven by means of a propeller or by a set of cups similar to those of
a wind gauge. These are set in motion by the water passing by. Their
speed of rotation is proportional to the current, and they are so ar-
ranged as to register the number of revolutions on a dial. The Ekman
type of meter, which has been used most frequently, also has an in-
genious arrangement for showing the changing direction of the cur-
rent. The propeller is geared so as to rotate a horizontal disk con-
taining a single hole of the exact size to allow a small shot to pass
through from a shot reservoir above it. Every 33 revolutions of the
propeller the hole arrives in position and the shot drops through the
disk. Beneath the hole in the disk is a pivoted magnet carrying a
channel along which the shot rolls. Beneath the magnet is a box with
36 radially arranged compartments, each corresponding to a 10-degree
sector of the compass. The whole instrument is suspended so that
vertical fins will keep it alined with the direction of the current. ‘Thus,
each time a shot drops, the compartment to which the magnet directs
it indicates the direction of the current.

Current meters of the Ekman type may be suspended at intervals
on a long cable and in this way measurements may be made at various

|
|
|

RIVERS IN THE SEA—SMITH 437

depths from the surface to the bottom. Special weights sent down the
cable will release trigger devices so as to start and stop the meters at
precise times after lowering the cable and before hauling it back to
the surface. Variations of this type of meter are also designed so as
to make mechanical records, or to record current velocity and direc-
tion on the deck of the ship by electrical means.

Among the ingenious devices applied to current meters are those
designed to keep the recording or electrical parts in a waterproof
housing. One type of meter, designed to operate for long periods
without attention, has the propeller outside of the main instrument.
Instead of a shaft entering the instrument through a watertight seal,
the propeller carries a magnet. As this rotates it actuates the record-
ing mechanism within the watertight shell, so that no shaft need pene-
trate and the problem of a seal resistant to the high pressures of deep
water is sidetracked. Some instruments of this type are designed so
that at regular intervals of time part of a strip of photographic film
is exposed, while a light illuminates the dials showing the time and
the velocity and direction of current. In an instrument developed
at Miami which can be left unattended on the bottom of bays and
estuaries, the photographic record also includes the salinity of the sea
water measured by its density, and the tidal depth of the water.

There are simpler devices that tell the speed of currents at the sur-
face only. These depend usually upon the drag of a float upon a
pendulum or cable, which is pulled at an angle from the vertical ac-
cording to the speed of flow. For measuring current at various depths
the more complicated meters are needed. Even here the problem
arises of the back-and-forth motions of the vessel as it rides to its
anchor, especially in deep water. Fortunately, the motion of the ship
is rhythmical in nature and can be subtracted from the meter records
by careful analysis.

DRIFT BOTTLES AND FLOATS

When measurements are needed over a wide area, anchored ships
do not offer a practical solution and, instead, use is made of drifting
bottles or floats. The simplest observation of this kind must have been
the discovery of tropical woods or fruits on European shores, which
indicated that currents reaching northern Europe must have origi-
nated in the Tropics and to the west. Perhaps this influenced the
Norse explorations long before the time of Columbus. Today various
types of floats are set free upon the water so that when recovered
they may indicate something of the nature of the currents that carried
them. Glass bottles with addressed postcards and directions for filling
out details of time and place of recapture have long been used. Some
types of bottles are weighted and have a wire trailer below so that

438 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

they will drift just clear of bottom obstructions and be carried by
bottom currents.

RED TIDE

This is one of several hundred cards released along the West Coast of Florida for
the study of currents in connection with the Red Tide. Your cooperation in giving
accurate information and returning the postage-free card will be greatly appreciated,
and will be very beneficial to you and your neighbors.

Datevand), DimesTound 2024 =o Sas Se ee 3 a ae oe es =

Wihere found 4 2 08 os] ke ee ee ee a ee ee eee

(Name of Beach, Key, Place on shore, near what city, or other prominent reference
point. OR, if at sea, exact latitude and longitude.)

Nameand Address.of Winder?:-f3i22.—5042-52. Bee ee Se ee Re eee

The back of a prepaid postal card used in drift bottles and in pliofilm envelopes
for investigating currents in their relation to Red Tide

DRIFT CARDS

An interesting variation in the use of drifting floats is the drift card,
which consists of the usual information postal card enclosed in a
transparent pliofilm envelope so that it floats. During investigations
of the Florida Red Tide, The Marine Laboratory of the University
of Miami used thousands of these cards. They were distributed from
a fleet of private motorboats in such a way that very large areas of
water were covered, and when picked up by the same fleet some
days later an unusually detailed picture of the complicated system of
currents and eddies off the west coast of Florida was obtained.

The interpretation of float records is full of difficulties, since any
one bottle, card, or float can only tell the beginning and end of its
course and the time taken. It does not show whether the course was
direct or indirect. An example of this was given by Dr. Tait in his
study of the North Sea currents in relation to fisheries. Bottles
released at one place were picked up near the coast of Jutland at
various times. The times taken for them to reach the place where
they were picked up were in multiples of 20 days. The explanation
was that there is a big eddy off the Jutland coast and that the circula-
tion time of the eddy is about 20 days. Some bottles completed the
course once, but others went around twice or even more before being
picked up.

RADIO FLOATS

As electronic devices are being applied more and more to oceano-
graphic problems and instruments today, it is not surprising to find —
the drift buoy or float undergoing its own kind of evolution. Floating |

PEATE!

1956.—SMITH

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Currents are measured directly by means of specially designed meters, similar in prin-
ciple to wind recorders, which are lowered on cables to the required depth. ‘The fins
ensure that the propeller which is turned by the current always faces toward it.

PEATEsS

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—SMITH

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oy Yorum ul yad

9p Ae! pue IDTEM BOS fo AVIATION pUuos [BIT I9]9 pue ainjeloduis} SoInseoul Yory mM JUSWINILSUT ue SI Riel) aH,

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—SMITH PLATE 4

Samples of sea water used in the measurement of ocean currents are taken in special steel
containers known as Nansen bottles. A series of these, open at each end, is lowered on
a cable to the required depth. Weights are then sent down the cable which release one
end of each bottle so that it turns upside down, at the same time closing each end so as
to trap water from the required depths. Thermometers may be seen in metal tubes at-
tached to the side of the bottles for measuring the temperature at each depth.

1956.—SMITH PEATE:

SMITHSONIAN REPORT,

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-soid ay1 Aq Ivy poeysnad ap30q Jars Aavay V [njores uodn spusdoep sjualin> uvsso Sutinsevour jO poylour jut

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—SMITH

PLATE 6

In ocean races today more and more yachtsmen are taking advantage of the fact that |
temperature changes take place at the sea surface in relation to the position of ocean cur-
rents. ‘This has been especially true in the Newport-Bermuda race which crosses the
Gulf Stream, variable in speed and position. ‘The illustration shows Comanche leaving

Jubilee at the start of the Lipton Race, sailed in the Florida Current, at the headwaters
of the Gulf Stream.

RIVERS IN THE SEA—SMITH 439

buoys, with deep keels or weighted poles to minimize wind action,
are now equipped to send out radio signals which carry information
about water temperature as well as signaling their changing positions.
Surface vessels are thus able to follow individual fioats at their will,
simply by “homing” on the radio signals. Another type of float works
in reverse, as it were, by having a staff and metal flag that acts as a
radar target, so that the research vessel may find its free floating
buoys on its own radar screen. This system obviously suffers from
being unduly subject to the effects of wind on the target. Still an-
other type of free-floating buoy, developed at Miami, has a lightweight
anchor and cable. At the end of a specified period, say 30 hours, a
clockwork mechanism trips the anchor, thus mooring the float, and
erects a radar target, previously folded down out of wind action.

So far we have considered the more or less direct ways of measuring
ocean currents, but there are some interesting properties of sea water
that make it possible to use indirect methods, involving, odd as it may
seem, tide gages, thermometers, electric currents, and even chemical
analysis. Only by means such as these is the oceanographer able to
compute more or less accurately the volume of water flowing in the
sea which, in the case of the Gulf Stream, is many hundred times that
of River Mississippi in flood.

ELECTROMAGNETIC MEASUREMENT

An old principle has been recently applied to the measurement of
currents. This is based upon the electromagnetic properties that
underlie the dynamo from which we obtain our electricity for power
and light. When an electrical conductor moves across a magnetic field,
then an electric current is developed in the circuit containing the con-
ductor. The faster the conductor moves the more electricity is pro-
duced. Pretty much the same thing happens when sea water, itself a
conductor of electricity, moves across the earth’s magnetic field.
And so, by measuring the small amounts of electricity produced at
sea, we have a means of measuring the rate of flow of the water. For
this purpose two stationary electrodes may be placed at suitable dis-
tances apart and the electrical flow between them measured. Or
they may be towed behind a ship. In each case they measure the
water flow between and at right angles to the line joining the elec-
trodes, independent of the ship’s speed. The instrument used at sea
today, including a potentiometer, which records the speed of water
current continuously on paper, is known as the G. E. K., or to be
more exact the geomagnetic electrokinetograph. When the method
was originally tested in England by Faraday from a bridge over
the River Thames the results were not satisfactory, but in more re-
cent years Longuet-Higgins and subsequently Von Arx have developed

4125755729

440 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

a satisfactory system. A remarkable feature of this method is that
under some conditions the measurement of water currents may be
carried out without even leaving the shore. Since the electrical field
caused by currents extends beyond the edge of the water the electrodes
may be used on land where they measure the speed of water from the
terrestrial part of the electrical field.

Water in the open sea is not exactly the same from top to bottom.
As mentioned previously, sea water is lighter when it is warmer and
fresher, and heavier when it becomes cooler and saltier. As might be
expected, when undisturbed by currents or mixing processes, the sur-
face layers of the sea will be lighter and successively deeper layers
will be increasingly heavy. The exact density can be calculated from
the temperature and salinity. When a current flows, however, there
is a readjustment of the distribution of density in the water to com-
pensate for the earth’s rotation, which exercises an effect on moving
bodies known as the Coriolis force. The effect of this is to shift the
heavier water toward the left of the current when looking down-
stream in the Northern Hemisphere. ‘The degree of this shift is pro-
portional to the current. The oceanographer can therefore calculate
the flow of a water current at sea provided he knows the way in which
the water density is distributed.

For practical purposes, the research vessel steams at right angles
to the current, stopping at intervals to make the necessary measure-
ments. At each station a cable is sent down with a number of water-
sampling bottles attached to it at appropriate intervals. The Nansen
hottles, as they are called, are made of steel tube, and are sent down
with both ends open so that the water runs through them. When each
arrives at its proper depth, messenger weights are sent down the
cable so as to trip a trigger mechanism that turns the bottle upside
down on its hinged attachment to the cable, while at the same time
closing it. The temperature is meanwhile measured by means of a
sensitive thermometer, attached to the bottle, which automatically
records the temperature registered at the time it is upended. The
saltness of the water is measured by chemical analysis of the sample
brought back in the bottle.

The thermometer used is guarded against the pressure of water by
being enclosed in a protecting tube. A second thermometer is car-
ried on the Nansen bottle for the surprising purpose of measuring
the depth at which the sample is taken. In order to do this, this ther-
mometer is not provided with a protecting tube. Asa result, the water
pressure causes the bulb to be slightly compressed and so the thermom-
eter registers higher than it should. The amount of pressure and
therefore the depth of water can be calculated from the difference in
reading of the two thermometers.

RIVERS IN THE SEA—SMITH 44]

Another consequence of the way in which the Coriolis force causes
a redistribution of water density enables changes in the flow of ocean
currents to be measured by means of tide gauges. Since the heavier
water shifts to the left of the stream, the water surface tilts in order to
maintain equilibrium so that the right-hand edge of the stream is
higher than the left. For instance, the Atlantic circulation, including
the Gulf Stream, flows in a circuit with the Sargasso Sea near the
center. On all sides, therefore, there is a downward slope of water
from the Sargasso Sea outward. In the Florida Straits this means
that the water level at Miami on the coast of Florida is around two
feet lower than it is at Gun Cay on the Bahamas side of the Straits.
This downhill gradient increases when the current increases, so that
comparison of tide-gage records at the two places enables the ocean-
ographer to detect changes in the pace of the Gulf Stream, after
averaging out the tidal movements, of course.

AID TO YACHTSMEN

Yachtsmen in the Newport-Bermuda ocean race go to sea equipped
with water thermometers, not through an enduring interest in
oceanographic science, but for navigational reasons, since they are able
to judge when they enter the Gulf Stream by changes in the surface
temperature. Since there is relatively less change in saltness than in
temperature in the open ocean it follows that the density distribution
is more noticeably reflected in the temperature of the water. For this
reason there is a rise of temperature as a ship enters the Gulf Stream
from the American side.

VERTICAL CURRENTS

Mention has been made of vertical currents and the huge slow move-
ments of water deep below the surface. The measurement of these
presents a different kind of problem to that of surface currents and
so other methods must be used. An obvious approach, of course, is to
add up the volume of water flowing into and out of any particular
ocean or body of water. When the surface currents are known and
hence reliable estimates can be made of the vertical movements, then
a balance may be struck and the residual amount of flow must take
place below the surface. A water budget, in fact, is set up. Other
methods are used, involving the measurement of carbon isotopes in the
sea. The ratio of the carbon-12 and carbon-14 atoms in the water
varies according to the length of time it has been away from the sur-
face so that isotope measurements provide a measurement of the water
movement. Other approaches involving changes in oxygen concen-
tration, temperature, and salinity have been used and will be de-
scribed, it is hoped, in a future article.

A Narrative of the Smithsonian-Bredin
Caribbean Expedition, 1956

By Watvo L. ScuMitT

Head Curator of Zoology, U. S. National Museum
Smithsonian Institution

[With 8 plates]

The Caribees, the Lesser Antilles, the Windward and Leeward
Islands !—names to conjure with. This cradle of many of our hurri-
canes and much of American history is equally fascinating from a
purely scientific point of view. It is still a happy and a fruitful
hunting ground for the naturalist, and so it proved to be during
the recent Smithsonian-Bredin Expedition to the Caribbean, spon-
sored and led by J. Bruce Bredin,? of Wilmington, Del. The Smith-
sonian has long been interested in these islands “adjacent” to our
continent and has welcomed all opportunities such as the present one
to learn more about them and their inhabitants—animal, plant, and
human, present and past, recent and fossil.

In 1947 Ernest May financed explorations along the historic route
of Columbus so that Dr. Herbert Krieger, Smithsonian ethnologist,
might reconnoiter the native village sites reported by the discoverer
of the New World in the course of his four voyages of exploration,
and so that Conrad Morton, Smithsonian botanist, could spend six
weeks on the Island of St. Vincent sampling the flora of its little-
investigated higher levels and mountains. Earlier, in 1937, the writer,
as marine biologist to the Smithsonian-Hartford Expedition on the
Joseph Conrad, visited a number of the islands of the West Indies,
including some in the current itinerary, and others in the Greater
Antilles, and in 1938 as a member of the Hancock Atlantic Expedition
to the north coast of South America he was enabled to collect on
the island of Tobago, not reached during the Bredin Expedition.

1 An Honorary Fellow of the Smithsonian Institution, Mr. Bredin sponsored the
Smithsonian-Bredin Expedition to the Belgian Congo in 1955 and another expedi-
tion to the Society Islands in 1957. Previously he had actively participated in
the Smithsonian-Hartford Expedition.

443

444 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

The Smithsonian’s earliest collections for the area are recorded in
the National Museum’s fish and invertebrate divisions as having beeu
received from Theodore N. Gill, who collected extensively in Trinidad
and Barbados in 1857-58.

These expeditions, undertaken and underwritten for the purpose
of broadening the Institution’s coverage of the animal and plant life
of the world, do much to increase its knowledge of their kinds and dis-
tribution and their representation in the study and reference collections
of the U.S. National Museum.

The Smithsonian-Bredin party, besides Mr. Bredin and the writer,
included Dr. Fenner A. Chace, Jr., carcinologist and marine biologist ;
Dr. J. F. Gates Clarke,? entomologist and microlepidopterist; and
Dr. Albert C. Smith, botanist and specialist on the flowering plants—
all then members of the professional staff of the U. S. National
Museum.

Desmond Nicholson captained our chartered yacht, the Freelance,
out of Antigua, which served as our floating laboratory. His school-
days acquaintance with the seashore life of the British Isles, his skill
and experience with the underwater face mask and snorkel, and his
untiring efforts afloat, ashore, and under water materially enhanced
the collections of marine animals taken in the course of the expedition.
Supporting the captain was the F'reelance’s cooperative, able crew of
native Antiguans, all five experienced sailors—“Kennet” Potter, cook,
a man who commanded universal respect and who also took over as
first mate in the captain’s absence or whenever his services were needed ;
Smith, the engineer, who saw to it that the yacht’s twin auxiliaries,
the generator, motorboat, and outboard functioned properly and when
wanted; Danny Thomson and Miguel, deck hands; and Thomas, cabin
boy. Among them, all our wants were well attended, even to trudging
miles overland, assisting the botanist with his plant collecting. Haul-
ing seines or cracking rocks and coral heads for the contained borers
and other life harbored in their crevices and interstices was all in the
day’s work for the crew. No matter what other work was being
carried on, there was always a line, hook, and spinner or two trolling
off either quarter while the ship was under way. The cry of “fish”
always called forth speedy action. Everyone but the man at the
wheel dropped what he was doing and ran aft either to take a look
or to lend a hand getting the line aboard. Most of these interim
catches of fish were eaten, if not wanted for specimens or for the
parasites attached to them.

? Desirous of spending more time on the island of Dominica than the planned
itinerary of the expedition would have permitted, Dr. Clarke flew to Dominica
while the rest of the party proceeded to Port of Spain, Trinidad. Dr. Clarke
joined the expedition at Roseau. Pertinent notes on insects and plants were
supplied by Drs. Clarke and Smith, respectively.

CARIBBEAN EXPEDITION, 1956—SCHMITT 445

The Freelance herself, a twin diesel schooner, measured 86 feet over- |
all. She had a 19-foot beam and 11-foot draft and was equipped with
motorboat, sailing dinghy, electric generator, electric fans and refrig-
eration, with hot and cold running water in each stateroom. Two
single and two double cabins provided ample accommodation for our
party.

To keep our rendezvous with the Freelance in Trinidad we obtained
passage for ourselves and our bulky outfit and collecting gear aboard
the cruise ship Je de France to Port-of-Spain. A one-day’s stop in
Barbados made it possible to visit the Bellairs Research Institute of
McGill University and the Barbados Museum.

The Institute, at St. James, a short distance out of Bridgetown, is
being set up primarily as a marine laboratory. The director, Dr. John
B. Lewis, had visited us previously at the National Museum, and we
were anxious to learn more of the scientific work of his laboratory.
He showed us through the Institute’s newly acquired quarters, a for-
mer private residence located on a lovely beach with a variety of ma-
rine habitats, including a flourishing coral reef close at hand. At the
time of our visit the residence was in the throes of renovation and con-
version into a well-appointed laboratory for marine study, with all fa-
cilities, including, of course, aquaria and running salt water.

The Museum, under the directorship of Neville C. Connell, is main-
tained by the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. Of marine
invertebrates, in which two of our party were especially interested,
there is a fair display of the commoner species of Crustacea and coel-
enterates, a habitat group showing a section of a local coral reef with
associated fauna, and a rather comprehensive and well-prepared series
of colored casts of the commoner fishes as found or taken about the
island. Most of the exhibits in the Museum, however, pertain to the
early history of the island, its inhabitants, their lives, local manufac-
tures, and importations. Very pertinent and of most interest were
the objects and the models relating to the early days and development
of the sugar industry in Barbados.

In Trinidad, the following day, March 7, we were met at the Cus-
toms House dock by Jocelyn Crane and Henry Fleming of the New
York Zoological Society’s staff working with Dr. William Beebe at the
Society’s Tropical Research Station at Simla. Miss Crane, well-
known authority on fiddler crabs, is associate director of the station.
Her cordial invitation to Simla was accepted forthwith by Dr. Smith
who wished to botanize the area and by the rest of us for several days
later, as we wished first to undertake shore collecting at Maracas Bay,
one of the island’s many beauty spots. We went to Simla on March 11,
it so happened in time for the dedication of the station’s new butterfly
flight cage. This was erected so that the species then under investiga-

446 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

tion could be closely followed and observed under virtually normal,
natural, yet controlled conditions.

During the entire period of our stay in Trinidad, Dr. Smith made
headquarters at Simla, which is located at an elevation of about 800
feet on the inland (southern) slope of the Northern Range of Trini-
dad. This Range comprises the island’s highest and most heavily for-
ested Jand, reaching an elevation of more than 3,000 feet; its third
highest peak, Morne Bleu (2,781 feet) lies some miles northeast of
Simla. Botanical collecting along the crest of the Range toward
Morne Bleu provided Dr. Smith with excellent material; the low
crest forest bears a heavy growth of epiphytic ferns and bryophytes,
with many species of orchids, aroids, and bromeliads. Among the in-
teresting trees and shrubs of this rain-drenched forest are species of
the melastome, madder, and pepper families, while among the under-
growth of ferns is to be found the beautiful white-flowered succulent
Begonia glandulifera, one of a group that ranges throughout the Les-
ser Antilles in wet areas.

In Port-of-Spain we paid our respects to the American Consul, and
fortuitously, through a misdirected telephone call, we became ac-
quainted with Frank Ambard, customs official, who has a very fine
and complete representation of the butterflies of Trinidad. Nearly
every species in his collection is represented by a pristine pair—with
few exceptions reared by himself.

We also visited the Royal Victoria Museum, of which Arthur N.
Greenhall is the director. This museum possesses a number of zoologi-
cal rarities, including the giant tadpole of a relatively small frog,
Pseudis paradowis. The adult is under 4 inches long, whereas the
tadpole may reach 71% inches in length.

On March 12, at 5 p. m., we were under way on the first leg of our
40 days’ and 40 nights’ cruise through the islands. This last day in
Trinidad had been a busy one getting our stores aboard, filling the
water and the fuel tanks, and our collecting chests with alcohol needed
for the preservation of zoological specimens. It was a rolling first
night at sea. The next morning was one of busy preparation organiz-
ing gear and containers, fitting together our water glass, and as-
sembling the bottom sampler. By lunch time we were tied up off
the sea wall in St. George Harbor, Grenada, just across the roadway
from the ship chandlers and the wholesale district, a busy harbor
indeed, teeming with the loading and unloading of cargoes from
the interisland schooners. We took time to make a number of pur-
chases essential for our collecting work, particularly a small kerosene
heater for Dr. Smith’s plants in their presses below deck, where
the plant specimens had to be dried because of the wind, the occasional
rain or spray, and the lack of space topside; and a wooden shovel for
screening beach sand for its contained macroscopic organisms.

CARIBBEAN EXPEDITION, 1956—SCHMITT 447

I was told that this type of shovel was ordinarily used for shoveling
cocoa pods and beans about. Before us, atop the sea wall, we saw
another step in the journey of the cocoa beans on their way from the
parent tree to the tin of commerce in which cocoa is sold. Along the
harbor road square yards of pods were spread out on tarpaulins to
dry in the sun. Over them a buxom, heavy-weighted native woman
strode in endless measured tread back and forth, crunching the pods
to free the beans,

Grenada, the southernmost of the British Windward Islands, 97
miles to the north of Trinidad, and only 133 square miles in extent,
is a veritable “Spice Island,” for, aside from cocoa beans, of which
over 5 million pounds are exported each year, nutmegs are the largest
item in the island’s economy. Before the well-nigh disastrous hurri-
cane of 1955 more than 6 million pounds of nutmegs and mace were
shipped out of Grenada. Most of these two spices are exported to the
United States, where, according to local reports, the nutmegs are used
chiefly to flavor sausage meats. Included in the island’s spice exports
are cinnamon and cloves; considerable cotton is also grown here.

The morning after our arrival in Grenada, Mr. Bredin and Dr.
Smith headed for the hills and Grand Etang, a beautiful crater lake 2
miles in circumference situated in the heart of a tropical rain forest
which covers most of this island. The volcanic depression in which
the lake is located at an elevation of about 1,600 feet is reached by a
steep, much-contorted, yet exceedingly picturesque road. It is often—
as it was this day—overhung with curtains of moist fog, while hard
showers of rain fell intermittently. The forest that fills the inner
valleys of Grenada shows the effects of the recent hurricane violence,
in that the trees, often too thickly growing to fall, stand broken and
leafless in eerie ranks. The region is not high enough to support the
“elfin woodland” that characterizes high portions of the Antilles, but
nevertheless the predominant trees do not much exceed a height of 30
or 40 feet. The immediate shores of the lake are low and swampy,
and here the botanist found excellent collecting, obtaining many
herbaceous plants such as sedges and the pretty yellow-flowered
Utricularia obtusa. On the slopes farther from the lake, in the debris
of the ruined forest, were found the coarse large-flowered Lobelia
cirsifolia, masses of the little prostrate shrub Sauvagesia erecta, and
many small-flowered orchids and ferns on the fallen branches of trees.

It is the luxuriant vegetation of the moister islands among the West
Indies that have merited them the name Isles of Paradise. Cer-
tainly those who live on Grenada, Martinique, Dominica, and Guade-
loupe—and many who visit them—feel this way about them. While
Dr. Smith was sampling the flora, Dr. Chace and I, with our para-
phernalia, took a taxicab out to Point Saline, for here the rocky

448 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE, 1956

shores, sea caves, and interspersed sandy beaches held promise of good
collecting of marine invertebrates.

We spent the afternoon collecting on a rocky reef between the ship
and the farther shore in a bight called St. Martin’s Bay. A few
dredge hauls were also made off Grenada’s famed swimming beach,
Grand Anse, just outside the harbor proper.

Although we planned an early morning start for Carriacou, 30 or
40 miles to the northward according to the strength of the wind, a case
of dysentery on board led us to seek advice and a prescription from a
local doctor. He refused payment for his services, considering us as
guests of the city, but finally he was persuaded to accept something
toward the cost of the local hospital’s charity patients.

The delayed sailing made it possible for us to extend the courtesies
of the Freelance to Dr. Slominsky, the resident physician on Carria-
cou, sparing him a 4-day wait for the next boat returning there. In
turn he was of service to us in locating a good and convenient anchor-
age in Tyrrell Bay. The bay is ringed with conical “peaked-cap”
shaped hills, all seemingly a little slumped over to the right. This
gnomelike setting was one of the richest collecting grounds of the
cruise: Porites beds with turtle-grass patches, rocky reefs, mangrove
swamps, and a wooden wreck thickly encrusted with animal and plant
growths. In a few hours, over the flats, along shore, and in the wreck,
this well-populated littoral area yielded such a profusion of specimens
representative of all groups of invertebrates that we could not prop-
erly preserve all of them before sailing the next day at noon. Never-
theless, that night we put over an electric light at the gangway.
Under it the captain wielded a busy dipnet. This routine was a regu-
lar thing for the captain almost every evening, and it always brought
in a host of the “finer things” of life, from Protozoa and copepods to
pelagic mollusks, little squids, and small octopuses, and now and then
an unexpected fish and many bizarre larval forms of them and no end
of large olive-green and blue-black sea-hares that were drifting or
swimming by. At this time of the year they were spawning in the
grass patches in shallow water, and evidently Tyrrell Bay was one of
their favored habitats.

That afternoon the weather began kicking up, and by 4 o’clock we
were driven to seek shelter in Chatham Bay on the lee side of Union
Island. This was the only really bad spell of weather encountered
during the 514-week cruise. The wind screeched and whistled all
night, and for a time both anchors with all available chain threatened
to drag. The clearing sky the next morning was ushered in with a
light breeze. Before long we reached the idyllic anchorage among the
Tobago Cays for which we had been headed the afternoon before.
Except for the utter lack of water ashore, one would be tempted to

CARIBBEAN EXPEDITION, 1956—SCHMITT 449

spend a lot of time here. The botanist and a helper from the crew
ascended the little islet of Petit Batteau to its high point of only 140
feet. Petit Batteau is a rough island composed largely of stony
debris, covered by a thick and thorny growth of low shrubs and cacti.
While the plants of this area represent widespread and common ele-
ments of the Antillean flora, the region is so seldom visited by botan-
ists that it seemed worthwhile to obtain representative specimens of
even well-known plants. Diving inside the reef, Captain Nicholson
brought us our first living crinoid of the trip. It was with sincere
regret that we left this beautiful anchorage for Mustique on the way
to St. Lucia by way of Bequia. Mustique is one of the few remaining
“feudal” holdings among the islands. It has been in the hands of one
family from the time of the original grant to the present day, and on
it is a village of several hundred of the descendants of the original
slave laborers on its plantations, who today work as tenants for the
owners of the island, whose responsibility they are for life. As one
might say, they are an integral part of the Jand—they neither know
nor have any other home. Seining was attempted off one of the better
looking beaches, but the effort was not worthwhile because the many
‘scattered coral heads made it impossible successfully to complete a
single haul. Skin diving saved the day for us, as cracked-up coral
clumps and the sponges so retrieved were alive with small animals of
all kinds.

A 4-hour run brought us to Bequia. Its harbor, Admiralty Bay, is
a quiet, out-of-the-way, withal very beautiful place, unspoiled by
tourists except for the few who may go there for no more than a dip
in the sea, a sunning on the beach, and a sleep in the shade. It was
there that we saw some of the neatest sailing ever. It is marvelous
how some of the stolid looking island schooners, with nothing but
their sails to power them, can make their anchorages in a light breeze
among other craft as easily as the best of motor sailers. True enough,
it takes them a bit longer to tack back and forth across the bay, but
the consummate skill and the certitude with which it is accomplished
are a thrill to watch. We witnessed just such a performance during
the heavily overcast afternoon that we were in Bequia; then, as the
schooner came to anchor, the sun broke through the clouds to high-
light the previously shaded white sails, a brilliantly scarlet hull
against the azure sea, the green hills in back, and the white-flecked blue
sky above. It was a seacape unsurpassed.

In passing on the way to Castries, St. Lucia, we stopped briefly at
Soufriére. Through intermittent showers we beheld one of the most
impressive harbor entrances in all the Lesser Antilles, guarded as it is
to the east by the Pitons, Petit and Gros. Here, warm sulfur baths
were enjoyed. History has it that the Empress Josephine spent her

450 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

childhood days on this island and bathed in the sulfur waters of these
self-same springs. Soufriére is almost as French as English, in its
place names at least. It changed hands a dozen times or more in the
days the French were harassing the English during our own Revolu-
tion. Castries is big and bustling, having staged a most remarkable
comeback following the disastrous fire of 1949. For the most part,
it can now boast of new, clean, and modern shops, office buildings,
and warehouses. We found it an excellent place for replenishing our
stores and fuel and water supplies.

The next morning we dropped back a few miles to Marigot Bay—a
most intriguing locality for the collector. The entrance to this
secluded, sheltered place is scarcely to be marked from offshore, yet
within it is a typical buccaneer’s hideaway. On one shore the channel
is so steep-to that one can tie up to the palm trees and literally step
ashore. The ship’s masts were completely hidden in the tops of the
trees. All that the black-hulled Freelance lacked to complete the
picture was a “Jolly Roger” emblazoned with skull and crossbones.

Some of our most successful seine hauls were made in this lovely
spot. Our botanist, Dr. Smith, returned with ample booty from the
hill above our mooring place, despite the warning posted near our
landing place that “any trespass done under this woodland will be
arrested & deal with arcording to the law.” Captain Nicholson, with
his expert diving, found something quite new to him, and to me also—
a pair of plump brownish white-spotted snapping shrimps (Alpheus
armatus) that find themselves at home in the shelter of the tentacles
of the large fleshy sea-anemone Bartholomea annulata, which lives
almost buried on sandy bottoms. These shrimps clambered over and
among the tentacles of the anemone with impunity where other species
of shrimps quickly became entangled in the mucus given off by the
tentacles and perhaps also stunned by their nematocysts and were
forthwith ingested. Though similar associations are known in zoolog-
ical literature, it had not before been observed by any of us. Later,
in an aquarium, the captain held two anemones and two pairs of these
shrimps alive for several weeks with only an occasional small freshly
killed fish for sustenance.

From Marigot Bay the course was set for Pigeon Island, which in
1782 was garrisoned by the English under Rodney in order to keep
watch on the French West Indian fleet based on Martinique. Remains
of the old fortifications and several of the cannon were noted by Mr.
Bredin and Dr. Smith while exploring the heights above the landing
place. Mr. Bredin brought back a much-corroded uniform button that
must have been dropped in the fort during its occupation in Rodney’s
day. Now the island sports a beach club with overnight cottages run
by a retired former member of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Co.

CARIBBEAN EXPEDITION, 1956—SCHMITT 451

Captain Nicholson had told us of the great seine hauls made in
favorable weather by the natives of the adjacent villages on the beach
fronting Pigeon Island. The net is dropped and the haul begins far
out in the bay at the very break of dawn. We went ashore an hour
and a half or two hours later—nearer 6 o’clock. Even then there was
scarcely light enough for regular color film—all that we had along.
More of interest to us than the seine haul was the sight that greeted
us as we struck the beach—as far as we could see in either direction—a
conspicuous pink windrow of crab larvae in the megalops stage, and
as we looked more closely the lapping wavelets and the waters of the
receding tide were “peppered” with more of these larvae, three or
four or more to every cubic foot of water. The natives said they had
never seen anything like it before. Meanwhile the wings of the seine
were coming closer and closer to shore. One of the lines, the left one
looking at the shoreward moving seine, was manned by the womenfolk,
with one lone man in the lead at the water’s edge. The other line was
being pulled in by an all-man crew. Natives in dugouts or canoes off
either end of the net beat the water with their paddles and oars or
threw stones to frighten back any fish that might try to escape the
net. After three or four hours of labor the net was ashore. The catch
was pitifully small—just not enough fish to go around. Which of the
many native families participating got what and how much, we were
unable to determine. It certainly looked as if the place was being
overfished, too regularly and too thoroughly. Specimens represen-
tative of the catch were bought for the Museum. Elsewhere in the
Lesser Antilles, the seine hauls do not appear to be any more pro-
ductive, perhaps for the same reasons. At least in Martinique in the
French West Indies, and in St. Kitts in the Leewards, this seems to
hold true. In Martinique, where we drove along the shore for a con-
siderable distance from St. Pierre to Fort-de-France, more than in
any other island there were numerous large seines drying on every
suitable beach. One haul that we witnessed not far from St. Pierre
was most scanty. Certainly something should be done to rehabilitate
the shore or seine fisheries of these islands.

At 5 o’clock on March 22 we made Fort-de-France, which must be
a popular port of call, for we found several] yachts there from the
States, including the Maverick, another of the Nicholson charter
yachts, and one from South Africa hailing from Hong Kong and
on a trip around the world. Early the next morning we paid our
respects to our American Consul, William B. Cobb, Jr., whose in-
troductions enabled us to make a number of valuable contacts and to
arrange for Dr. Smith to meet, at Guadeloupe, Dr. Henri Stehlé, a
botanist colleague with whom he had long beeen in correspondence.
This last was attended to by Dr. Blanche, Directeur du Service de

452 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Protection des Vegetaux, Service de |’Agriculture, who also took us
to meet J. Morice, Directeur de l’Office de Péches. A further courtesy
was the gift of a complete set of the bulletin issued by the local
natural history society, a periodical not otherwise available in Wash-
ington that will be very welcome to our systematic biologists. Mr.
Cobb also kindly conducted us on an extended all-day tour of the
island, first inland through rain-forested valleys to the sulfur baths,
and then over the hills to St. Pierre.

St. Pierre is the now famous city where on Ascension Day, May 9,
1902, 30,000 inhabitants lost their lives in a matter of moments in that
fearsome cloud of incandescent gas that rolled down Mount Pelée.
Parts of the city today are strongly reminiscent of Pompeii, except
where some of the new, though not always modern, buildings are being
erected among the old. Some protection is now being accorded the
more significant ruins, and continued excavation is opening up more
of the important structures and the streets of old St. Pierre. The
vulcanological museum, with its host of “relics” and photographs
taken shortly after that fatal eruption, furnishes a sad and moving
visual commentary on what was that once flourishing town and what
happened to it. It was perhaps the Creole Paris of the New World
and is memorialized in Lafcadio Hearn’s “Two Years in the French
West Indies,” written long before the disaster.

Later that day we received an invitation to meet M. Morice at the
local yacht club with Dr. Blanche, where we were shown a number
of interesting preserved specimens of Crustacea, including the three
species of spiny lobsters known from Martinique. Then he mentioned
a special zoologist’s treat he had in store for us—a bottle full of red
megalopa from Pigeon Island! Although they were picked up on
the beach 30 hours after our visit, they were little the worse for
wear. Morice assured us, too, that it was the first time the phenome-
non had come to the attention of any observant person and that he
was as anxious as we were to determine the species of crab represented.
Dr. Chace has since determined these as probably previously unknown
larval forms of an oxystome crab of the family Raninidae.

An urgent cablegram recalled Mr. Bredin to the States. His going
left a gap in our ranks, which he promised to fill at the first oppor-
tunity with his brother-in-law, Ernest N. May. It was Mr. May who
sponsored the Smithsonian-May Expedition of 1947, also to the West
Indies, mentioned on the first page of this article.

Dominica is a beautiful high island, as attractive in many ways as
equally verdant Martinique, with its majestic and destructive Mount
Pelée. Our sails, with an assist in the lee of the island from our twin
diesels, brought us from Fort-de-France to Roseau in about 9 hours.
Greeting us on the dock was Dr. Clarke, who had already spent 17

CARIBBEAN EXPEDITION, 1956—-SCHMITT 453

days on the island thoroughly sampling the microlepidopteran
fauna. In this brief span, in a rather restricted area, nearly 100 species
of Microlepidoptera were taken. In this material are many species
formerly unknown to science, many of which appear to be endemic.
Other species such as Brachyacma palpigera, and the notorious pink
bollworm (Pectinophora gossypiella) were formerly unrecorded from
the island. Extensive collecting revealed the presence of both of the
above species on many of the islands to the north. Preliminary exami-
nation indicates that the microlepidopterous family Blastobasidae,
the larvae of which feed in dead and decaying vegetable matter, finds
its greatest development in the New World Tropics where it replaces
the Lyonetiidae of the Old World Tropics. The Blastobasidae were
formerly considered a largely temperate zone family.

Dr. Clarke wished to make a final trip to the fresh-water lake that
lies some miles inland, near the main ridge of the island at the head
of the Roseau River. He and Dr. Smith spent a very profitable day
in the vicinity of the little lake, which les in a forest-surrounded val-
ley at an elevation of about 1,700 feet. Along the swampy shores of
the lake are found several species of grasses and sedges, behind which
occur the usual genera of tropical trees and shrubs. Collecting along
the trail back toward the coast, the botanist obtained many epiphytes
in the wet moss-covered forest, while an endemic West Indian
ericaceous plant, Hornemannia racemosa, was noted as abundant. A
little trailside raspberry, Rubus rosaefolius, was appreciated by the
collectors for its excellent edible qualities. This was Dr. Smith’s best
day of the trip from the viewpoint of quantity of material, as he pre-
pared 92 numbers of specimens with about eight duplicates of each.
In general he obtained this number of duplicate sets, so that the
Museum’s Department of Botany will have available seven sets of the
expedition’s plant collections to use for exchange purposes.

We anchored in Woodbridge Bay, a few miles up the coast, a some-
what better roadstead than at Roseau. Here there was a pier for
lightering bananas out to the English-bound Martha Reuter. The
loading was done with expedition, for here, as everywhere else, time
was money. All day long the trucks were discharging heavy loads
of bananas alongside natives from the hills, who brought in their one
or two stalks upon their heads. In the same fashion the stalks were
taken from the storage shed down to the pier to the lighters. Al] this
carrying was done by the women—one stalk to a head and at a rapid
walk, often a half trot, because they got so much for each one car-
ried. Returning “empty headed,” the more ambitious ones came on
a run—the more trips the more earned. The steamer was in for only
a day and had to leave at midnight. Except for brief pauses for
snacks at noon and midafternoon there was no cessation of the work.

454 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

As each woman passed a checker on the way down to the pier she was
given a metal token, for each of which she collected the equivalent of
about 2 cents (U. S.). The minimum weight of any stalks accepted
by the buyer, who pays the grower about 6 cents a pound for them, is
18 pounds, but the heaviest of these stalks easily weighed twice this.
A woman might well carry nearly a ton of bananas from morning to
midnight, when the steamer sailed, if she worked the entire time.

Here too we met Stephen Haweis, longtime resident artist of
Dominica, who painted several of the color plates for Hildebrand’s
account of fishes in the Smithsonian Scientific Series. Among other
things, Haweis is interested in the conservation of “mountain chick-
ens,” a delicacy much sought after by natives and Europeans alike, so
much so that they are becoming scarcer by the year. The mountain
chicken is neither bird nor fowl, but a large frog, Leptodactylus fallaz,
found now only in the mountain streams of Dominica. A specimen as
much as 614 inches long may weigh as much as a pound. Tasting like
breast of chicken, the flesh is firmer than that of the frog’s legs served
in the States.

On March 28 we moved up the coast hoping to explore the Layou
River Valley, a surprisingly beautiful place according to the captain,
but, to our disappointment, the surf on the river bar was impassably
high. Instead, we cast anchor in Prince Rupert Bay off the town of
Portsmouth, where we were able to secure an additional length of
stout tow line needed for contemplated dredging on the Saba Bank
later during the cruise. We got another crinoid here off Portsmouth,
and at night with the electric light lured two myctophids, fishes with
rows of small luminous spots on each side.

On our way in to Pointe 4 Pitre, Guadeloupe, we passed just the
type of reef over which we wanted to collect. It looked so good and
was so close in that Dr. Chace remarked that it could well be the type
locality for a number of the crustaceans first described from this island.
On the natural history of their West Indies the French zoologists in the
early days published a number of fine papers, but very little has ap-
peared since. On the quay we met Dr. Blanche again. He had made
a direct and quicker trip up from Fort-de-France. With him was
Dr. Stehlé, the now resident French botanist. An all-day field trip
to the uplands had been arranged for Drs. Smith and Clarke. But
the pleasure of the meeting of two longtime friends who had only
known each other through correspondence rather overshadowed the
fieldwork this day. Nevertheless, Dr. Smith obtained some specimens
of remarkable interest in the forest adjacent to the Institute for Agro-
nomic Researches, as a result of Dr. Stehlé’s intimate knowledge of the
flora. Of particular interest were the little yellow-flowered iridaceous
Trimezia martinicensis and a species of Polygala which has an odd
known distribution of only Guadeloupe and Cuba.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—SCHMITT PLATE 1

1. The Freelance, the 86-foot auxiliary schooner which served the expedition as a floating
laboratory during the 40-day cruise from ‘Trinidad to St. Croix.

2. The crew of the Freelance: Thomas, Kennet, Potter, Edmund, Smith, Danny, Miguel,
and Captain Nicholson. This picture was made at Basseterre, St. Kitts, where Edmund
replaced Miguel who had injured his hand.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—SCHMITT PLATE 2

1. The anchorage at Tobago Cays, Grenadines, from the summit of Petit Batteau. This
was one of the most beautiful localities visited by the expedition. The reefs, where the
surf is breaking in the background, merit further investigation by marine biologists.

2. Hauling the seine in Marigot Bay, St. Lucia. It was in this spot that Captain Nicholson
found the first of the striking snapping shrimps, 4/pheus armatus, associated with the sea
anemones, Bartholomea annulata.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—SCHMITT PLATE 3

1. Dr. Clarke collecting insects from a bromeliadon Dominica. The boy on the left trudged
10 miles over the mountains to sell his bunch of bananas, only to have his crop rejected.

2. Miguel among vegetation typical of the dry slopes of one of the smaller Grenadines. The
spiny character of this environment led to the conclusion that stout clothes and a for-
giving disposition were prerequisites for collecting on these otherwise delightful islands.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—SCHMITT PLATE 4

1. The Caribee. This yacht, once owned by Ernest N. May, was encountered in Sir Francis
Drake Channel while Mr. May was aboard the Freelance.

2. Faggot fishing in the Barbuda lagoon. The three fishermen are moving the stack of
waterlogged sticks outside of the net before pursing the latter and gathering the spiny
lobsters trapped inside.

PLATE 5

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—SCHMITT

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EESMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—SCHMITT PEATE

1, Dr. Clarke pinning Microlepidoptera in the Freelance’s saloon. After a successful light-
trap station, this operation sometimes lasted most of the following night in order to obtain
good study specimens of each of the species caught.

2. Dr. Smith stacks his plant presses around a lantern in his cabin. Because of unpredict-
able drying conditions on deck, all the botanical specimens had to be dried by this im-
provised method.

PEAGESS

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—SCHMITT

H

&

One of the less pleasant chores of a marine biologist is injecting the

1. Pickling the catch.
larger fishes to insure proper preservation.

CANA

and the author segregating the fragile and un-

Dr. Chace

usual invertebrates before preservation.

2. After a good day on the reef.

CARIBBEAN EXPEDITION, 1956—SCHMITT 455

The reef we spotted on the way in was centered about Rat Island.
It was indeed rich collecting, reminiscent of Carriacou. Roundabout
were mud flats, sand flats, weedy patches rather than turtle-grass
shoals, Porites clumps again, and, on the little island itself, much
honeycombed and fissured sandy limestone alive with shrimps, crabs,
and barnacles, boring, stalked, and sessile, and all manner of other
invertebrates. On the other hand, the electric light over the ship’s
side within the harbor that evening lured virtually nothing to our dip
net, probably because the waters here are too polluted.

Recalling that a longtime friend and correspondent of the National
Museum lived in Pointe & Pitre, we undertook to look him up—Adrian
Questal, now in his 80’s and confined to his third-floor elevatorless
apartment. He is very proud of the several papers he published on
the island’s flora, helped with identifications made for him in Wash-
ington. While looking for the Questal residence, we encountered a
Mr. Halley who was anxious to have a strange crab identified. He
said it had been taken in a fish pot or trap, locally. This we could
not believe, for what he had was a beautifully mounted and varnished
Birgus latro, the coconut “robber crab” known to us only from the
mid and south Pacific. We were most skeptical of his claim that this
crab came from the offshore waters of this Atlantic island, yet as we
were preparing to leave Pointe & Pitre, we spied in the curio shop
just within the customs house gates three identically mounted speci-
mens in a case with a lot of West Indian shells, sea fans, and corals.
Could it be that the robber crab has become an “acclimatized” inhabi-
tant of the coconut groves of Guadeloupe? I shall always regret that
a tight schedule did not permit us to check his information. We are
still inclined seriously to doubt it. However, the rufus-tailed guan,
a pheasant which was introduced into the islands of Bequia and Union
in the 1800’s, has become well established there; and monkeys said to
have been brought over in the slave-trading days are at home in the
forests of Grenada, according to Fredric Fenger (1926).

The night’s run northward in the lee of Guadeloupe was uneventful.
Our tries on the 40-fathom bank off Antigua for red snappers were
futile; all we got was one black crevalle. It was midafternoon before
we tied up at English Harbour and were received by Cmdr. and Mrs.
V. D. B. Nicholson, Desmond’s father and mother, from whom we had
chartered the Freelance. Here, roundabout, were what was left of
the buildings of Nelson’s day, many of which were still in good repair
when used in part as the shore laboratory of the Barbados-Antigua
expedition of the University of Iowa in 1918. It was from English
Harbour that Nelson sailed with his 12 ships to victory at Trafalgar
over the French fleet which greatly outnumbered his small fleet.

4125755730

456 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

The old sea wall of Nelson’s day, still standing, is a marvelous place
for collecting invertebrates, mobile as well as sessile, and many small
fishes, too. At night, with flashlight and long-handled dip net, night
prowlers, which seldom if ever leave the crevices in which they hide
by day, fall easy prey to the collector. Here the long-clawed, red-
banded Stenopus can be caught in quantity, one specimen at a time.
While Chace and the writer worked over the seashore, the reefs, the
harbor piling, and an old wreck, the captain successfully dived for
more of the sandy, bottom-dwelling anemones and their associated
crustaceans. In addition to the snapping shrimp, Alpheus armatus,
that he had discovered lurking among the tentacles of the sea anemones
at Marigot Bay, he found here another species with similar habits, a
hippolytid shrimp, 7hor floridanus, and also a small red mysid shrimp
of which he got several specimens under the same conditions.

The botanist and entomologist were otherwise engaged. They
always sought out the higher elevations of most of the islands visited,
fer the higher one got, and the farther from civilization, the more
natural and unspoiled the flora and fauna. The main range of hills
on Antigua bears an imposing name—the Shekerley Mountains—
although only in a few places does the elevation exceed 1,000 feet.
There remain a few patches of native vegetation on these hills, but
in the main the whole of the island has been cleared at one time or
another. On Boggy Peake, the highest on Antigua, 1,314 feet, and
later on Falmouth Peak (“Sugarloaf”), the collecting was varied.
Much of the hill area is clothed with a thorny evergreen bush con-
sisting of many species of the legume family; such genera of other
families as Guettarda, Capparis, Cordia, and Rapanea are represented
among the small trees. Several species of epiphytic bromeliads and
peperomias thrive in spite of the scanty precipitation. At lower
elevations, and especially on the dry hills near English Harbour, a
predominant plant is the tall yellow-flowered Agave obducta, endemic
to Antigua and the nearby island of Barbuda. This lowland vegeta-
tion is characterized by a preponderance of thorny plants, not only
such horrendous cacti as Opuntia triacantha and O. dillenii, but
thorny legumes, thorny Verbenaceae, thorny Rubiaceae, and thorny
Euphorbiaceae. Dr. Clarke and Dr. Smith agreed that, in pursuit of
their specialties on the hills near English Harbour, stout clothes and
a forgiving disposition were prerequisites.

The low-lying, seldom visited, reef-girt island of Barbuda was next
on our itinerary because we wanted to see there the spiny lobster
faggot fishery, about which the captain had told us. To the island’s
treacherous reefs are credited perhaps more wrecks than any other
island in the West Indies. But the island is nevertheless blessed with
a large, almost landlocked lagoon. An opening to the north permits
the shallow draft, usually Antigua-bound, sloops to make their way

CARIBBEAN EXPEDITION, 1956—-SCHMITT 457

from and to the town of Codrington on the eastern shore of the lagoon.
It is in this relatively quiet inland sea that the faggot fishery is carried
on. For the spiny lobsters, Panulirus argus, called crawfish in Florida,
and crawfish or langouste in the West Indies generally, the lagoon
seems to constitute a huge nursery. It is this circumstance, coupled
with the relatively shallow water in much of the lagoon, that makes
this unique method of fishing possible. In suitable parts of the lagoon,
in about half to three-quarters of a fathom of water, the natives build
up piles of waterlogged brush, tree limbs, and small stumps. This pile
of “faggots” is usually about 414 feet high and roughly 6 or more feet
in diameter. Left to soak undisturbed for some weeks, it becomes a
well-populated refuge or shelter for young lobsters. These are then
secured by surrounding the pile of faggots with a seine or gill net of
sufficiently small mesh. Then the fishermen stand within the en-
circling net and toss over the faggots to form a new pile just outside
the net. Thus the faggot fishery is a continuing one. When all the
faggots have been removed, the net is pursed at the bottom and the
catch dumped into the sloop in which the natives travel about the
lagoon. In the haul described there were 26 sizable lobsters. The
three fisherman who put on the “performance” for us maintain seven of
these faggot piles, in addition to whatever other fishing or agricultural
work they may do.

Ashore with his ight-trap set overnight, Dr. Clarke secured no less
than 3,000 specimens of the tiny moths, Microlepidoptera, that he es-
pecially sought. Also, in the course of a hike to the so-called south
landing, from the reefs there, additional forms of marine life were
collected, and on the road to and through the brush from the landing
Dr. Clarke got many other unexpected insects from bromeliads and
other vegetation that he hacked to pieces on the way.

From Barbuda we returned to Antigua, but our stopover this sec-
ond time was scarcely longer than necessary to stock up for the last lap
of the cruise, and to await Mr. May’s arrival by plane. This was
his first opportunity to “sign on” following Mr. Bredin’s return to
the States from Martinique.

Nevis was our next destination. On the way, early in the afternoon,
we found ourselves passing close to that isolated volcanic “extrusion”
from the bottom of the sea, Redonda. About 20 years ago I had hoped
to land on this small uninhabited island, but was thwarted by the
high seas beating against its precipitous cliffs and boulder-strewn
shores. For all these years I had wanted to get back to secure a few
specimens of the “phosphate rock” formerly “mined” here for our
late chief geologist, Dr. William F. Foshag, who had always wanted
some of it. This year I was able to gratify that ambition; the sea
was calmer, and the surf ashore far less forbidding. The captain

458 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

assenting, Dr. Clarke and I made it for a few hours, with Danny
Thomson as boatman. While I worked the shore among the boulders,
Clarke scaled the heights up a steep, narrow gully or rift. He retraced
his steps a bit faster than he went up, riding a rock slide that he
started in his descent. Though neither of our collections was at all
extensive, we must have set up a number of records. Both of us got
samples of the desired phosphate “ore,” Clarke at the upper end of
a former cableway that brought down the rock to the long-demolished
pier, and I from the dump at the lower end, where remained still a
lot of rock and debris.

Nevis is the island on which Alexander Hamilton was born, but
all that remains of the reputed site of his home are bits of foundation
walls and a few stone steps. On this day Dr. Chace and I were pitied
by the entomologist and botanist, who, as usual, headed for the high
point; on Nevis this is the precipitous truncated cone that dominates
the island, Nevis Peak, with an elevation indicated (perhaps opti-
mistically) on the charts as 3,596 feet. Marine biologists cannot
always understand the exhilaration reserved for the mountaineering
biologist, but on this clear and beautiful day we could indeed envy
our colleagues “up the hill.” They circled the peak to its eastern
base by road, and then, with a local guide, struck up the unrelenting
slope, following a single ridge to the summit. The cleared land gives
way to forest at about 1,000 feet, and from that point the ascent was
a scramble over boulders, roots, and saturated tangles of vegetation.
Occasionally the climbers came to an open shoulder from which the
cultivated fields and the shore line of Nevis could be seen far below.
After three hours of climbing the party reached the summit ridge,
above an old breached crater, which they followed to a surveyor’s
tripod on the actual summit. Several hours were spent here and on
a slower return trip. Here is one of the most spectacular views avail-
able in the Antilles, as the whole of the adjacent island of St. Kitts,
culminating in Mount Misery, spreads northward under piled white
clouds. The summit ridge of Nevis bears an excellent sample of
Antillean “elfin woodland,” a dwarfed type of forest of which the
component trees are bent and gnarled by the wind. Epiphytic ferns,
mosses, bromeliads, and orchids abound in this cool, wet realm, and
collecting for the botanist was excellent.

Inasmuch as marine collecting at Nevis was poor, we decided to
move over to Frigate Bay near the southern end of St. Kitts and
investigate what appeared on the chart to be a promising reef on
the windward side of that island. A walk of about half a mile across
the narrow neck of St. Kitts, past a pond where natives in festive
mood were sacking blocks of salt that had crystallized on the surface,
brought us to one of the most interesting reefs encountered on the

CARIBBEAN EXPEDITION, 1956—-SCHMITT 459

trip. A steep, sandy beach provided an underwater grandstand from
which to view the activities of reef fishes about the bases of colonies
of Acropora palmata. While we were there two native fishermen,
with spear guns and goggles, wended their way across the flat tops of
these coral growths to the outer edge of the reef a couple of hundred
yards away as confidently as a woodsman might follow a forest trail.

As the long haul to Tortola would take us over the Saba Bank,
we had planned a few dredge hauls on it. For us fortunately the
great underwater plateau in some places reaches to within 6 to 9
fathoms of the surface. The ground fishing attempted by the crew
drew a blank for reasons unknown to us, but the dredging exceeded
all expectations—it was the best of the cruise.

Farther along and much nearer Tortola, we stopped briefly on
Virgin Gorda to work over another rich littoral fauna in Gorda Sound,
and to permit Drs. Clarke and Smith to ascend Virgin Peak (1,379
feet). They found no part of this hill with its original vegetation
cover, but nevertheless the second-growth thickets and woods dis-
closed botanical and entomological components of considerable inter-
est. A further stop was made near the western extremity of Virgin
Gorda to visit the locally famous “Baths.” These are veritable indoor
pools open to the sea but sheltered in “chambers” formed by the most
gigantic boulders any of us had ever seen. Tortola is another of
those islands, like Barbuda, that few people ever visit unless they
have special business there. Here the last mountain, Mount Sage,
1,780 feet high, was climbed by Clarke on his last hunt for insects
on this expedition.

It zs a small world after all. Mr. May, in 1947, was the proud
owner of a very fine yacht, the Caribee, which he later sold, but this
very day of April 18, as we were bowling along with a fair breeze
through the beautiful, blue, island-studded water, Sir Francis Drake
Channel, bound for St. Croix, Mr. May, who was watching sails on
the horizon, exclaimed, “There’s the Caribee!” “How do you know?”
“T sailed her too long not to know the cut of her sails anywhere.” It
was the Caribee! In response to a radiotelephone request the present
owner kindly brought her over so that we might photograph her under
full sail. A once-in-a-lifetime happenstance—our boat being there
and for a brief spell sailing the same course in the same direction.

It was with sincere regret that we had to pass up St. Thomas and
St. John of the American Virgin Islands, but time was running out,
as did our charter of the /’reelance, too, in Christiansted, St. Croix, on
April 19, 1956. Captain Nicholson most kindly granted us several
days’ grace to get our specimens packed as the expeditionary party
scattered. Mr. May enplaned for Puerto Rico and Drs. Clarke and
Smith for the States and the Museum, to which Dr. Chace and I were

460 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

also returning with the collecting gear and pickled specimens by
slower transport, the Alcoa Runner.

All in all, the Smithsonian-Bredin Expedition on the Freelance
covered, as a ship sails into the wind, perhaps a thousand miles be-
tween Trinidad and St. Croix, and from one to another of some 28
islands or islets, rocks, or reefs on the way. Biological collections were
made on or about most of them, bottom samples were taken at 15
different anchorages, and samples of soil for biotic assay at 38 lo-
calities. The entomological aspects of the expedition were concerned
primarily with obtaining material from an area that is rather weakly
represented in the national collection. Much information on distri-
bution and ecology, and some on habits and life histories were obtained,
but the distributional data were by far the most important.

The various materials collected at this writing are still far from
being completely sorted and critically identified. Included are over
4,000 specimens of plants, more than 18,000 individual specimens of
Microlepidoptera and other insects, over 27,000 marine invertebrates
of various kinds, sea anemones, corals, polychaete worms, shrimps, and
crabs, and their smaller relatives, and many mollusks, squids, and
octopuses. Among this material are many little-known or undescribed
species. The fishes saved for the Museum’s ichthyological collections
numbered 1,700—a not insignificant showing for five “collectors” for
a 514-week period.

The Institution is again immeasurably indebted to Mr. and Mrs.
Bredin for underwriting this second of their recent scientific expe-
ditions undertaken for the enhancement of the study collections of
the United States National Museum.

Of course, there was much more to the trip than is, or can be, re-
counted in these few pages. We have set forth, briefly annotated, the
greater part of our itinerary and a few of our experiences. I cannot
refrain from citing one quotation quite typical of the natives’ phi-
losophy throughout the islands, lifted, with apologies, from a little
real-estate folder distributed in Christiansted: “Only so many dollars
on St. Croix—mon kill heself try get more’n he share.”

Man as a Maker of New Plants and New

Plant Communities’

By Epcar ANDERSON

Curator of Useful Plants, Missouri Botanical Garden
Engelmann Professor of Botany, Washington University
St. Louis, Mo.

THaT MAN changes the face of nature may be noted by any casual
observer; not even the ablest and most experienced scholar can yet
estimate just how far this has reclothed the world. Whole landscapes
are now occupied by man-dominated (and in part by man-created)
faunas and floras. This process began so long ago (its beginnings
being certainly as old as Homo sapiens) and has produced results of
such complexity that its accurate interpretation must await research
as yet scarcely begun. Though answers to many basic questions re-
main unknown, they are by no means unknowable.

The average thoughtful person has little inkling of this reclothing
of the world; even professional biologists have been tardy in recog-
nizing that in the last analysis a significant portion of the plants and
animals which accompany man is directly or indirectly of his own
making. The ordinary American supposes that Kentucky bluegrass
is native to Kentucky and Canada bluegrass native to Canada. A
few historians and biologists know that these grasses (along with much
of our meadow and pasture vegetation) came to us from Europe. The
research scholar inquiring critically into the question realizes that
some of this vegetation was as much a Neolithic immigration into
Europe as it was a later immigration into the New World. Like Ken-
tucky mountaineers, this vegetation has its ultimate roots in Asia, and
spread into central and western Europe at times which, biologically
speaking, were not very long ago.

It is obvious that landscapes such as the American Corn Belt have
been transformed by man. Other man-dominated landscapes do not

* Reprinted by permission from Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth,
published and copyrighted by the University of Chicago Press for the Wenner-
Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1956.

461

462 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

betray their origin to the casual observer. Take the grasslands of
California, the rolling hills back from the coast, the oak-dotted savan-
nas of the Great Valley. Here are stretches of what look like indige-
nous vegetation. Much of this mantle is not obviously tended by man;
it has the look of something that has been in California as long as the
oaks it grows among, yet the bulk of it came, all uninvited, from the
Old World along with the Spaniards. Most of it had a long history
of association with man when it made the trip. Wild oats, wild mus-
tards, wild radishes, wild fennel—all of these spread in from the
Mediterranean, yet over much of the California cattle country they
dominate the landscape. Native plants are there, even some native
grasses, but it takes a well-informed botanist going over the vegetation
item by item to show how small a percentage of the range is made up
of indigenous California plants.

For those parts of the Tropics where plants grow rapidly it will take
careful research before we can have an informed opinion about such
questions. ‘Thorn scrub, savannas, bamboo thickets, weedy tangles of
quick-growing trees and shrubs are known to have covered vast areas
in the last two or three millenniums. Yet Standley, our greatest
authority on the vegetation of Central America, digging up a small
tree in what appeared to him to be a truly indigenous forest in the
Lancetilla Valley, came upon a layer of potsherds (Standley, 1931).
What is the relation between the supposedly wild avocados of such a
forest and the avocados eaten in the village that once covered that
site? We now have various techniques (pollen profiles, carbon-14
datings, chromosome analysis, extrapolated correlates) which can give
critical answers, but they are time-consuming, and their application
to such problems has just begun.

The total number of plants and animals that have moved in with
man to any one spot on the earth’s surface is way beyond what even
a biologist would estimate until he looked into the problem. There
are the cultivated plants both for use and for display, the domesticated
animals, the weeds, and their animal equivalents such as houseflies,
clothes moths, rats, and mice. A much larger class comprises organ-
isms not purposely introduced by man, which are neither eyesores
nor plagues, but which, like weeds, have the capacity to get along
in man’s vicinity. Such are the daisies and yarrows and buttercups
of our meadows. Such, in a sense, are even those native species that
spread under man’s influence. Take, for example, the sunflowers of
Wyoming. They are certainly native to North America and may pos-
sibly in part be prehuman in Wyoming. They line the roadways yet
seldom are elsewhere prominent in the native landscape. They ap-
peared along with the road, even though they may have moved in from
not so far away. But how did they get into the spot from which they

MAN AS A MAKER OF NEW PLANTS—ANDERSON 463

spread, and did pioneers or primitive man have anything to do with
making this previous niche? This is the sort of question we are now
making the subject of decisive experiments; we do not yet have enough
results for decisive answers.

For micro-organisms the problem of the species that travel about
with man staggers the imagination. Micro-organisms seemingly fall
into the same general categories as macro-organisms. Brewers’ yeasts
are as much cultivated plants as the barleys and wheats with which
they have so long been associated for brewing and baking. The germs
of typhoid and cholera are quite as much weeds as are dandelions or
Canada thistles. The micro-organisms of our garden soil are appar-
ently the same mixture of mongrel immigrants and adapted natives
as our meadow and pasture plants. Soils are good or bad quite as
much because of the microcommunities they contain as because of
their composition. Man’s unconscious creation of new kinds of micro-
organisms is an important part of his total effect on the landscapes
of the world. Think, then, of this total composite mantle of living
things which accompanies man: the crops, the weeds, the domesticated
animals, the garden escapes such as Japanese honeysuckle and orange
day lily, the thorn scrub, the bamboo thickets, the English sparrows,
the starlings, the insect pests. Think of the great clouds of algae,
protozoa, bacteria, and fungi—complex communities of micro-organ-
isms that inhabit our soils, our beverages, our crops, our domesticated
animals, and our very bodies.

If we turn to the scientific literature for an orderly summary of
where these species came from and how, there is a depressing lack of
information. The crop plants and domesticated animals have been
somewhat studied, the ornamentals and the weeds scarcely investi-
gated. Even for the crop plants one notes that for those that have
been the most carefully studied—wheat (Aase, 1946), cotton (Hutch-
inson et al., 1947), maize (Mangelsdorf and Reeves, 1938)—there is
now general recognition that their origins, relationships, and exact
histories are much more complex problems than they were thought to
be a generation ago. In spite of these wide gaps in our knowledge,
I believe the following generalizations will stand:

1. All the major crops and most of the minor ones were domesti-
cated in prehistoric times. J/odern agriculture, classified solely by
the plants it uses, ts Neolithic agriculture.

2. For none of the major crops can we point with certainty to the
exact species (or combination of species) from which it was derived:
for some we can make guesses; for a number we can point to closely
related weeds. This merely complicates the problem. We then have
to determine the origin of the crop, the origin of the weed, and the
history of their relationships.

464 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

The world’s knowledge of crop plants, in other words, does not tell
us very much. Al] we know is that we are dealing with man’s effects
on certain plants in the Neolithic or before. Yet for weeds and orna-
mental plants even less is known. <A few general observations may
be offered, parenthetically, about their origins.

1. We can now point to crops that are definitely known to have been
derived from weeds. For instance, rye as a crop originated from a
grainfield weed (Vavilov, 1926). As barley and wheat spread farther
north onto the sandy Baltic plain, the weed gradually replaced the
crop. The origin of rye as a weed is a far older and more complex
problem. Stebbins and his students are far enough into it to tell us
that it is a story with several chapters, most of them unsuspected until
recently.

2. We can point to weeds that originated from crop plants. The
bamboo thickets that cover whole mountainsides in the Caribbean
came from cultivated bamboos. It now seems much more probable
that teosinte the weed was derived from maize the crop than that
maize was derived from teosinte.

3. Crop plants and their related weeds frequently have a continu-
ing effect upon each other. We have documented evidence of weeds
increasing their variability by hybridizing with crop plants and of
crop plants consciously or unconsciously improved through hybridi-
zation with weeds. ‘These processes recur repeatedly in the histories of
weeds and crop plants. For wheat it is clear that a minor grain was
in very early times built up into one of the world’s great cereals
through the unconscious incorporation of several weeds from its own
fields (Anderson, 1952, pp. 57-64).

As a whole, ornamentals (though little studied as yet) provide the
simplest keys and the clearest insights into the basic problems of do-
mestication of any class of plants or animals. Some have been do-
mesticated within the last century—the African violet, for instance—
but are already distinct from the species from which they arose.
Such recent domesticates provide unparalleled experimental material
for determining what happens to the germ plasm of an organism when
it is domesticated. Others of our garden flowers originated in pre-
historic times. They seem to have been associated with magic and
ceremony ; some of them may have been with us for as long as or even
longer than our crop plants. Take woad, /satis tinctoria, now known
only as a garden flower, though it persisted as a commercial dye
plant until Victorian times (Hurry, 1930). When Caesar came to
Britain, he found our semisavage ancestors using it to paint their
bodies. There are various other ornamentals (Bixa, Amaranthus,
Helianthus) whose earlier associations were with dyes and body paints.
Which is older, agriculture or body painting?

MAN AS A MAKER OF NEW PLANTS—ANDERSON 465

The cultivated grain amaranths (known to the Western world
mainly through such bizarre late-summer annuals as love-lies-bleed-
ing) demonstrate that we shall be in for some rude shocks when we
make serious studies of these apparently trivial plants. J. D. Sauer
found (1950) that this whole group was domesticates, divisible into
several different species, none of which could be equated to any wild
amaranth; that the whole group was of American origin; and that
the varieties cultivated since ancient times in Kashmir, China, and
Tibet were not (as had previously been taken for granted) derived
from Asiatic amaranths. They are instead identical with those cul-
tivated by the Aztecs and the Incas.

It is now becoming increasingly clear that the domestication of
weeds and cultivated plants is usually a process rather than an event.
None of them rose in one leap from the brain of Ceres, so to speak.
The domestication of each crop or weed went on at various times and
places, though by bursts rather than at a regular rate. For many
it still continues. Our common weed sunflowers, for example, are at
the moment being bred into superweeds. In California, by hybridiza-
tion with a rare native sunflower, these weeds are increasing their
ability to colonize the Great Valley (Heiser, 1949). In Texas
(Heiser, 1951), by similar mongrelizations with two native species,
they are adapting themselves to life on the sandy lands of the Gulf
Coast (see figs. 1, 2, and 3).

The story of the American sunflower is significant because it demon-
states the kinds of processes that went on in the Stone Age and
before, when our major crops were domesticated. It is because the
domestication of weeds and cultivated plants (using the word “do-
mestication” in its broadest sense) is a continuing process that it came
to my professional attention. Thirty years ago I started out to study
(and if possible to measure) such evolution as was still going on. As
I analyzed example after example, the fact became increasingly clear
that evolutionary activity is concentrated in (though by no means
confined to) disturbed habitats—to times and places where man’s
interference with the prehuman order of things has been particularly
severe. Post-Pleistocene evolution, it seems, has been very largely the
elaboration of weedlike plants and animals.

Now why should this be? What is there about the presence of man
that stimulates his plant and animal companions into increased evolu-
tionary activity? A growing body of observational and experimental
data bears directly upon that question; rather than summarizing it,
let me describe in considerable detail one particularly illuminating
example. It concernes the hybridization of two California species
of wild sage, Salvia apiana and S. mellifera. They have been meticu-
lously studied by Epling—in the field (1947), the herbarium (1988),

466 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

H. debilis vor. debilis

PRE-HUMAN

Ficure 1.—(For explanation, see opposite page.)

‘ ‘ '
Se Cultivated sunflower

PRE- COLUMBIAN

Figure 2.—(For explanation, see opposite page.)

MAN AS A MAKER OF NEW PLANTS—ANDERSON 467

'

aa et tae F
H./Bolanderi Toy
: / !

v
\
i \Weed petiolaris

“
OX

OOS

ee

5058

\ ,

ectate Was SSSetaed q
SY ers Ger, (
as

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fe ae:

! \ :

‘

’ 7
Weed cucumerifolius
} ebb ss

MODERN

Ficure 3.

Ficures 1, 2, and 3.—A diagrammatic and greatly simplified demonstration of the extent
to which the domestication of the sunflower as a cultivated plant and its development as a
weed are processes rather than events. Data from Heiser (1949, 1951) and personal com-
munications, and from my own observations. The history of the cultivated sunflower,
complicated though it is shown to be, will be simpler than that of most cultivated plants
when these histories have been worked out in accurate and documented detail. Various
complications have been ignored altogether to keep the diagram intelligible, as, for instance,
the continuing intercrossing between the “‘camp-follower” weed and the cultivated orna-
mental and field-crop sunflowers.

Ficure 1.—Annual species of North American sunflowers as presumed to have existed in
prehuman times: (1) Helianthus exilis, a highly localized endemic in the serpentine areas
of California; (2) H. petiolarts on bare sandy areas in the western Great Plains; (3) H. annuus
in playas and other raw-soil habitats of the southwestern deserts; (4) H. argophyllus on the
sands of the Texas coastal plain; and (5) H. debilis in Florida and Texas.

Ficure 2.—Hypothetical origin of the North American sunflower as a weed and as a
cultivated annual in pre-Columbian times. In the areas where annuus and petiolaris had
begun to introgress, this process is being unconsciously accelerated by the activities of early
man,

Ficure 3.—Spread of annual species of North American sunflowers in modern times. In
the Great Plains extensive introgression of annuus and petiolaris produced the Great Plains
race of Helianthus annuus, which has spread eastward through the prairies as a somewhat
weedy native. The camp-follower weed (sometimes mixed with Great Plains annuus) has
spread as a weed throughout the East and to irrigated lands in the West. In California,
by extensive and continuing introgression with exilis, it has created the semiweedy H.
bolanderi, which is still actively spreading. Similarly on the sands of the Texas coast and
the Carrizo ridge, H. argophyllus is introgressing actively with H. annuus to produce weedier
strains. Over an even wider area in Texas extensive introgression of annuus, petiolaris,
and cucumerifolius is producing a coastal-plain weed sunflower which is actively spreading
along the coast. In spots it has already reached the North Carolina coastal plain. Even-
tually this will react actively with H. debilis var. debilis, breeding a superweed for the Ameri-
can Southeast but, fortunately, a not unattractive one. The Texas and California phenom-
ena have already been documented by Heiser (1949, 1951), and research on other facets
of the problem is going forward rapidly.

468 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

the laboratory, and the experimental] plot (Epling and Lewis, 1942).
Burton Anderson and I (1954) have made an exhaustively detailed
analysis of the variation pattern of several populations, confirming
and extending Epling’s conclusions.

These two species of sage are so unlike that any ordinary amateur
would immediately recognize them as radically different plants; only
an occasional botanist would see that they are really quite closely
related and that their differences, though conspicuous, are superficial.
This was what first drew Epling’s attention to them. He found that
they hybridized readily when artificially cross-pollinated. The hy-
brids grew vigorously in an experimental plot and were fertile enough
to produce abundant and variable offspring. In spite of this
fertility, hybrids were ordinarily not found in nature or occurred
mainly at spots where the native vegetation had been greatly altered
by man’s activities. Yet on the rocky slopes where they were native,
these two kinds of sage frequently grew intermingled. Burton An-
derson and I worked with samples of wild populations of both species
so intensively that eventually we could distinguish between mongrels,
seven of whose great-grandparents were from one species and one from
the other, and plants with all eight grandparents from one species.
With this yardstick we learned that, though the plants on the moun-
tainside were prevailingly of one species or the other, yet along the
pathway from which we collected them we could find a few mongrels.
These were mostly plants closely resembling typical Salwia mellifera
but showing slight indications of S. apiana in one character or another.
Apparently the very rare hybrids which Epling had found were not
completely without issue. Some of them had crossed back to S. melli-
fera, and, of these three-quarter bloods, a few of those similar to the
recurrent parent had been able to fend for themselves.

At one point along the path we found conspicuous hybrids resem-
bling those produced by Epling; careful investigation of this area
gave us new understanding. With repeated visits we gradually real-
ized that these bizarre mongrels were limited to a definitely circum-
scribed plot having a greatly altered habitat. It was at a point where
the trail swung down along the slope. Originally a forest of live
oaks had abutted on the rocky, sunny slopes where the salvias grow.
The oaks had been cut and a small olive orchard planted and then
abandoned—abandoned so long ago that native plants had flowed in
and the whole site looked quite natural. A collection of salvias made
exclusively from among the olives was almost entirely hybrids and
hybrid descendants. Though the bulk of the plants looked somewhat
like Salvia apiana, there was not a single plant which in all its char-
acters agreed exactly with the apiana outside this plot. Further-
more, they resembled artificial backcrosses in that their differences

MAN AS A MAKER OF NEW PLANTS—ANDERSON 469

from apiana were all in the direction of S. mellifera. These “sub-
apianas” graded into plants closely resembling the first-generation
hybrids raised by Epling. There were a few “sub-medliferas” sim-
ilar to those we had detected along the pathway on the mountainside
and a few plants which on our index scored as typical melliferas.
However, in the field none of them looked quite average. Dr. Anderson
and I had to work in St. Louis on pressed and pickled material pre-
viously collected in California. Had we been able to go back and add
characters such as flower color and flower pattern to our battery of
measurable differences between S. mellifera and S. apiana, I believe
we could have demonstrated that the entire plot was colonized with
hybrids and mongrels, most of them first or second or third back-
crosses from the original hybrids to one or the other species.

The results indicate that hybrids are being constantly produced on
this mountainside, but one does not ordinarily find them, because there
is no niche into which they can fit. The native vegetation had a long
evolutionary history of mutual adaptation. Plants and animals have
gradually been selected which are adapted to life with each other like
pieces of a multidimensional jigsaw puzzle. It is only when man, or
some other disruptive agent, upsets the whole puzzle that there is any
place where something new and different can fitin. If a radical vari-
ant arises, it is shouldered out of the way before it reaches maturity.
In a radically new environment, however, there may be a chance for
something new to succeed. Furthermore, the hybrids and their
mongrel descendants were not only something new; they varied great-
ly among themselves. If one of them would not fit into the strange
new habitat, another might. Though virtually all of them had been
at a selective disadvantage on the mountainside, a few of them (aided
and abetted no doubt by the vigor which is characteristic of these and
many other hybrids) were now at a selective advantage. They con-
sequently flowed in and occupied the old olive orchard to the virtual
exclusion of the two original species.

Furthermore, to take up an important fact about which biology as
yet knows very little, the habitat among the olives was not only some-
thing new; it was open. It was not full of organisms which had been
selected to fit together. Remember that for the mountainside, on
those rare occasions where a first-generation hybrid plant had been able
to find a foothold, virtually none of its highly variable descendants
was able to persist. ‘Such species crosses can father hundreds if not
thousands of distinguishably different types of mongrel descendants.
Only along the pathway had any of these been able to find a place for
themselves and then only those that differed but slightly from Salvia
mellifera. Hybridization does not advance in closed habitats.

470 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

The plants in the olive orchard had no such history of long associa-
tion. The olives were new to California. The societies of micro-
organisms in the soil were originally those that go with live oaks, not
those accompanying the salvias on the sunny slopes. ‘These must have
been greatly changed during the time the olives were cultivated.
Furthermore, the olives, being planted at considerable distances from
each other, did not re-create either the fairly continuous shade of the
oaks or the open sunshine of the upper slopes. The orchard became
the site for evolutionary catch-as-catch-can, and under these circum-
stances, as we have seen, the new and variable had a decisive advantage.

Now that we know this much about these salvias, it would be inter-
esting to work experimentally with them and the species with which
they are associated to determine just what factors allow two different
but closely related species to fit together with their associates so per-
fectly that all hybrid intermediates are excluded. From experience
with other similar problems I would predict that among the most
important factors would be fairly specific reactions between some of
the other associated plants and these two sages. In our experimental
work with sunflowers we have discovered that one of the strongest
factors in determining where weed sunflowers may or may not grow
is their reaction to grass. Many grasses apparently give off a sub-
stance highly toxic to weed sunflowers. The various species of weed
sunflowers differ in their sensitivity to this poison. When two such
sunflowers hybridize, one of the factors affecting the outcome is the
grassiness of the site. Such relationships seem to be very general
among plants. On the whole, many species grow where they do, not
because they really prefer the physical conditions of such a site, but
because they can tolerate it and many other organisms cannot.

Generally speaking, the plants which follow man around the world
might be said to do so, not because they relish what man has done to
the environment, but because they can stand it and most other plants
cannot.

Are these salvias weeds? I would put forward the working hy-
pothesis that those in the abandoned olive orchard are on the way to
becoming weeds. The small exceptional communities of hybridizing
colonies similar to this one, which can be found here and there over
southern California, are worth considerably more attention than they
have hitherto received. They demonstrate the way in which man,
the great weed breeder, the great upsetter, catalyzes the formation
of new biological entities by producing new and open habitats.

The Salvia case is not unique. We now have over a score of similar
well-documented studies of the connection between hybridization and
weedy, disturbed habitats. This relationship had long been known
to observant naturalists, though not until the last few decades was

MAN AS A MAKER OF NEW PLANTS—ANDERSON 471

its significance stressed or experimental work undertaken. One other
example demonstrates the role of man’s operations on the habitat.
Riley (1938) studied the hybridization of two species of /rés on the
lower delta of the Mississippi in a neighborhood where the land-use
pattern had produced something as demonstrable and convincing as
a laboratory experiment (Anderson, 1949; see fig. 4). Property lines
ran straight back from the river; the farms were small, only a few
hundred yards wide, and very narrow. Under these conditions it was
easy to see that the hybrids between these two irises were virtually

NW =v) \\ %:
bee vi NWi\\ I:

Ficure 4.—A demonstration of man’s unconscious role in creating new plants. (From
Riley, 1938.) At the far right one of the minor bayous of the lower Mississippi Delta.
At right angles to it and running nearly across the figure is the abandoned channel of a
former stream, now drained by a ditch. The natural levees of the stream are slightly
higher than the surrounding country. Their sharp inner edges are indicated on the map
by hachures. The road has been run along the lower levee, and houses have been built
along the opposite one. The property lines (as in many old French settlements) produce
a series of long narrow farms, which for our purposes serve as so many experimental
plots. Each farm has its house on a low ridge with a long entrance drive connecting it
across a swale to the public road on the opposite ridge. The farms (including a score of
others which are out of sight to the left of the figure) were originally essentially similar.
At the point where the ditch joins the bayou is a large population of Iris hexagona giganti-
caerulea. Behind the levee on which the houses were built, J. fulva grows on the lower
ground as well as farther upstream along the ditch. The key fact to be noted is that
the hybrids are on only one farm, that they are abundant there, and that they go up to
the very borders of the property on either side. Nature is evidently capable of spawn-
ing such hybrids throughout this area, but not until one farmer unconsciously created
the new and more or less open habitat in which they could survive did any appear in this
part of the delta. (See Anderson, 1949, pp. 1-11, 94-98, for a more complete discussion.)

412575—57——31

472 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

limited to one farm. They grew in a swale which crossed several
of the farms, yet were nearly all on one man’s property. On his
farm they went right up to the fences and stopped, and this could
be demonstrated at either side of his property. Unlike his neighbors,
he had kept the swale heavily pastured. His cattle had held in check
the grasses which are serious competitors of swamp irises. They had
also, tramping about in wet weather, turned the swale into more of
a quagmire than existed on any of the neighboring farms. They had
at length produced an open environment in which the pasture grasses
were at a disadvantage and the resulting hybrid swarm of irises at a
very real advantage. Hybrids in various patterns of terra cotta,
wine, purple, and blue flooded out into this swale until it had almost
the appearance of an intentionally created iris garden.

Though Riley never published the sequel, it might be inserted here,
parenthetically, since it points up some kind of a moral. The farmer
himself did not remove the irises, even though they interfered seriously
with the carrying capacity of his pasture. The irises were con-
spicuously beautiful, and garden-club members from New Orleans
dug them up for their gardens, at so much per basket, until they
were eventually exterminated. The hybridization that nature began
in this and other pastures around New Orleans has been continued
by iris fans. These Louisiana irises are now established as cultivated
plants both in Europe and in America, Until the arrival of the
garden-club ladies, they were nascent weeds (fig. 5).

A little reflective observation will show that the ways in which man
creates new and open habitats, though various, can mostly be grouped
under a few headings: (1) Dumps and other high-nitrogen areas; (2)
pathways; (3) open soil; (4) burns. The last is probably the oldest
of his violent upsettings of the natural order of things. It must have
stimulated evolutionary activity very early—whole floras or certainly
whole associations must have come to a new adjustment with it here
and there; fire should be, of all man’s effects upon evolution, the most
difficult to analyze. Until valid experimental and exact historical
methods deal with this problem, it inevitably must spawn more polemic
activity than scientific analysis.

In contrast to fire, the creation of open-soil habitats as a really
major human activity belongs much more to the age of agriculture and
industry than to prehistory. It may be that is why it seems to be the
simplest to analyze. In Europe and eastern North America, in the
humid Tropics and sub-Tropics, open soil—bare exposed earth—is
scarcely part of the normal nature of things. Most of the flora truly
native to these areas cannot germinate in open soil or, having germi-
nated, cannot thrive to maturity. Make a series of seed collections
from wild flowers and forest trees and plant them in your garden just

MAN AS A MAKER OF NEW PLANTS—ANDERSON 473

like radishes or lettuce. You will be amazed to learn how small a per-
centage of them ever comes up at all. Make similar collections from
the weeds in a vacant lot or from the plants (wanted and unwanted) of
your garden. Nearly all of them will come up promptly and grow
readily. Where did these open-soil organisms come from in the first
place, these weeds of gardens and fields, these fellow travelers which
rush in after the bulldozer, which flourish in the rubble of bombed
cities? Well, they must have come mostly from prehuman open-soil
sites. River valleys did not supply all of them, but rivers are cer-
tainly, next to man, the greatest of weed breeders. Our large rivers
plow their banks at flood times, producing raw-soil areas. Every river
system is provided with plants to fill this peculiar niche; all those
known to me act as weeds in the uplands. One of the simplest and
clearest examples is our common pokeweed, Piytolacca americana,
native to eastern North America. It will be found growing up abun-
dantly in the immediate valleys of our major rivers (Sauer, 1952;
see fig 6). On the uplands it is strictly limited to raw soil, though,
once established in such a habitat, it can persist vegetatively for a
long time while other kinds of vegetation grow up around it. Being
attractive to birds, its seeds are widely scattered. I remember, from

0

|. fulva 1. hexagona giganti-caerulea

Hybrids

Ficure 5.—Sepals and petals of some hybrids of Iris hexagona giganti-caerulea and I. fulva,
somewhat diagrammatic but accurately to scale. In each case the sepal (the so-called
“fall”? of iris fanciers) is shown to the left; the petal, “standard,” to the right. J. fulva
has small lax terra cotta sepals and petals. J. hexagona giganti-caerulea has large crisp
petals and sepals of bright blue. The sepal has a brilliant yellow signal patch (shown
in black) surrounded by a white area (shown by stipples) shading off into the blue. Note
that in the various hybrids the small-sized flowers (characteristic of J. fulva) tend to be
associated with the lack of a white area (another fulva characteristic). Note the varia-
bility of the hybrids. In color they varied from deep wine to very pale light blue.

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

7
4
4 é

4 Z

ou

ae

y

ee AGES
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faa

Small dots represent
single plants.
Large dots represent Be ofearinl A Basekeac de Pyles
five plants. 20 fear

Ficure 6.—(See legend on opposite page)

MAN AS A MAKER OF NEW PLANTS—ANDERSON 475

my Michigan boyhood, how pokeweed came in when a woodland near
our home was lumbered over. We had never noticed this weed in
that community, but the birds had been planting it wherever they
roosted. When the felling of the big oaks tore lesser trees up by the
roots, pokeweed plants appeared as if by magic for the next few
years in the new craters of raw soil. Man and the great rivers are in
partnership. Both of them are upsetters. Both of them breed weeds
and suchlike organisms. The prehuman beginnings of many of our
pests and fellow travelers are to be sought in river valleys. River
valleys also must have been the ultimate source of some of the plants
by which we live: gourds, squashes, beans, hemp, rice, and maize.

The examples of the salvias and irises show how quickly evolution
through hybridization can breed out something new and different
under man’s catalytic influence. What we should most like to know
is the extent to which weeds and similar organisms, created or at least
extensively modified through man’s influence, are built up into whole
associations. It is clear that such things can happen; the maqui vege-
tation of the Mediterranean, the shiblyak and karst vegetation of the
Balkans, the carbén scrub of Central America, are obviously very
directly the results of man’s interference. One would like to analyze
the dynamics of these associations. We must do so if man is to under-
stand his own past or to be the master of his own future. For such
purposes we need ways of studying vegetation which are analytical as
well as merely descriptive—methods not based upon preconceived
dogmas. I should like to suggest that the methods used in analyzing
the /ris hybrids and the Salvia hybrids, if combined with other experi-
mental techniques, would allow us to get a long way into these prob-
Jems. Let me illustrate what I mean by describing some recent studies
of Adenostoma, a fire-resistant shrub, which is a common component
of the California chaparral (Anderson, 1954).

Between the Great Valley and the Pacific Coast, Adenostoma
jasciculatum is one of the commonest shrubs in the California land-
scape. Noting that it varied conspicuously from one plant to the
next, I made collections of it near Palo Alto and applied to them the
methods of pictorialized scatter diagrams and extrapolated corre-
lates. The details of these techniques need not concern us here, since
they have been adequately published elsewhere, both in technical

—

Figure 6.—Occurrence of pokeweed in two different habitats. Pokeweed (Phytolacca
americana) is an example of a species which is apparently native in the open soil along
American rivers but a weed in the open soil of disturbed habitats. (Map from Sauer,
1952.) Small dots represent single plants. Large dots represent five plants. It will
be seen that the pokeweed is occurring in two quite different kinds of habitats: in the
raw soil of repeatedly flooded woodlands on the immediate banks of the river and as a
weed around farm buildings, gardens, and the like. (See Sauer, 1952, for further details
and discussion.)

476 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

journals and in books for the intelligent public. They allow us
(through a meticulous examination of variability in such mongrel
complexes as the salvias of the abandoned olive orchard) to determine
precisely the good species (or subspecies or varieties) from which
these complexes must ultimately have arisen. Furthermore, though it
takes considerable hard work, these methods can be used successfully
by one with no previous knowledge of the organisms or of the faunas
and floras from which they may have come.

Using these methods, I have shown that the common Adenostoma
fasciculatum of coastal California arose from the hybridization of
two very different adenostomas. One of these was A. fasciculatum
var. obtusifolium, a low-growing shrub of the headlands and islands
along the California coast. The other is now found in its purest form
in the Mother Lode country of the Sierra foothills, a tall, branching
shrub which, when in flower, somewhat resembles a small-leaved white
lilac. Each of these had its own contributions to make to life in
coastal California. The coastal shrub brought in a tolerance of bril-
liant sunlight and the ability to grow in thin, rocky soil. However,
it was accustomed to fog and drizzle even during the dry season. The
inland form could go months without a drop of water, but it is used
to deeper soil and to Jess extreme radiation. When these two centers
of variation had been identified, it was easy to demonstrate that the
common Adenostoma is a great, plastic, hybrid swarm, including ap-
proaches to these two extremes and many intermediates between them.
On dry, rocky ridges in sites that are frequently foggy, one finds plants
very close to the island extreme. On deeper soils and in the shade
of small oaks are bushes scarcely different from those of the Mother
Lode country. Around old ranch buildings and in other peculiar
habitats one finds strange and bizarre recombinations of various sorts.

Just as these studies came to a close and it was time for me to leave
California, I realized that many of the other plants in the chaparral
association were similarly variable. There were swarms of hybrid
oaks and hybrid ceanothus and hybrid manzanitas. The entire asso-
ciation seemed to be in a state of flux. Unlike the coastal sages which
I had studied in southern California, there was room for hybrid re-
combinations within the association itself. The entire chaparral
seemed to be ecologically in the same general class of disturbed habitat
as the abandoned olive orchard.

I do not wish to jump to conclusions from one smal] experiment. I
would merely suggest that these methods are appropriate for the anal-
ysis of such problems, particularly if combined with experimental
work (for instance, the removal of a single species or species complex
from a small area using modern herbicides followed by measurement
of the effect of this removal on the other complexes in the association).

MAN AS A MAKER OF NEW PLANTS—ANDERSON 477

Here is a field in which we could very rapidly get down to some of
the basic principles concerning closed versus open habitats. In my
opinion, the degree to which such associations as the California chap-
arral are manmade is a better subject for study than for debate. They
have certainly been greatly affected by man. To learn to what degree,
I should prefer to look for more facts rather than to listen to more
opinions.

Even among biologists there has been a strong tendency to avoid
such problems—to study the plants and plant association of mountain-
tops and jungles rather than those of dooryards and gardens, to think
of plant and animal communities as they must have been in some bliss-
fully innocent era before the advent of man. It seems to me far
healthier and far more logical to accept man as a part of nature, to
concentrate one’s attention as a naturalist on man’s activities, since he
is the one species in the world we most nearly understand. It is be-
cause we know from inside ourselves the problems in which man is
deeply involved that we appreciate their bewildering complexity;
experiments with laboratory insects would not seem so beautifully
simple if we knew as much about them as we do about man. The popu-
lation genetics of garbage-pail flies (Dobzhansky, 1949) would appear
more complex if we understood from within what it is like to be a
Drosophila. The apparently standardized environment of flour in a
bottle (Park, 1938) would not seem undifferentiated to any investi-
gator who had once been a flour beetle and who knew at firsthand the
complexities of flour-beetle existence. Imagine a nonhuman investi-
gator of human populations recently arrived from Mars. What could
he understand of the relationships of Catholics and Protestants? How
long would it take him to discover that, though most of the shortest
girls in New York City get married, the very tallest seldom do? Hav-
ing discovered this phenomenon, how much longer would it take him
to understand it? When we attempt to work with laboratory insects,
our ignorance of their social complexities makes them seem far sim-
pler material than they really are.

I must confess that when, from being a student of variation in
natural populations, I was of necessity led to being a student of man’s
upsetting effects on his environment, my own thinking was too much
colored by this attitude. Only gradually did I come to realize that,
though man is now the world’s great upsetter, he is not the first.
There were others before him, and they played a similar role in evolu-
tion. Stebbins and I have recently suggested (1954) that the great
bursts of evolutionary activity in the past, the times of adaptive radia-
tion, were caused by such upsets. The formation de novo of a great
fresh-water lake such as Lake Baikal produced a new and open habitat
in which the organisms from various river systems could meet and

478 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

mongrelize and, under the hand of selection, evolve as rapidly into
new paths as did the salvias in the abandoned olive orchard. What
must have happened when the first land vertebrates at last arrived
on continents whose vegetation had no experience of such beasts?
What occurred when the giant reptiles of the Mesozoic churned like
gigantic bulldozers through the ferny swamps of that period? Must
not the plants of those periods have gone through the same general
experiences as are now facing the adenostomas of the California
chaparral?

Man has been a major force in the evolution of the plants and ani-
mals that accompany him around the world, in the midst of which
he largely spends his days. The detailed study of this process (1)
should illuminate for us the course of evolution in prehuman times;
(2) should be as well one of our truest guides to the history of pre-
historic man; and (3), most importantly, should enable us at last to
understand and eventually to control the living world around us.

REFERENCES

AASE, HANNAH C.
1946. Cytology of cereals, II. Bot. Rev., vol. 12, No. 5, pp. 255-334.
ANDERSON, EDGAR
1949. Introgressive hybridization. 109 pp. New York.
1952. Plants, man, and life. 245 pp. Boston.
1954. Introgression in Adenostoma. Ann. Missouri Bot. Garden, vol. 41, pp.
339-350.
ANDERSON, EpcAr, and ANDERSON, BURTON R.
1954. Introgression of Salvia apiana and Salvia mellifera. Ann. Missouri
Bot. Garden, vol. 41, pp. 329-338.
ANDERSON, Epaar, and STEBBINS, G. J., Jr.
1954. Hybridization as an evolutionary stimulus. Evolution, vol. 8, No. 4,
pp. 378-3888.
DoBZHANSKY, TH.
1949. Observations and experiments on natural selection in Drosophila.
In Bonnier, Gert, and Larsson, Robert (eds.), Proc. Highth
Internat. Congr. Genetics (July 7-14, 1948, Stockholm), pp. 210—
224. Lund.
HPLING, CARL C.
1938. The California salvias. A review of Salvia, Section Audibertia.
Ann. Missouri Bot. Garden, vol. 25, pp. 95-188.
1947. Natural hybridization of Salvia apiana and Salvia mellifera. Evolu-
tion, vol. 1, Nos. 1-2, pp. 69-78.
Eptina, CARL C., and Lewis, HARLAN.
1942. The centers of distribution of the chaparral and coastal sage as-
sociations. Amer. Midl. Nat., vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 445-462.
HEISER, CHARLES B., Jr.
1949. Study in the evolution of the sunflower species Helianthus annuus
and H. bolanderi. Univ. California Publ. Bot., vol. 23, No. 4, pp.
157-208.
1951. Hybridization in the annual sunflowers. Helianthus annuus X H.
debilis var. cucumerifolius. Evolution, vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 42-51.

MAN AS A MAKER OF NEW PLANTS—ANDERSON 479

Horry, JAMEISON B.
1930. The woad plant and itsdye. 328pp. London.
HutTcHINSON, J. B.; Stow, R. A.; and STEPHENS, S. G.
1947. The evolution of Gossypium and the differentiation of the cultivated
cottons. 150 pp. London.
MANGELSDoRF, P. C., and REEVES, R. G.
1938. The origin of maize. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., vol. 24, No. 8, pp. 303-312.
Park, THOMAS.
1938. Studies in population physiology, VIII. The effect of larval popula-
tion density on the post-embryonic development of the fiour beetle,
Tribolium confusum Duval. Journ. Exp. Zool., vol. 79, No. 1, pp.
51-70.
Lian eye se Be
1988. A character analysis of colonies of Jris fulva, I. hexagona var.
giganticaerulea and natural hybrids. Amer. Journ. Bot., vol. 25,
pp. 727-738.
SAUER, JONATHAN D.
1950. The grain amaranths: A survey of their history and classification.
Ann. Missouri Bot. Garden, vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 561-632.
1952. A geography of pokeweed. Ann. Missouri Bot. Garden, vol. 39, pp.
113-125.
STANDLEY, P. C.
1931. Flora of the Lancetilla Valley, Honduras. Field Mus. Nat. Hist.
Bot. Ser. No.10. 418 pp. Chicago.
Vavinov, N. I.
1926. Studies on the origin of cultivated plants. Bull. Appl. Bot. and
Plant Breed., vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 188-248.

Reprints of the various articles in this Report may be obtained, as long as
the supply lasts, on request addressed to the Editorial and Publications
Division, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 25, D. C.

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Project Coral Fish Looks at Palau

By FrepertcK M. BAYER

United States National Museum
Smithsonian Institution

and
RosBert R. Harry-RoFen

The George Vanderbilt Foundation

[With 20 plates]

WE WHo Live on continents can rarely appreciate the vastness of
the world’s oceans. Those of us who may be prompted by business or
pleasure to traverse them learn of their two-dimensional magnitude,
but there are a few of us who are privileged to investigate the secrets
of the seas first-hand, by living among them. We look upon the seas
in their role as an environment and seek to unravel the interwoven
facts of life within them. One of the first facts we learn is the com-
plexity of their many-faceted wonders, and we consider ourselves
fortunate when we are able, as it were, to polish a few of these facets
so as to see more clearly into them.

Of all the seas, the one with the greatest area, greatest depth, and
most to tell us is that restless giant, the Pacific. Even before we begin
to study it we must concede, if not defeat, at best a draw, for it is prac-
tically axiomatic that one solution leads to another problem. When
our words are as antiquated as those of the Renaissance pioneers Belon
and Rondelet and Marsigli now seem to us, people will still be learning
new things about this watery one-third of our planet.

When we look upon the Pacific, or any ocean for that matter, as an
environment, the central problem deals with the physical and chemical
properties of the fluid medium that make it adequate to support life.
This is a vast field of investigation to which many people in many
laboratories are devoting tireless efforts. We, however, as biologists,
can devote time to such problems only when they have direct and im-
mediate bearing upon some question involving the organisms with
which we are concerned, and even then we must rely upon specialists
in those restricted fields for most of the information we need. The

481

482 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

next problem is a qualitative one regarding the population of the sea:
what are these creatures that populate the waters? This is a basic
problem in marine biology; upon it depend the solutions to problems
of economic, or ecologic, or purely biologic interest. We must know
what organisms we are working with before we can determine how
they live together in communities, how they depend upon one another,
and how they affect us.

Creatures of the sea do, in fact, affect the affairs of man in many
ways. Many of them have served us for food since the beginning of
mankind. When we build structures in the sea for our own purposes,
certain of the animals and plants whose domain we have invaded use
those structures to their own ends and thus either destroy what man
has made or so befoul and beclog it as to render it worthless. When
we sail in tropic waters, other marine life—corals and algae—has been
there long before us and raised up an edifice that passively awaits the
unwary navigator and his fragile keel. If we are thrown into the sea,
or when we voluntarily venture into it, still others may unintentionally
do us bodily damage or even deliberately seek us out as a meal. Most
“dangerous” of all, to marine biologists anyway, are those that have
such bizarre or complicated ways of life that they entice us to devote
most of our lives to learning of them and solving their riddles.

Since the close of World War II, interest in the Pacific Ocean has
been increasing steadily. A number of expeditions were sent out to
study the tropical Pacific, among which were those of the Pacific
Science Board (National Academy of Sciences—National Research
Council) and the George Vanderbilt Foundation. Among the
expeditions of the Pacific Science Board were those comprising the
5-year Coral Atoll Program, in some of which the present authors
participated.

The expeditions of the Coral Atoll Program did much to broaden
our knowledge of life on the coral atolls of the Marshalls, Gilberts,
Carolines, and Tuamotus. But field team studies came to a close
before the most interesting part of the Pacific could be studied: the
western rim, the faunal gateway to that vast coral world that reaches
to Hawaii, the Galapagos, and even our own western shores. Moving
eastward from the Malay Archipelago and its wonderfully rich fauna,
we find no depletion through the Philippines, but what of the western-
most islands of Micronesia? They are a scant 600 miles east of the
Philippine Islands (see map, fig. 1), no journey at all for sea creatures
with free-swimming young stages. However, between the Philippines
and the Palau Archipelago lies one of the greatest deeps in all the
seas. How many of the East Indian species have been able to span
this deep? Even the submarine ridge upon which the Palaus are
situated, extending northeastward from the Moluccas, is covered by

483

PALAU—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN

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484 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

waters too deep to serve as a shallow-water passageway for littoral
forms. Are the Palaus now so isolated that special endemic species,
found nowhere else, have evolved from their East Indian ancestors?
How do the reefs, the habitat of most tropical shallow-water animals,
as we see them in Palau, differ from those elsewhere in Micronesia,
and from those in the East Indies? Such were the questions we hoped
to answer when we, as part of a 4-man team, set out for the Palau
Islands late in June 1955.

PROJECT CORAL FISH

Together, we formed Project Coral Fish, a continuing field program
devoted to the study of the marine biology of the high islands and
atolls in the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. This program was
initiated in 1954 by the George Vanderbilt Foundation at Stanford
University, with the cooperation and support of the Pacific Science
Board (National Academy of Sciences—National Research Council),
the Office of Naval Research, the United States Department of the
Navy, the United States Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and
the Smithsonian Institution. Aside from the present writers, the team
included H. Adair Fehlmann, assistant curator of the George Vander-
bilt Foundation collections at Stanford University, and Sterling H.
Pierce, technical assistant. We hoped to gather data and specimens
of all kinds to give us an approximate answer to the question: What
lives in the waters of Palau? With this basic information we would
be in a better position to answer such practical questions as: What
kind of marine life can be exploited for food? How can their supply
be conserved? What other marine products of economic importance
could the Palauan people develop successfully ? What are the dangers
in fishing the reefs, and how can they be avoided?

As a byproduct of our basic task of finding out what animals popu-
late the reefs of Palau, we studied the communities living in various
kinds of habitats, especially in Iwayama Bay, and the strange associa-
tions that develop between different kinds of animals.

After many months of preparation, during which supplies and
equipment were assembled and shipped to the western Pacific, the four
team members assembled on June 22, 1955, at the George Vanderbilt
Foundation headquarters on the Stanford University campus, and
final plans for the trip to Palau were made. Under orders from the
Chief of Naval Operations, the following day we left Moffett Field,
Calif., aboard a military transport plane bound for Guam.

Two days and more than 6,000 miles later, we arrived in Guam,
where we learned that the expedition equipment had all been for-
warded to the Palaus on schedule. D. H. Nucker, the Acting High
Commissioner of the U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, with

PALAU—-BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN 485

whom arrangements for the expedition had been made months pre-
viously, issued the permits necessary for our travel and fieldwork in
the islands. All was in readiness. We were in the Tropics again, and
our destination was almost in sight.

It was an impatient group that awaited the next weekly flight of
the Transocean Airliner to Koror, but at last Thursday came and
we were at the air terminal in the Naval Air Station, Agafia, early
that morning. A few moments after Miss Thelma Gorman, of Trust
Territory Headquarters, had bustled us and the other passengers
aboard the Albatross amphibian and breathed a sigh of relief, we were
airborne.

The islands of Palau lie some 800 miles southwest of Guam, a flight
of about six hours, including stops at Ulithi Atoll and Yap. At
Ulithi, we touched down on the airstrip to discharge passengers,
where two years previously we ourselves had landed on our way to
Tfaluk, a tiny jewel in the sea that captured our hearts as could no
other spot. But that is another story, and we were back in the air
before we could reminisce about it. At Yap, the lagoon is the air-
strip and we made a water landing to discharge passengers, cargo,
and mail. Again, after a pause of only a few minutes, we were taking
off on the last leg of our journey halfway around the world. The
next land we would see would be Palau—first the great, hilly island
Babelthuap, then Koror with its settlement and the broad harbor on
which we would land. Reaching up toward us from the sea below,
were the jagged ridges of the islands we would come to know so well
(pl. 1, fig. 1). Amid sheets of spray we settled in the green water of
the lagoon and taxied up to the ramp that led the plane out of the
water. At last we were in Palau.

THE PALAUS

Although the Palau Islands were discovered in 1710 by Francisco
de Padilla and his pilot, Joseph Somera, on the galleon La Santisima
Trinidad (and may have been sighted earlier, perhaps by Diego de
Rocha in 1525-26 or Lope Martin in 1566), the first Europeans to
publish an extensive account of their visit were the crew of the
British East India Company’s Antelope in command of Capt. Henry
Wilson. The keel of the luckless Antelope struck the coral rocks
of the barrier reefs near Aulong Island on the morning of August 10,
1783. Only one man was lost in the disaster, and the remainder of the
crew escaped safely to set up camp on Aulong. The castaways salvaged
every usable item from the wreck and, although the Antelope was a
total loss, were able to build another vessel large and seaworthy enough
to take them all safely to Macao. This vessel, the Oroolong, brought
700 Spanish dollars (about equivalent to the U. S. dollar of the

486

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

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PALAU ISLANDS

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Adapted from U. S. H. O. chart 6073.

reef outiine

AS land outline

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN REeAvurial

1. Koror from the air, with Iwayama Bay and the limestone islands in the distance. The
abrupt headland on the horizon at right is Ngaremediu Point on Urukthapel.

2. Looking east through Ngasaksao Pass, the eastern entrance to Iwayama Bay. ‘To the
left is Ngalap region of Koror, and to the right Kwannon (Ugeliungs) Island, with conical

Ngaraglbukl (Ngergelbakl) Rock in the pass.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN PLATE 2

1. The Lenore in Lebugol Passage, the narrow western entrance to Iwayama Bay. This
boat was used by field parties to reach the more remote localities investigated in the
Palaus.

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2. A building that was once part of the Japanese meterological station on Koror now accom-
modates biological activities in the Palau District of the U. S. Trust Territory. The
ground-floor laboratory to the left of the main entrance is occupied by the George Vander-
bilt Foundation, and the apartment above (now remodeled) provides living quarters for
members of its field parties.

PLATE 3

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN

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SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN

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PLATE 5

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN

"ou0 Ivap & Yydeassojoyd srtyi fo aotid ayi ayvuI 0} Surdjay ‘syoeq Zutddip imo 19A0 poutrems
jnq 911g JOU pIp Jey JU yori fo soloods v UIIM DATTL JOM soyouvig SUIBUBYIOAO OUT, UOT} 219S9A YIM UMOIZIOAO Ajasuop len
snon}10} pue dsaqs v dn AyuO poutes oq urs SPU SPM MOTA SITY YOTYAM WOIF JUIOd oseIURA OY], “YOU 24} OF “1 puodag usppry [sat
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Bees

PLATE 6

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN

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SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN PLATE 8

1. One of the authors preparing to descend in a self-contained underwater breathing
apparatus (aqualung).

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SS. # ¥ 2
2. A dark green feather-star (Comanthus) of the species that is the host of the commensal

clingfish. The small urnlike objects to the left of it are colonies of an ascidian, Didemnum
ternatanum.

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eg

1. Shallow reefs in Iwayama Bay are in some places dominated by the large poritid coral
Gontopora. ‘The stubby branches of its skeleton are obscured by the exceptionally large
polyps, which remain extended even in daylight. Unlike most anthozoan corals, it can
sting, thus making collecting near it very unpleasant.

2. This species of mushroom coral, Fungia actiniformis palawensis, has long, creamy-yellow
tentacles that completely hide its stony skeleton which is nearly the size of a saucer. It
is a solitary polyp that never forms a colonial skeleton as most other reef corals do. A
small specimen of a wrasse, Cheilinus, that is common in enclosed bays like Iwayama, can
be seen at the top of the picture.

PALAU—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN 487

period) when sold in Macao, and stands as a tribute to British forti-
tude and resourcefulness in the face of adversity.

The English, although at first apprehensive, found no difficulty
in establishing friendly relations with the Palauans. Even though
they “had not on board philosophers, botanists, draughtsmen, or gentle-
men experienced in such scientific pursuits as might enable them to
examine with judgment objects which presented themselves, or trace
nature through all her labyrinths,” they nevertheless gave us a fasci-
nating account of the islands and people and their experiences among
them.

Palau and the Palauans today present a far different impression
from that described by Wilson and his men in 1783. Although the na-
tives had complete power over the English, they did not take advantage
of their superior position, but instead did everything possible to help
their hapless visitors. Admittedly, the Palauans were awed by fire-
arms, and the English assisted Abba Thulle (Ebadul or Ibedul) the
chief of Koror, in some of his interisland campaigns. Good relations
were thereby strengthened, but it probably was not guns alone that
made the Palauans friendly. We ourselves have been residents of
islands where the people have had little real contact with civilization
as we know it, and found that they remain much as Wilson pictured
the Palauans, with a high regard for honesty and respect for their fel-
lows. Now the Palauan people have become sophisticated and mun-
dane after 20 years of German administration and another 26 under
the Japanese. Missionaries long ago insisted that they give up their
native way of dress (or undress) in favor of less practical European-
style clothing. Their airy, thatched houses and abais, or men’s houses
(pl. 3, fig. 1), decorated with colorful murals depicting historical and
mythological events or droll folk tales, have given way to quonset huts
and quasi-Japanese frame structures. Their elegant outrigger canoes
are becoming a rarity, replaced by dirty little diesel boats like the
My Flower—anything but flowerlike—that plies between Peleliu and
Koror.

The Palau Archipelago in the western Caroline Islands (fig. 2) ex-
tends northeastward from about latitude 6°53’ N. to 8°06’ N., or
over 70 miles, at a longitude of about 134°29’ E. The main islands,
dominated by Babelthuap, lie between latitudes 7° and 7°45’ N. Ex-
cept for Kayangel, the northern part of the islands is volcanic in
origin. Babelthuap is about 25 miles long and 8 miles wide, covered
with rugged hills and dense jungle, rolling grasslands, sparkling
streams and dashing water falls, (pl. 12, fig. 1), and fringed with man-
grove. Twenty miles to the north of it is Kayangel, a true atoll like
the islands far to the east, and to the south of it is the maze of lime-
stone ridges and conical islets (pl. 1) that forms one of the most re-

412575—57——32

488 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

3
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| boewwrrey
H@QOAGoORs ne HM OPsaKoOo ween
; a | prosocoodsd sacc00c000]/@ o WoW ada OO 2 Cao sco me ned
a WN SISSIES BS . » ~ “ ° 7
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Sketch of old abais, based on several published photographs.

markable features of Palau. Here and there on the edge of the reefs
there are islets of wave-tossed coral debris and sand, much like the
atoll islands. Together, the Palaus offer the most diversified collec-
tion of marine habitats to be found anywhere in Micronesia.

The Japanese recognized the unusual scientific opportunities pre-
sented by the Palaus and, during their administration of the South
Seas Islands (Nanyo Gunto), established at Koror a tropical biological
station devoted to the study of coral reefs, under the directorship of
Dr. Shinkishi Hatai. At that time, Koror was the capital of the
Japanese mandated islands of the South Seas and was a thriving city.
The Palao Tropical Biological Station is no more, but we hope to build
upon its accomplishments and contribute further to a more thorough
understanding of the fauna of Palau.

ACTIVITIES IN THE FIELD

Our first big job on Koror was to unpack and organize our field
equipment. The territorial entomologist, Robert P. Owen, had gen-
erously provided us with laboratory space in the entomological labora-
tory (pl. 2, fig. 2), one of the few bullet-scarred Japanese buildings
still usable. A rebuilt second story over the laboratory served as our
quarters until a nearby house could be made ready for occupancy. For
days we moved boxes and steel drums full of supplies from the district
warehouse to the laboratory grounds, and the unpacking went on far
into our first few nights in the islands.

PALAU—-BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN ie 489

One morning while we were busy setting up the laboratory with
the help of Bob Owen’s Palauan assistants, we became aware of a
scowling stranger who at first hesitated around the periphery of ac-
tivity, and then picked up a hammer and began energetically opening
boxes. This was Rikrik (pl. 18, fig. 1). We asked the others about
him and learned that he was a willing and able worker, knowledgeable
in English, Palauan geography, and fishing. We had learned from
experience that such a man is indispensable to an expedition, so we
hired him on the spot. Rikrik’s scowl broke into a broad but tempo-
rary grin and we had gained a true friend. Later, we added to our
staff another Palauan named Sumang, who had a remarkable knowl-
edge of Palauan natural history. He could speak both English and
Japanese, was a village chief or “Ya’at,” and knew practically every-
body from Angaur to Kayangel. Amiable Sumang Y. was a valuable
public-relations department whose good offices were a great advantage,
particularly during the long overland trips on Babelthuap, and his
memory of Palauan geographic names gave valuable documentation
for our collection records.

The Palauan people use a different approach from ours to naming
the various parts of their homeland. ‘They often do not give names
to islands as a whole, whereas groups of islands or localized regions on
islands may have special names. Rivers and streams may have as
many as three names—one for the part near the mouth, another for the
headwaters, and a third for the parts between. The imposition of our
own practice of giving a single name to geographical features upon
the Palauan system has led to either a part taking the name of the
whole, or the whole taking the name of one of its parts. Examples of
the latter kind are Koror, which is the name of a village that we apply
to an entire island, and Kil Malk, the name of a cape which we use
for the island of which it is a part. The situation is complicated by
the circumstance that we take many of our spellings of Palauan place
names from Japanese maps, which expressed them in phonetic
katakana characters. The English transliterations from the Japanese
spellings usually bear little, if any, resemblance to actual pronuncia-
tion, but they appear almost universally on American maps so we are
obliged to employ them in this account. Thus, the name “Ankosu”
as we use it is correctly spelled “Nghus,” and “Geruherugairu” should
be “Ngaregelngael.” A complete list of the place names we will men-
tion in these pages, giving the correct (and any common alternate)
spelling, may be found on p. 507.

Actual fieldwork could not be started until our 18-foot fiberglass
boat was put into commission. Sterling H. Pierce, our engineer and
electronics technician, installed wiring, instruments, and cabin con-
trols for the powerful outboard motor. In due time, the final coat

490 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

of paint was applied, the name Lenore and the George Vanderbilt
Foundation insigne inscribed on her bows, and the boat was ready
for launching. She was both speedy and seaworthy, and in her we
could make trips to outlying islands and return to the laboratory the
same day, a distinct advantage when perishable specimens must be
promptly preserved.

When the Lenore was fully loaded for a day’s work, there was
scarcely room left for us. Nets, containers large and small, inflatable
floats for receiving specimens as we took them from the water, spray
apparatus for distributing the poison we used to stupefy fishes and
other active specimens, tools for digging and breaking up coral, pre-
servative, cameras and, often, bulky diving apparatus loaded the boat
to capacity.

The self-contained diving apparatus was useful not only for col-
lecting in water too deep for free diving, but also in shallow-water
areas where we wanted to see the exact situation under which certain
animals were living, or to observe their behavior at length. When-
ever possible, both the habitat and the inhabitants at collecting sta-
tions were photographed in detail, both in color and in black-and-
white, using reflex cameras in waterproof casings (pl. 7, fig.2). These
excellent cameras greatly minimized waste of film by enabling us to
watch moving specimens until they were in range and focus.

Because one of our chief aims was to get as complete a biological
sample as possible, every available means of collecting specimens was
employed, from hand capture and hook-and-line to explosive charges.
Although different situations required different techniques of sam-
pling that had to be carefully decided upon before attempting to col-
lect, the most generally useful method of obtaining active specimens
was by the use of the vegetable poison rotenone. In liquid form this
is extremely potent, so it must be diluted with water in a spray pump
and distributed over the area to be collected. Fishes, crustaceans,
cephalopods, and certain other types of animals are suffocated by it
and are soon made helpless. When we used this technique, we needed
every available hand to collect specimens before they were swept away
by the current or eaten by larger fishes not affected by the poison.
Often we enlisted the aid of youthful spectators, who are character-
istically good collectors, and they would scurry about in response to
Sumang Y.’s commands, enjoying all the bustle of excitement.

IWAYAMA BAY

Our program of faunal sampling took us the length of Palau, from
Arekolong Peninsula at the northern end of Babelthuap to Peleliu,
but one of the most fascinating and complex areas in the islands was
virtually in our own front yard. The Japanese scientists of the

PALAU—-BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN 491

Palao Tropical Biological Station were attracted by it 20 years ago
and made a survey of it that was reported in the first volume of their
journal (Abe, 1937). We became greatly interested in that study and
had decided, even before reaching Palau, to resurvey the same area to
see what had happened to the different habitats since they were origi-
nally studied. This area is an island-studded lagoon, partly enclosed
by Koror Island (pl. 4), which the Japanese called Iwayama-wan, or
“Rocky-mountain Bay.” The Japanese name is generally accepted
now, because the nearly forgotten original Palauan name for it is a
matter of debate (some maps use Kriimer’s coined name for it, “Songel
a Lise,” which, although utilizing Palauan words, is a European inven-
tion). We therefore use Iwayama Bay as a neo-Palauan name.
Iwayama Bay isa roughly circular body of water about 114 nautical
miles in diameter, enclosed by Koror on the north and Auluptagel on
the south (see map, fig. 8). Its west entrance is a long, narrow pass
called Lebugol Channel, and its east entrance a wider, coral- and sand-
choked passage called Ngasaksao Pass. The western arm of Koror
is voleanic land with a wide, muddy mangrove shore; its eastern arm
is limestone, like Auluptagel and the 40 small islands in the Bay, with
a fringe of corals. The Palauan names for most of the islands are all
but forgotten (Sumang Y. succeeded in tracking down most of them
by lengthy conferences with the prominent patriarchs of Koror) so,
to simplify matters, the Japanese students assigned each island a
number, which they actually emblazoned on them in white paint.
These roman numerals are still legible on some of the islands, and we
also found that system more convenient to use than names, either
Palauan or Japanese. N. Abe and his colleagues further divided the
Bay into “divisions” bearing letter designations (see fig. 3), in most
of which they studied transects from island shore to reef margin. In
the process of collecting, we revisited each of the transects in the bay
and studied the 16 divisions, wherever possible taking photographs
of the coral growth, animal communities, and general habitat.
Because of the many islands and narrow passes, tidal currents are
swift at many points in Iwayama Bay. The Islands, which are very
close together, rise up almost vertically from the bay floor and create
very narrow, deep waterways many of which are 100 feet or more in
depth. The islands are deeply undercut at the high-tide line (pl. 6,
fig. 2)—as much as 5 to 10 feet—forming deep “notches” above a sub-
marine shelf of variable width. In favorable localities where the cur-
rent is strong, as on the north shore of island 29, coral growth on the
shelf and vertical submarine cliff is exceptionally luxuriant. Here,
one could stand among flourishing corals and look either directly
overhead into dense jungle vegetation or straight down the coral preci-
Pice into a hundred feet of deep blue water. Occasionally we saw the

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

492

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PALAU—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN 493

shadowy shapes of giant blue parrotfishes, perhaps 6 feet long, rise
from the depth to which they had fled at our coming, or a shark patrol-
ling his accustomed beat, or the faint silvery glint of sunlight on a
distant school of swift predators, perhaps some kind of jack (Car-
angidae), near the limit of our vision.

On the submarine shelf of these undercut shorelines, the coral
variety was great, with multicolored Pectinia lactuca, commonly called
lettuce coral (pl. 9, fig. 1), green, orange, or brick-red Lobophyllia,
and a few others dominating the shallower areas. The less colorful
Plerogyra, with bubblelike tentacles an inch across, the closely re-
lated Physogyra, and long, wiry antipatharians (black corals) were
usually found on the vertical face of the cliffs. On the shadiest slopes
we often met with handsome specimens of Palauphyllia, a subgenus
of corals named in honor of their homeland.

The bright colors of Palauphyllia, like those of most other stony-
reef corals, are located not in the coral skeleton but in the soft tissues
of the polyps themselves, and are due in part to the presence of minute
unicellular algae living in the cells of the endoderm. These remark-
able algae, called zooxanthellae, actually serve the coral polyps in the
capacity of excretory organs by taking up from the animal tissues such
waste products as they can use in their own life processes. They have
never been found living free of corals, and have never been artificially
cultured. Their only reproductive process seems to be simple division
and they are passed on from generation to generation of corals
through the eggs, which become infected before leaving the parent.

Several species of fishes were found only in such situations in Iwa-
yama Bay. Among these were the brilliant gold-and-black striped
butterflyfish (Chaetodon octofasciatus Bleeker), wrasses of the genus
Chetlinus (pl. 10, fig. 2), and several kinds of cardinal fishes belonging
to the genus Apogon. Many species of highly colored fishes that reach
a length of no more than one or two inches balance like jeweled
spangles among coral branches that rival them in beauty, or conceal
their splendor in holes in the coral cliffs. Ever present are the preda-
tors that seek out these defenseless inhabitants of the coral slopes.
Some, like trumpetfish, have long snouts with which they relentlessly
explore all holes and crevices in search of prey; others, such as the
turkeyfish, have wide jaws and gaping mouth that enable them to en-
gulf their prey in one quick gulp, in much the same way that a
vacuum-cleaner may inhalea feather. Solitary sharks were patrolling
the bottom of the deep waterways, but their presence was of most
importance to the inhabitants of the deeper waters for the sharks sel-
dom came to the surface.

Some of the islands in Iwayama Bay have protected little baylets
in which the coral growth may consist largely of Gondopora, a thick-

494 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

branched stony coral with huge, protruding polyps (pl. 10, fig. 1).
We soon learned to expect trouble when we collected these secluded
spots, for the unusually virulent nematocysts, or stinging capsules, of
the Goniopora polyps were easily dislodged by the currents we pro-
duced by swimming, and stung us so badly that we sometimes were
obliged to leave the water.

Much more troublesome than Goniopora, however, was an arbor-
escent, colonial scyphistoma (called Stephanoscyphus) of the medusa
Nausithoe, which also released its nematocysts into the water upon
agitation by strong currents. The stings produced by this animal left
angry red welts that itched for days afterward, and even caused swell-
ing of adjacent lymphatic glands. It seemed probable to us that a
dense growth of Stephanoscyphus could liberate enough nematocysts
into the water to inflict serious stings upon unsuspecting swimmers.
Fortunately, this coelenterate seems to be common only locally in
Palau, where we found it in only two localities.

In spite of seemingly ideal surroundings in most parts of Iwayama
Bay, dead corals could be found at almost any location, suggesting
that conditions are not always so favorable. A day or so of heavy
rainfall will dump tons of fresh water not only into the bay but also
upon the islands, from which it cascades down to the Bay, carrying
with it great quantities of silt and forest debris. Salinity must be
much reduced, especially near the surface, for many hours, if not
days; the normal water temperature of about 85° F. may be lowered
by 5° or more; suspended matter beclouds the water and the more delli-
cate corals may be smothered. But, after a few clear days and several
tidal cycles, the water clears and the survivors continue their struggle
for existence.

The northwest corner of the Bay, forming divisions M, N, and O,
is bathed by good tidal flow, but silt from the nearby mangrove
shore discourages coral growth and the reef has a sickly appearance
that belies the large number of species that comprise it. One of the
resurveyed transects crosses the reef-flat at the south end of island 15,
and we studied it during several low tides. Here we collected dead
coral heads with cylindrical black sponges growing on them, which
we soon found were only the external portions of a boring sponge
that had excavated great hollow caverns in the coral boulders. Some
coral heads were thus reduced to hollow shells, and we have yet to
learn what becomes of the sponge after it has completely “eaten itself
out of house and home”—whether it then assumes a massive, free-
living form as do some other boring sponges, or simply dies of expo-
sure. Whatever its fate after the destruction of the rock in which
it lives, it is certainly an active reef-destroying agent. At the same
locality we found another rock-boring sponge that attacked not only

PALAU—-BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN 495

dead corals but also the limestone floor of the tide-level notches.
This sponge is almost certain to prove to be one of the important bio-
logical agents contributing to the formation of undercut shorelines.

The swift tidal currents that breath life and variety into the reefs
do not reach the upper part of division K in the northeast corner of
Iwayama Bay, which is a quiet backwater. An abundant growth of
coral is nevertheless present, but it lacks variety. Fingery masses
of Porites and great, white, papery chalices of Montipora (pl. 11,
fig. 2) flourish everywhere, but few others can be seen. Even the
fishes are fewer in kind and smaller in size. Small dragonets (Cal-
lionymidae) dart about in sandy patches or seek refuge among the
coral branches. One of these dragonets (Synchiropus splendidus) is

Figure 4.—The splendid dragonet, Synchiropus splendidus, slightly larger than natural size.

probably the gaudiest fish we found during the summer—colored blue,
green, and red in an intricate design of spots and bands (see fig. 4).
A few species of damselfishes (Abudefduf) were abundant, each fish
with its own territory of coral and water. Each individual vigorously
defends its own particular home, bullying intruders with threatening
advances, cheeks distended, clicking and grunting indignantly.
Hovering over the branches of Porites we could always find little
bronze and maroon cardinalfishes (Apogon nematopterus), ready to
retire into their stony sanctuaries at the approach of our staring
camera lenses (pl. 11, fig. 1).

In the undercut shoreline of Koror nearby we found a small cave
of the sort that permeates many of the limestone islands (pl. 6, fig. 1).

496 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

It was too small to crawl into very far, but in its dark and narrow
recesses we found some alcyonarian corals (Zelesto) hanging from
the roof, completely exposed by the ebbing tide. Elsewhere there are
larges caves, some at water level and large enough to admit a boat,
others equally large but completely submerged. In most of the major
limestone islands there are large caves that have collapsed, forming
lakes connected with the sea by subterranean passages. These salt-
water lakes contain large gobies, mussels, and sedentary jellyfish
(Cassiopeia).

One of our reconnaissance techniques was to cruise slowly along
the coral slope in the Lenore, watching for changes in the appearance
of the reefs to indicate interesting spots to be examined more closely.
We followed the bay shore of Koror south from the little cave, around
the so-called Arappu Peninsula (Ngalap), where the submarine cliff
was almost devoid of corals and the only conspicuous organism was a
large, sprawling, branched, pale pink sponge that looked white in
20 or 30 feet of blue water. Even the stiff snaky “wire corals”
(Antipatharia) that usually thrive on the cliffs were missing. We
could find no explanation for the absence of corals there, for the
current flow is better than it is in many other places, the water clearer.

After we passed through the narrow strait called Kaki-suid6
(Oyster Pass) in the Japanese reports (Palauan name Ngerikiuul),
the situation changed, and we came upon one of the most interesting
areas in Iwayama Bay, one that we visited and revisited, each time
to find something new. Here the undercut was very deep and the
foliage of the jungle-covered slopes above hung far down over the
water, blocking the midday sunlight and producing an almost con-
stant twilight. For only a few moments in the afternoon could a
few rays of sunshine slip through before the shadow of island 29
across the pass crept up to throw the waters into increasing darkness.
A yawning cavern gaped in the cliff wall, entirely under water, its
roof festooned with huge, netlike antipatharians (“black corals”)
hanging down like drapes. They were so flexible and so large that
they could grow only in hanging position (pl. 18, fig. 2). When
fresh, their polyps were brilliant orange in daylight, but they ap-
peared almost white in the murky blue water of the cave.

ANIMAL PARTNERSHIPS

Only on this half-lit slope did we find the whip-corals, Junceella;
they grew here like tall, waving grass reaching out toward the light,
with their tips drooping like buggy whips. They form the hub of an
interesting association that we will describe in detail in a future paper.
The most unusual member of this association is a little transparent
pink goby, a new species allied to the genus Cottogobius. It isa tiny

PALAU—-BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN 497

fish, not much more than an inch in length, that clings to the stalks
of the whip-corals. They may be pursued up one side of the coral
and down the other, but rarely will they move to another coral even
though it is very near. Our ingenious Rikrik found that by sliding a
coral stalk through his fist, he could catch its fish in a small net as it
popped off the end. The water was often murky and the light always
poor, but we did get a picture of Rikrik catching gobies in a field of
junceellas (pl. 16, fig.1). Also clinging to the whip-corals were many
handsome gray feather-stars, or stalkless crinoids (comatulids) , some
of them grasping several corals at once (pl. 16, fig. 2). The cirri (the
clawlike “feet”) of the crinoids irritated the surface of the corals and
scarred it permanently wherever they had clung, indicating that these
“free-living” crinoids move about little, if at all. One of the crinoid’s
distant cousins, a bright orange brittle-star, lived entwined in the arms
of the crinoid, and among them could also be found a spider crab,
Harrovia, that had joined the partnership. Another crustacean, a
small porcellanid crab, scuttled over the surface of the whip-corals,
completing this curious association of vertebrates and invertebrates.
Among the most studied of symbiotic relationships to be found on
tropical reefs is that involving several species of large sea-anemones
that allow certain kinds of small but colorful damselfishes (genera
Amphiprion and Dascyllus) to seek protection among their tentacles.
These clownfishes, as they are sometimes called, rarely stray far from
their host anemone, and are ready to dart down among the stinging
tentacles at the first hint of danger (pl. 14, fig. 2). In spite of years
of study, the details of this association are still not clear (Gohar, 1948 ;
Gudger, 1946). It is believed that the fishes avoid being stung by
swimming in a distinctive fashion that is “recognized” by the coelen-
terate. Clownfishes have been seen to drag food to the waiting ten-
tacles of the anemones, but, on the other hand, we watched an Amphi-
prion seize a tentacle of its host in its mouth and with a few quick
tugs pull it loose and eat it. This finny ingrate expected, and received,
sanctuary from the very anemone it had been nibbling upon, for it
dashed headlong among the tentacles when we approached too closely.
Some investigators have suggested that by eating bits of the anemone,
Amphiprion builds up an immunity to nematocyst poison, but this
suggestion has never been scientifically confirmed. It does seem fairly
certain, however, that the clownfishes recognize their preferred species
of host anemone partly by sight and partly by chemical emanations.
There is also some indication that the anemones do not sting their
partner fishes because of some kind of chemical “recognition.”
Coelenterates and echinoderms seem often to play the host role in
these partnerships, probably not because of any inherent good nature
or native generosity, but because they are slow moving or sedentary

498 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

and therefore an easy mark. One of our most startling discoveries
of the summer was a fish that lives with anechinoderm. This, of itself,
is not unusual, for the eel-like pearlfishes (Carapus, Fierasfer, and
Jordanicus) have long been known to inhabit the cloaca of holo-
thurians (sea-cucumbers) and the body cavity of Culcita (the cushion
starfish). But our fish was a previously unknown species of clingfish
(Gobiesocidae) and the echinoderm host was a feather-star (Coman-
thus), a completely unexpected combination. The clingfish was black
with a bright yellow stripe down each side, perfectly camouflaged
among the arms of its host.

It was on August 7 that we discovered it, as we were returning from
a 2-day trip to Ngemelis. We had stopped in Meharehar, the labyrin-
thine lagoon of Eil Malk, to look for future collecting sites and to ob-
tain some samples of the lagoon bottom sediments. It was a stormy
day with heavy downpours that had hampered our observations and
dampened the spirits of everyone aboard the Lenore. We had taken
the bottom samples in the rain, and were heading for home by way of
the inside route west of Urukthapel when we found ourselves over some
coral flats near Ankosu Point, the southernmost cape of Urukthapel.
Not wishing to pass up any likely localities, we dropped anchor and
went over the side to look around. The water was about 6 feet deep
and the bottom was covered with a tangle of staghorn coral
(Acropora), most of it lying loose upon the sandy bottom. A few
knolls of massive coral could be seen, with chalice-shaped acroporas
and sea-fans (Melithaea) growing on them. Here and there, hidden
among the corals, we found a many-rayed spiny starfish (Acanthaster
planci), which is a real danger to bare feet (even those tough enough
to disregard the jagged coral). It is widely feared by the natives of
Micronesia, and with ample justification. A friend of ours was vir-
tually incapacitated for a week or more by wounds inflicted by this
animal, and he was not fully recovered for a month or more.

Between the coral branches everywhere, and on the coral knolls,
the restless, fernlike arms of feather-stars swayed with the rising
tide. Because we knew that crinoids are ever-gracious hosts to a va-
riety of invertebrates, we collected some of them to find their lodgers.
There are usually two kinds of shrimp, a galatheid (or “squat-lob-
ster”), and a polychaete worm, all protectively colored to match their
host—usually black and greenish yellow in this locality. The first
feather-star that Adair Fehlmann collected had some black-and-
yellow striped shrimps among its arms. Safely inside a glass vial,
they gave us a real surprise. They were not shrimps at all, but
fishes—and clingfishes at that—the only ones we would find all sum-
mer. A careful search disclosed a number of additional specimens
before the current became so swift that we could work no longer. We

PALAU-——BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN 499

continued our homeward trip with one of the prize catches of the
expedition—some tiny black-and-yellow fishes little more than an inch
in length.

In practically any protected sandy area of the lagoon we could ex-
pect to find the unusual partnership of shrimps and fishes that we
first observed at Ifaluk Atoll in 1953. We were delighted to find this
association at Palau in such shallow water and in such abundance
that we could observe it closely and collect the animals in numbers.
At Palau, two kinds of alpheid shrimps and at least four kinds of
gobies live together with identical habits.

Each pair of shrimps excavates its own burrow and then plays
host to a pair of fishes. The fishes sit Just outside the mouth of the
shrimp burrow (pl. 14, fig. 1) while the shrimps repair and deepen
it, bringing load after load of sand to the surface on their large claws,
bulldozer-fashion. But should any danger threaten, the gobies dart
down the hole in a trice, tumbling the shrimps over in their haste.
From this activity the shrimps detect that something is amiss and
cease digging until the gobies regain their composure and their usual
position on the front doorstep. Whether this inadvertent warning
is the only benefit derived by the shrimps from the association we are
unable to say at present. It seems probable that the gobies obtain,
in addition to shelter, an occasional banquet at the expense of their
hosts, since one of the specimens collected was stuffed with larval
crustaceans—probably the young of the shrimps whose home it had
shared.

There is still much to be learned about these and various other rarely
observed biological associations, and it will take patient observation,
study, and experimentation in the field before we know the exact
nature of the relationship between the partners and how it may have
developed.

THE OUTER REEFS

The outer reefs have an entirely different appearance from the
lagoon reefs of Iwayama Bay and the staghorn coral thickets of the
shallow passes. On the west side of the archipelago the reefs are
barriers, but on the east they are fringing reefs that follow the land
closely, with an offshore barrier in only a few places. Whether barrier
or fringing reefs, they are bathed with the always clean water of the
open sea and pounded by its sometimes thunderous surf. Different
and stronger corals live in these exposed situations, and a whole new
population of fishes swims among their branches. The surgeonfishes,
butterflyfishes, and wrasses that live here are for the most part
peculiar to this zone of churning, turbulent water. Few species of
the quiet lagoon waters are hardy enough to adapt to this rigorous
environment. Sharks and barracudas in particular prefer this region,

500 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

constantly patrolling it for food. Certain surgeonfishes also are char-
acteristic of the surf zone, among them Acanthurus lineatus, a yellow
and neon-blue striped fish that loves turbulent, surging water. Their
relatives, the fan-finned zebrasomas, hide under the spreading table
corals. Huge parrotfishes, six or more feet in length, graze like
cattle upon the corals, producing a noisy chorus as they crunch their
limy meals in large, gregarious schools. Moray eels (@ymnothoraz)
lie in wait in their holes, their malicious eyes alert for any unwary
fish that may pass within striking distance. The butterflyfishes
(Chaetodon), so named because of their brilliant coloration, are
especially numerous and are endowed with an insatiable curiosity.
They seem unafraid of divers and will approach very close in order
to get a good look. On many occasions they have startled us by a
quick nip or a tug on some especially attractive hair. This has an
electrifying effect upon swimmers already fearful of a surprise attack
by prowling sharks, and the sheepish feeling combined with relief
upon seeing these small challengers, is more amusing now than it
was on the reef.

The spiny lobsters (Panulirus) that lurk in crevices of the outer reef
are different species from those found in the lagoon. So are the coral
crabs (Zrapezia) among the massive branches of pocilloporas, veri-
table giants by comparison with their relatives in more protected
waters.

Any specimens taken from the surf zone are collected only through
great exertion, for it is one of the most difficult habitats to sample.
Swift currents rapidly dissipate the rotenone and sweep away the speci-
mens killed by it. The collector himself may be picked up by the
swell and dropped 15 or 20 feet away, as likely as not on a jagged
coral. When explosives are used instead of rotenone, all the nearby
sharks materialize as if from nowhere, considering its sound a dinner
bell inviting them to a free meal. Needless to say, we used this explo-
sive technique infrequently, so as to avoid becoming the piéce de
résistance of some shark’s luncheon.

Near the reef passes and in the deeper waters offshore the corals
flourish in stony gardens of eerie and awesome beauty. Some species
of Acropora produce towering spires and antlers (pl. 7, fig. 1) that
bring to mind the reefs made by the same genus of corals in the West
Indies, and others form great, spreading disks and platforms com-
posed of tiny branchlets, a growth form peculiar to the Indo-Pacific
area (pl. 18). The sea gardens of swaying alcyonarians (sea-fans
and sea-whips) that give the West Indian reefs their color and fluid
beauty are nowhere to be seen, for the aleyonarians here are nearly all
massive, rubbery kinds (pl. 13, fig. 2) that have not the elegance of
their Caribbean relatives. The few species of sea-fans that do occur

PALAU—-BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN 501

are more abundant along deep channels or in the protected lagoons
than on the seaward reefs.

EEL-GRASS ENVIRONMENT

A conspicuous feature of the Palau lagoon is the great extent of
sandy bottom covered with eel-grass (#’nhalus acoroides and some re-
lated species). It is a distinctive and complex habitat. The most ex-
pansive eel-grass beds lie near Peleliu, to the south of Koror, al-
though the west coast of Babelthuap also has some fine ones. We
made two trips to Peleliu to survey the grass beds there, but on both
oceasions we found poor conditions due to the stage of the tide. The
water was so murky and full of plant debris that collecting was un-
pleasant and photography impossible.

Among the anima] inhabitants, fishes are particularly abundant and
thrive in the eel-grass environment. Sharks, jacks, barracudas, and
other predaceous fishes constantly search the eel-grass beds for prey.
Food is not easy to find here, even in the midst of plenty, for the eel-
grass forms the home of many highly specialized fishes that blend with
their background in both form and color. Some of them, such as the
pipefishes (Syngnathidae) and certain wrasses (Cheilio), are elongate
in outline and green in color, so perfectly camouflaged that sharp eyes
are needed to separate them from the grass in which they live. Others,
such as the parrotfish (Scarichthys), spinefish (Siganus), and some
snappers (Lethrinus), are not shaped like the grass blades but are so
much like it in color that they are virtually invisible. The filefishes
(Monacanthus) , blennies (Petroscirtes),and dragonets (Callionymus)
goastep farther in having their bodies covered with waving filaments
and hairlike growths that resemble the hydroids and other epiphytes
covering the eel-grass blades.

The Palauan boys pointed out some peculiar little black-and-yellow
fishes that were swimming about a water-logged branch half buried
in the sand and hidden by grass and warned us that they were very
dangerous. When we insisted upon catching them, Sumang Y. and
Rikrik must have regretted pointing them out to us. The fish were
small catfish (Plotosus anguillaris) with barbed pectoral and dorsal
spines that are venomous and can inflict a nasty wound. They were
swimming in a curious manner, very close together and wiggling vigor-
ously, in a compact school that moved slowly forward like a dark
cloud. It was simple to frighten them into the range of a large dip-
net, and each fish captured caused our sturdy Palauans to wince in
anticipation of the painful punctures to come when we pulled them
out of the nets, and later, when we placed them in containers of for-
malin. A month or so later, when we were in Japan to consult with
biologists who had worked in Palau before the war, we encountered this

502 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

same fish in southern Honshu. It was living in a completely different
ecological situation, in rocky tide pools near the Seto Marine Biologi-
cal Station at Shirahama.

One of the major eel-grass inhabitants is a mammal, the little-known
dugong, or sea-cow (Dugong dugon). During our stay in Palau we
were always especially watchful while passing over eel-grass areas,
in the hope of seeing some dugongs, but as they are quite scarce we
never did see one in its natural habitat. During our last few days at
Koror, however, some Palauans speared and captured alive a half-
grown specimen that provided us with considerable excitement and be-
came the first ever to be exhibited alive in an American aquarium.
We bought this dugong, otherwise destined for sale as food in the local
market, and kept it alive in a large pool at the end of Koror dock
until we were ready to begin our return trip to the United States.
Then we caught it, wrapped it in wet blankets (pl. 20, fig. 1), and
carried it, lying on the floor of the plane between our seats, to Guam
(pl. 20, fig. 2). At Guam it was ensconced in a sturdy crate and
transferred to a commercial airline for shipment to California. The
California Academy of Sciences had arranged for its transportation
to the Steinhart Aquarium, where it proved to be an unusually popular
exhibit. It was certainly the first Palauan dugong ever to fly to
America, and we have no doubt provided some material] for the “talk-
ing picture” carvings that decorate Palauan abais.

HERPETOLOGICAL STUDIES

Another Palauan animal that never before had been displayed alive
in an American zoo or aquarium, and which we succeeded in bring-
ing back to the United States, is the deadly poisonous sea snake
(Laticauda colubrina), a relative of the cobras and coral snakes.

Our first encounter with the banded sea snake in the wild was on
a field trip to Ngemelis, a group of islands along the southwest barrier
reef. We were making our way toward the beach just before dusk
when, a hundred yards or so from shore, we came upon a huge snake,
a good 6 feet in length, slowly working its way seaward along the
bottom, poking its head into nooks and crannies and in and out of
corals, carefully feeling with its tongue. It paid no attention to us,
and we stood or swam near it for several minutes, in water perhaps
5 feet deep. At no time did we see it surface for air, and as we con-
tinued on our way it was still swimming seaward along the bottom.

The Palauans have an odd story about using sea snakes to catch fish.
They say that if one holds the snake by the tail, it will probe among
the rocks and catch fish, which can then be easily seized. We never
saw this method of fishing practiced. Probably no modern Palauans
are courageous enough to try it, for our helpers invariably let out

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN PEATE. iit
sn ee =e UT : bs a .

1. Graceful, spotted cardinalfishes (4pogon nematopterus) hover over the branches of a
Porites colony that is their refuge in times of danger. This little fish, with its red spots
on a bronzy ground color, and a dark-brown cummerbund, is one of the loveliest denizens
of protected reefs.

2. Huge, fragile chalices of Montipora foliosa dominate the reef slope in the innermost part
of K Division of Iwayama Bay. They form an uncertain retreat for fishes like the small
damselfish (Pomacentrus) swimming above them.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT. 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN PLATE 12

ct ee r Mec et reat eM *” gta oe Ta y “ae
Dh che RS Oe ;

1. The beautiful falls of Matal Eigad on the Ateshi River, in Ngardmau Municipality of
Babelthuap. Note figure at foot of falls. The only fishes collected above the falls were
eels, which can travel overland around obstacles insurmountable to other fishes. (Photo-

graphed by H. A. Fehlmann.)

bi = E : ki £ uebe — Vier i a Bs oi "
2. H. Adair Fehlmann and Rikrik collecting in a small stream on Arekalong Peninsula of

northern Babelthuap. Such a locality yields many gobies, and prawns of the genus
Macrobrachium.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN PLATE 13

1. Great, circular plates of acroporas grow one above the other like modernistic buildir
in this scene along a reef channel south of Ngaremediu.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN PLATE 14

1. At left, a pair of speckled gobies sit outside the burrow made by the dark-banded snapping
shrimps. At right, the banded gobies are living with a pale, fine-striped shrimp that is
almost invisible against the sand.

2. At left, a clownfish (Amphiprion) pauses above its host anemone. At right, a clownfish
can be seen hiding among the tentacles of the anemone, which do not sting it.

PLATE 15

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN

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SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY

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untjayids YIM polaAod ‘soulds divys-s[psou sy], “espea| [v10d vB
Japun sopry (19un)d 431SDYJUDIP ) ¢

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PLATE 18

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN

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pey oy 1yy (supdsvq) Avizuys oy sAvidsip YLIyRY *T

PLATE 19

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN

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PLATE 20

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN

"WIENS O} 1YSIY Inoy-g oy} Jof ouL[deas AJOUAIaT, JsNAy, 9Y1 prvoqge
$008 Zuosnp oY] purys] uvsoqeyriy uo Wodie 101Oy oy IV °7Z

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aovd s[eloyjo ouljile pur ‘uurwyyoy “vy “YL “yyy “A Sueung 'fT

PALAU—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN 503

great yelps of fear whenever we caught sea snakes (or any other kind,
for that matter), and their repugnance extends also to eels, perhaps
with more justification. Another droll story, frequently seen on the
carved “talking picture” boards, tells how the sea snake taught
Palauans to fish with nets. In this tale, a Palauan woman, whose
children were a banana tree, a pussycat, and a sea snake, grew weary
of her offspring and told them to make their own way in the world.
The banana tree pointed out the impracticality of this suggestion, at
least from its rooted standpoint, and thus won a reprieve, but the two
more active “children” were sent packing. As they swam toward
Orukuizu, the cat riding on the snake’s head, they grew hungry, and in
Palauan carvings we see the snake encircling some fishes so the cat
could catch them as they swam out through the narrow space between
the snake’s head and tail. A villager who was up in a palm tree
gathering toddy caught sight of this procedure and at once recognized
its possibilities. He rushed down to the shore and asked the snake to
show him how to fish that way, so the snake showed him how to set
up a fence of sticks in shallow water, in which fish would be trapped.
But the Orukuizu man still needed the cat to catch the fish as they
passed through the mouth of the weir, so he asked the snake if he could
have the cat, too. The snake agreed but made the man promise to give
the cat one of the fish each time they made a successful catch. Such
was the origin of cats and fishweirs.

This particular species of sea snake is not so completely aquatic as
are some of its relatives, and it could be found on the seaward shore of
exposed islands, coiled up in underbrush on dry land or even in the
branches of trees (pl. 19, fig.2). They were very common at Nardueis,
off the southeast shore of Babelthuap, where we caught as many as a
dozen in a couple of hours. Some of these are still living in the Stein-
hart Aquarium in San Francisco, but the specimens destined for the
National Zoological Park in Washington perished during the flight
across the continent.

The herpetological collections we assembled contain at least four
other species of snakes, including a burrowing form (Z’yphlops) no

os os et
YSIS AEDR EZ SQ S255 25 SS 2
a ia ae ee

<<

The story of the sea snake, the cat, and the banana tree. Adapted from an actual Palaun
carving.

412575-—-57-—_83

504 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

larger than a moderate-sized earthworm. Geckos (nocturnal lizards
with adhesive toe pads that aid in climbing) of several kinds abound
in the trees and on window screens of buildings where they catch in-
sects attracted to electric lights at night. The toad is extremely
abundant in the vicinity of Koror, and two kinds of frog seem to
be widespread throughout the islands. The monitor lizard is not
especially common but may be encountered on Babelthuap. The
collections and notes of Dr. Masamitsu Oshima, who studied the rep-
tiles of Palau, were unfortunately destroyed during the course of the
war before they could be published. Our collections will therefore
fill an important gap in our knowledge of the terrestrial fauna of the
Palaus.
HOMEWARD BOUND

By the time November rolled around and Project Coral Fish had
been active in Palau for four months, we began to make plans for
the homeward journey. On November 4 we made our last marine
collecting station, and on the following day the dismantling of the
laboratory began. AI] equipment had to be either packed for ship-
ment or stored for use by Project Coral Fish II. Outboard motors
were cleaned and boxed, the Lenore was stripped and crated; collec-
tions were packed in tins, drums, and boxes, labeled, and stacked up
to await the next freighter to Guam. In a few days the laboratory
was starkly in order and deserted. Arrangements were made for
the transportation of the live cargo of sea snakes and dugong. “Plane
Day” on November 15 was a typical rainy-season day in Koror. Rikrik
and Sumang Y. went early to the dock and caught the dugong, and
it was difficult to say if it was wetter in the pool or on the dock.
Dugong, snakes, other precious collections, and ourselves were loaded
on the Albatross amphibian in the still-pouring rain, and we were
off, it seemed after having scarcely arrived, so swiftly did the months
pass on these coral-fringed islands and broad lagoons. Only yester-
day, so it seemed, we had made our way up one of Babelthuap’s
rivers as the crocodiles slid off the banks into the dark water,
or had been listening to the little bird with a “pipe sweet as a
flageolet” as we collected in some forest-bound coral bay. Perhaps
nowhere else in the world are reefs and jungles so intimately asso-
ciated that one can stand among living corals and at the same time
collect many different kinds of orchids from overhanging branches.
It will be many a year before the complexities of this multifarious
habitat are thoroughly understood, but we think that Project Coral
Fish is making a long stride toward that understanding and, thers-
fore, toward a better understanding of life in the seas as a whole.

During the 1955 expedition to Palau, Project Coral Fish assembled
thousands of specimens from 276 collecting stations extending from

PALAU—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN 505

the northern end of Babelthuap to Peleliu. Phylogenetically, the
collections contain animals ranging from the Protozoa to the verte-
brates, as well as many specimens of marine plants. The largest
collections are those of fishes, crustaceans, and sponges, but the smaller
collections are no less significant. Taken together, they represent a
contribution toward a more complete faunistic and zoogeographic
knowledge of the Palaus, an especially significant one in view of the
fact that the collections made in the same territory by Japanese
scholars prior to World War II are either widely scattered over Japan
or were destroyed during the war. In addition to their systematic and
zoogeographic value, these collections include information on reef
communities and biological associations, which forms the framework
of reef ecology. In spite of its encouraging success, the first field
season of Project Coral Fish did not accomplish all there was to be
done in Palau. Neither will the 1956 season. Some of the smaller
component projects will certainly see early completion, but they bring
into bold relief many other problems, not a few of which demand
an experimental approach that can succeed only at a place like Palau.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PALAUAN MARINE FAUNA

The large collection of marine animals assembled in Palau during
the summer and fall of 1955 is only now being studied in detail,
so it is not yet possible to analyze the fauna from a zoogeographic
standpoint. However, some impressions of both its richness and its
affinities were inescapable during the course of observing, collecting,
and preserving the many specimens handled. These impressions,
superimposed upon what we already know from the literature, enable
us to reaffirm the East Indian relationships of the Palauan marine
fauna.

Many East Indian fish groups not common in the oceanic islands
were found to be abundant in the Palaus. Especially noticeable is
the archerfish (Yowotes), which travels in large schools along the
lagoon shores, particularly in mangrove regions, where it penetrates
the narrow waterways and ascends a considerable distance up streams
and rivers. Glassfishes (Ambassis) and spotted scats (Scatophagus)
are abundant in the mangrove swamps and lower reaches of streams
but are not found in the limestone islands of the southern Palaus.
Fresh-water eels (Anguilla) grow up to 5 feet long in even the
smallest streams. Some groups of fishes, such as the snappers (Plecto-
rhynchus, Caesio, Lethrinus, and others) are represented by many more
species than are known from the multitudes of oceanic islands in the
Marshalls, Marianas, and Carolines.

Among the invertebrates, the only two shallow-water gorgonaceans
(Octocorallia) to extend an appreciable distance eastward into Micro-

506 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

nesia, Subergorgia mollis and Rumphella antipathes, are common
Kast Indian species that occur also, as expected, in the Palaus. An-
other species of Subergorgia, two magnificent melithaeas, the so-called
“Plexaura” flava, a species of Huplexaura, and Junceella fragilis are
more or Jess common in Palau, indicative of close ties with the Kast
Indies and Philippine faunas. Among the Alcyonacea, Dendro-
nephthya occurs in abundance and Studertotes was found in slightly
deeper water in the lagoon, both genera being well represented in the
Philippines. These various octocorallian genera are centered mainly
in the East Indies-Philippines area, but range also northward to
Japan and southward to Australia, thence eastward to Fiji, Tahiti,
and Tonga, but reduced in species peripherally. Furthermore, the
alcyonarian genera typical of Micronesian reefs, such as Sinularia,
Sarcophyton, Lobophytum, and Sphaerella, are represented in Palau
by a greater number of species than is usual in the central Pacific
atolls.

The molluscan fauna is notably richer in many elements than that
of the Micronesian atolls to the east, especially in such genera as
Murex, Spondylus, and Pecten. Since the distribution of Stmnia and
related gastropods is tied to that of the gorgonians on which they live,
they accordingly do not extend very far to the east, probably not be-
yond Palau. However, the large egg-cowry (Ovula ovum),
which lives on soft-corals, enjoys the much wider range of its hosts.

The fauna of the Palaus will probably not be found to approach
the richness of that of the Philippines, East Indies, and New Guinea,
but it certainly far overshadows that of the oceanic atolls.

PROSPECT

As we write these words, Project Coral Fish II is continuing the
program of investigations embarked upon in 1955. It is anticipated
that the field phase of a survey of the fresh-water fish fauna of Babel-
thuap, begun in 1955, will be completed successfully during the pres-
ent season, and the marine survey continues with special attention to
areas not previously visited. The research program has been broad-
ened by the addition of an oceanographer to the field party, so that
more detailed data regarding the aquatic environment may be
gathered.

During Coral Fish III in 1957, we hope to complete our ecological
resurvey of Iwayama Bay, and to make more detailed studies of some
of the commensal, symbiotic, and parasitic relationships mentioned in
the foregoing pages. The results of the 1956 expedition should permit
much more efficient observations on the physical environment and en-
hance the value of the Iwayama resurvey. We hope that it will also

PALAU—BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN 507

be possible to inaugurate a program of current and plankton studies,
especially within Iwayama Bay, to determine the reasons for, and to
provide a better understanding of, the distribution of various corals
and other benthic invertebrates within the confines of the Bay.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The fieldwork described in these pages was carried out under ar-
rangements with the Pacific Science Board (NAS-NRC) and the
Office of Naval Research [contract NVonr-291(57)]. Work in the
Palaus would have been impossible without the approval and thorough
cooperation of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. Especially
we wish to express our appreciation to High Commissioner D.
H. Nucker, Executive Officer A. M. Hurt, and their staffs in Guam.
In Palau, District Administrator Donald Heron extended every pos-
sible courtesy, and his staff, including Francis B. Mahoney, Robert P.
Owen, and many others, were wholeheartedly cooperative and inter-
ested in our program. We likewise cannot overlook the Trustees of the
George Vanderbilt Foundation and the authorities of the Smithsonian
Institution, who made our participation possible.

PALAUAN GEOGRAPHIC NAMES

The names used in this account are those to be found on the charts
of the U. S. Hydrographic Office and the maps of the U. S. Corps of
Engineers. The spellings of these names may bear little resemblance
to their pronunciations. We therefore offer the following table, the
left-hand column listing the names as taken from published charts and
used herein, and the right-hand column listing the phonetic spellings
by Kramer, or supplied to us by Sumang Y.

JNopep be (GIG ag eee a ee Set es ee ee ee, ee ee a Ngeaur

PAT OS a GE O1Nd hes oe ee eee A ee Nghus

JNA OSTA EE |) es ee ee eee Ngarekobasang
PATEK SALONS: GEC DLASTH A) ) ee = ee ee ee ee Ngaregolong
Ateshin(hiver) [also Addeido] ese. == an eee a Did

FAulone. (island) = 3s. Sa Se a Se SS a Ulong
Aurapushekaru (island) [also Auluptagel]_-___-_________. Ulupsigel
iBabpelthua pe Cisland) So 2 es ee ee eee eee Babldéop

TL ee 1G Neo 0 ee ee Ee ee ee ee @ Ilmalk
Genuherocairuy (Pass) 22s n ee ee ee eee Ngaregelngael
Keayaneele CATON) 222 es 2 ee nate a oe ere ee eee Nggeiangel
Nol aca RGIS an) ese 2 oe eee ee ee LA ee Malagal
Maralnicadg(Mallsiofia Diduins) ere ee See ee Madal a Jegad
DR Grar ote Cert SJey GS) Re a0 0) ee a ee ee ee ee Ngarduais
COVA Te BST AG ISD) ase ee a ee ee poe ee ee Ngerkuid
iPalanelaiso Palaonbelew,, ele) |e es. e222 2220 le Pelau or Belau
DCE) CEU ea ett i hh ane DR RIOR rN a OD Peliliou

OOK Ena eee Seek iS Re Eee ee Ee oe eae Ngurukdapel

508 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

LITERATURE
ABE, NOBORU.

1937. Ecological survey of Iwayama Bay, Palao. Palao Trop. Biol. Stat.

Stud., vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 217-324, 42 figs.
Abr, Nosorvu ; Ecucui, M.; and Hiro, F.

1937. Preliminary survey of the coral reef of Iwayama Bay, Palao. Palao

Trop. Biol. Stat. Stud., vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 17-35, 1 text fig., 2 pls., chart.
ABE, TOKIHARU.

1939. A list of the fishes of the Palao Islands. Palao Trop. Biol. Stat. Stud.,

vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 523-583. .
DAVENPORT, DEMOREST.

1955. Specificity and behavior in symbioses. Quart. Rev. Biol., vol. 30,

No. 1, pp. 29-46, 7 figs.
GoHar, H. A. F.

1948. Commensalism between fish and anemone (with a description of the
eggs of Amphiprion bicinctus Riippell). Publ. Marine Biol. Stat.
Ghardaqa (Red Sea), Egypt, vol. 6, pp. 35-44, 4 pls.

GupaGer, . W.

1946. Pomacentrid fishes symbiotic with giant sea anemones in Indo-Pacific
waters. Journ. Roy. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, Science, vol. 12, No. 2,
pp. 53-76, 2 pls.

Harry, RosperT R.

1956. “Eugenie” the dugong mermaid. Pacific Discovery, vol. 9, No. 1, pp.

21-27, 5 figs.
KEATE, GEORGE.

1788. An account of the Pelew Islands, situated in the western part of the
Pacific Ocean. Composed from the journals and communications
of Captain Henry Wilson, and some of his officers, who, in August
1783, were there shipwrecked, in the Antelope, a packet belonging to
the Honourable East India Company. London.

KRAMER, A.

1917-1929. Palau. Ergebn. Stidsee Exped. (Thilenius, ed.). II. Ethno-
graphie, B. Mikronesien, vol. 3. Pt. 1, 1917; Pt. 2, 1919; Pt. 3, 1926;
Pt. 4-5, 1929.

Kusary, J. S.
1873. Die Palau Inseln in der Siidsee. Journ. Mus. Godeffroy, vol. 1, No. 4,
pp. 177-238.

1895. Ethnographische Beitriige zur Kenntnis des Karolinen Archipels.
Leiden.

Nanyo Gunto BunKA KyoxKar (South Seas Cultural Association).

1938. Nanyo Gunto Shashin Cho (Photo album of the South Sea Islands),
Tokyo.

Archeological Work in Arctic Canada

By Henry B. CoLuins

Bureau of American Ethnology
Smithsonian Institution

[With 14 plates]

SournamptTon Istanp, a bleak and treeless land mass some 17,000
square miles in extent, forms the northwestern boundary of Hudson
Bay, separating it from Foxe Channel and Foxe Basin to the north.
Though the island is 50 miles below the Arctic Circle, its shores remain
icebound for about eight months of the year, and its climate, vegeta-
tion, flora, and fauna are all typically Arctic.

The island is of particular interest to archeology for two reasons. It
was the home of a strange, primitive tribe of Eskimos—the
Sadlermiut—who became extinct in 1903 before they had been studied
by ethnologists. And long before this, in prehistoric times, the island
had been occupied by two-other groups of Eskimos, those of the
Thule and Dorset cultures. The Thule people had come originally
from Alaska, about 800 years ago, and were commonly assumed to
have been the ancestors of the Sadlermiuts. The Dorsets were a little-
known Eskimo people of markedly different culture who had occupied
the central and eastern Arctic long before the arrival of the Thule
migrants from the west. This was the locale and these the problems
selected by our 1954 expedition to Southampton Island, sponsored by
the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of Canada, and
the National Geographic Society. We hoped to obtain information
on the early inhabitants of the island and the different ecological,
climatic, and cultural conditions that had prevailed there at different
times in the past, on the physical type of the old populations, and on
the cultural relationships between the three Eskimo groups—Dorset,
Thule, and Sadlermiut.

We planned to establish camp at Tunermiut (Native Point), 40
miles down the coast from Coral Harbour, and spend the greater part
of the summer excavating at a large abandoned Sadlermiut site and
a smaller Dorset culture site that had been reported there (Bird, 1953).
In midsummer we planned to charter an Eskimo Peterhead boat for
a trip over to uninhabited Coats Island to the south, where the

509

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

510

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ARCHEOLOGICAL WORK IN ARCTIC CANADA—COLLINS 511

Sadlermiuts were first encountered by Capt. Lyon in 1824 and where
we hoped also to find village sites of the earlier Dorset people. This
paper will be in the nature of a narrative account of the expedition,
describing the circumstances under which the work was conducted,
as well as the results accomplished.

On June 23 our party, consisting of Dr. J. Norman Emerson, Wil-
liam E. Taylor, Jr., Eugene Ostroff, and myself, was flown by the
R. C. A. F. from Montreal to Churchill on the west coast of Hudson
Bay. Here we stopped overnight and picked up a supply of 5-in-1
military rations, tents, and Arctic clothing which the U. S. Quarter-
master Corps had kindly provided for our use. The next morning
we flew over to Coral Harbour on the south coast of Southampton
Island, arriving around noon. Our immediate destination was the
Hudson’s Bay Company post and Eskimo village 3 miles east of the
airstrip, but as most of the snow had disappeared from the ground,
making sled travel overland impossible, we had to get there by a
roundabout route. Our supplies and equipment were loaded on an
Air Force truck and taken to a small Eskimo settlement bearing the
strange name of “Snafu,” on the coast 3 miles to the south. Here
we engaged Eskimos to take us the rest of the way by dog team over
the sea ice. It was a short trip of about 7 miles, a new experience for
most of the party and a prelude to the much longer sled trip we were to
begin next day. The name of this little Eskimo settlement comes from
a wrecked oil tanker, referred to as the Snafu, which ran aground there
during World War II. The proper tribal name of these Eskimos is
Okomiut, but they are now also called “Snafumiut,” a designation
they cheerfully accept, unaware of its somewhat derogatory connota-
tion. The Okomiuts came originally from southern Baffin Island, hav-
ing been brought to Southampton when the Hudson’s Bay post was
established there in 1924. They constitute the minority element in
the present Eskimo population of Southampton Island. Most of the
Eskimos now living on the island are Aiviliks from the Repulse Bay-
Wager Bay area on the mainland to the west, who were brought over
by the whalers around 1908. The total Eskimo population is about
240, mostly concentrated around the Hudson’s Bay post, where we were
now headed.

A. T. Swaffield, the post manager, met us and had our equipment
taken up to one of the company storehouses and the neat little 3-room
lodge where we were to stay until we left for Native Point. The
problem now was how to get down to Native Point. Normally the
ice breaks up by July 4th so that boat travel is possible by that time.
This year, however, the prospects were that the breakup would be
possibly as much as two weeks later. As we were anxious to get to
Native Point and begin work as soon as possible, Mr. Swaffield called

512 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

in one of the Eskimos, Pangiyuk, to discuss the situation. Like most
of the other Southampton Eskimos, Pangiyuk speaks hardly any
English, but Swaflield, through years of experience as a Hudson’s
Bay manager, has developed a considerable proficiency in the Eskimo
language.

Pangiyuk said that the sea ice, though somewhat rough and sloppy,
was still safe for sled travel and that his dog team and three others
were ready to take us down to Native Point as soon as the weather
permitted. The sky was then dark and overcast, it was raining and
windy and the barometer was falling; but the weather changes with
surprising rapidity in the Arctic, and by next morning the rain had
stopped and the sun was out. Our food supplies, tents, sleeping bags
and other equipment were hauled down to the rocky beach and loaded
onto the four sleds. Because of weight limitations, the aircraft that
had taken us to Coral Harbour had been able to bring only half
of our food supplies. The remainder was to be brought over from
Churchill on the July flight and delivered to us at Native Point by
the Eskimo Peterhead boat that was to take us to Coats Island.

It was perhaps just as well that we had no more of a load for
the four sleds were already filled to capacity. A skiff was lashed on
each sled and the boxes and other gear piled inside (pl. 1, A). This
was necessary in order to keep the supplies from getting wet, as the
sleds were very low and would have to traverse areas where at this
time of year there would be up to six inches of water on top of the
ice. It was also desirable as a precautionary measure in case we en-
countered wide leads in which a sled without a boat would sink.

As the weather was fine and the night as bright as day, we planned
to go directly to Native Point without stopping for the night, hoping
to make the 40-mile trip in around 10 hours. This proved to be a
somewhat optimistic estimate, for the trip required 14 hours, including
time out while the Eskimos hunted seals basking on the ice beside their
breathing holes.

The sleds were pulled by from 8 to 10 dogs who jogged along at a
good trot to the constant accompaniment of the drivers’ “Wo-ah”
(right), “Ah-ee” (left), and other sounds more like grunts than
words but which were clearly intelligible to the dogs. Sometimes,
though, when the dogs had not responded properly there would be a
deluge of words—undoubtedly Eskimo invective and profanity—simi-
lar in purpose to the conventional remarks a mule driver uses in ad-
dressing his team. When language failed, the long whip would swish
out and the offending dog would emit a surprised yelp and start
pulling.

There was almost as much water as ice surface, though most of
it was only a few inches deep, in pools that usually contained deeper

ARCHEOLOGICAL WORK IN ARCTIC CANADA—COLLINS 513

holes which had to be avoided (pl. 1, B). The sleds negotiated the
open leads and ‘pools with little trouble, though for the passenger
sitting on top it was a rather bouncy, bumpy ride, frequently inter-
rupted by his having to jump off and help pull the sled over an ice
hummock or through a patch of soft snow. Most of the leads were
narrow enough for the dogs to jump over. Occasionally, however,
there were wider leads, half the length of the sled, which the dogs
would have to swim, and here it would be necessary for Eskimo driver
and passenger to hop off and help pull the sled across.

At 5 a. m. on June 26th the long trip was over as the weary dogs
pulled the sleds up to the beach at Native Point and settled down to
rest. But before we could rest we had to unload the sleds and haul
our gear over the rocky beach to the dry level spot 100 yards away
that we had selected as a camp site. The wall tent was set up, we
brought our sleeping bags inside and went to sleep about 6 a. m.
Later that day we put up the other tent, got camp organized and made
a preliminary inspection of the ruins we were to dig.

With the departure of our Eskimo friends next morning, we were
the sole inhabitants of Native Point, or indeed of the whole southeast
end of the island. The first day was spent looking over the sites, ex-
ploring the gravel ridges—old beach lines—to the east, south, and west,
and planning our operations for the summer. I had selected Native
Point for excavation largely on the basis of a manuscript report by
W. D. Bell, archeologist on Dr. J. Brian Bird’s geographical expedi-
tion of 1950 (Bird, 1953). Bell had reported that this site, known
to have been the principal settlement of the extinct Sadlermiut, con-
tained the largest aggregation of old Eskimo house ruins in the Ca-
nadian Arctic. He had also discovered some middens containing
Dorset culture material on an elevated headland 1 mile away.

Though we expected this to be a fine spot archeologically, we were
hardly prepared for what we found. The Sadlermiut site was tre-
mendous. It consisted of the ruins of about 75 semisubterranean
dwellings in addition to a dozen old “qarmats” or autumn houses built
by Aivilik Eskimos who had camped there in recent years. Some of
the older Sadlermiut houses appear now as only slight depressions on
the grass-covered surface of the old beach ridges, but most of them are
fairly well preserved, their sunken interiors and entrance passages
filled with a jumble of stones that had formed the walls and roofs
(pl. 2, A). Whale bones, which the Thule Eskimos and the Sadler-
miuts on the northern end of the island often used in house construc-
tion, had been rarely used for that purpose here. The walls were
made of stones and blocks of sod, and the floor, roof supports, and
sometimes even the roof itself were of stone. The ground outside the
houses was littered with the skulls and bones of animals eaten by the

514 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Sadlermiuts, mainly seals, walrus, caribou, and polar bears, and addi-
tional thousands of such bones were visible in the bottom of a shallow
pond which dried up before the summer was over (pl. 2, B). Stone
cairns and meat caches by the hundreds were found along the beach in
front of the site and on the old shorelines for miles around. Human
burials, numbering well over 100, were to be seen at the site itself and
along the adjacent beach ridges. The burials within the village were
of the surface variety ; the bodies had been laid on the surface of the
ground and merely surrounded by a row of stones. Away from the
village the bodies had been placed in carefully constructed vaults of
limestone slabs (pl. 3). Human skulls and bones were also visible in
some of the house ruins. These were the remains of the very last of
the Sadlermiuts, who died here in the epidemic of 1902-3. Most of
the graves, however, were made of stones that were heavily incrusted
with lichens and were probably more than a hundred years old.

To excavate a site of such magnitude completely and carefully would
have required years of work by a party far larger than ours. How-
ever, our plans did not call for extensive excavations. We wished only
to sample the houses and middens, digging enough to give us a rounded
picture of Sadlermiut culture and leaving the bulk of the site intact
for future archeologists. We planned to dig only two houses, Num-
ber 37, which appeared to be one of the most recent, and Number 30,
one of the oldest (pl. 4). The excavation of these houses and of
selected midden areas and graves yielded a large collection of artifacts
which provided the essential information needed. Some of the Sadler-
miut artifacts are illustrated on plate 5.

The Sadlermiuts have been one of the puzzles of Eskimo ethnology.
They were first described by the British explorer Capt. G. F. Lyon,
who met them in 1824 on the southwest coast of Coats Island, which
then and for many years later was thought to be a part of Southampton
Island. American, English, and Scotch whalers began operating in
Hudson Bay in the 1860’s, but as far as known they rarely came into
contact with the Sadlermiuts who, probably because of their isolation,
remained aloof from other Eskimos as well as whites. Three of the
whalers, Captains Comer (1910), Munn (1919), and Ferguson (1988),
published brief observations on the Sadlermiut, and a number of their
typical artifacts, collected by Comer, were described by Boas (1901-7).
In 1922 the Danish archeologist Dr. Therkel Mathiassen while ex-
cavating on the north side of Southampton Island, obtained valuable
information on the Sadlermiut from two old Aivilik Eskimos who had
lived for a few years among them (Mathiassen, 1927).

The Sadlermiut population seems to have declined steadily after
the coming of the whalers. In 1896 Capt. Comer estimated their
number at 70, most of them living at settlements on the south side of

ARCHEOLOGICAL WORK IN ARCTIC CANADA—COLLINS 515

the island, mainly at Native Point. In the winter of 1902-3 the
Sadlermiut were struck by an epidemic, which seems to have been
typhoid, and the entire tribe perished except for two children who
had previously been adopted by the Aivilik.

Without exception, those who had an opportunity to observe the
Sadlermiuts were impressed by the many differences between them
and other Canadian Eskimos. Their language was different, they
lived in permanent semisubterranean stone dwellings instead of snow
houses, and the men wore bearskin trousers and tied their hair in
an enormous knot above the forehead. Another striking difference
was that the Sadlermiut, instead of using iron tools like the Eskimos
all around them, still made their knives, harpoon blades, and other
implements from chipped flint.

It has been commonly thought that the Sadlermiut were the descend-
ants of the old Thule people, the last remnant of this prehistoric
Eskimo population which originated in Alaska and spread eastward to
Arctic Canada and Greenland some seven or eight hundred years ago.
There was undoubtedly a connection of some kind between Sadlermiut
and Thule, but as a result of our work at Native Point it seems more
likely that the Sadlermiuts, instead of being the actual descendants of
the Thule people, had merely been influenced by Thule culture. On the
other hand, there are strong indications that the Sadlermiuts were
related in some way to the Eskimos of the prehistoric Dorset culture,
perhaps even descended from them. One of their most important
implements, the harpoon head with which they captured seals and
walrus, was demonstrably derived from one of the Dorset types.
In our excavations at the Sadlermiut site and the three Dorset sites
at Native Point, we found harpoon heads that clearly show the transi-
tion from Dorset to Sadlermiut. Stone side blades on knives and
lances are another feature which the Sadlermiuts appear to have
taken over from the earlier Dorset people. Our later work on Walrus
Island suggests that even the Sadlermiut form of dwelling may have
been borrowed from the Dorset Eskimos. It might also be mentioned
that the Sadlermiut, according to their own tradition, came to
Southampton from Baffin Island, and that their dialect seems to have
been related to that of the Okomiut of that area. The Sadlermiut
also lived on Coats Island and probably on Mansel and the islands
in Hudson Strait, and it was on these same islands and the southern
part of Baffin Island that the Dorset culture had previously flourished.
In short, both prehistoric Dorset and modern Sadlermiut occupied the
same territory in the Hudson Bay and Strait area. Though the evi-
dence is still incomplete, it would seem not unlikely that the Sadler-
miut, whose anomalous position has long puzzled ethnologists, were
the descendants of the mysterious Dorset people who were the other,
and principal object of study of our expedition.

516 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

The Dorset culture was first described by Dr. Diamond Jenness
(1925) on the basis of material in the National Museum of Canada
excavated by Eskimos at Cape Dorset on the south coast of Baffin
Island and on Coats and Mansel Islands. The material described by
Jenness differed strikingly from that found at Thule culture sites.
The Dorset people had used chipped-stone instead of rubbed-slate im-
plements. Their harpoon heads and other bone and ivory artifacts
were small and delicate, and entirely different in form from those made
by the Thule Eskimos. The Dorset collection contained no trace of
such typical Thule elements as whalebone mattocks, snow shovels, bone
arrowheads, bow drills, ulus, harness toggles, or other evidences of
dog traction. Another striking difference was that the Dorset artifacts
were usually deeply patinated. In the past 25 years Dorset sites have
been excavated at a number of localities in the eastern Arctic from
Newfoundland to Greenland. These excavations, however, added
little to what Jenness had originally deduced as to the age, relation-
ships, and significance of the Dorset culture. It was clearly older
than the Thule culture, for Dorset implements, and in some cases
Dorset occupation levels, were found underlying Thule (Holtved,
1944; Collins, 1950). ‘Though the Dorsets had ocupied the central
and eastern Arctic many years before the arrival of the Thule people
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a few groups of them con-
tinued to live on long after that. Evidence of this is a small Dorset
site of post-Thule age excavated by Dr. Deric O’Bryan (1953) on
Mill Island to the east of Southampton. And if the hypothesis
mentioned above is correct, the Sadlermiut themselves may have been
such a remnant group, though one greatly modified by contact with
the Thule culture. To test this hypothesis we would need information
on Sadlermiut sites somewhat older than the one at Native Point,
sites that might reveal an earlier stage of Sadlermiut or Dorset-
Sadlermiut culture lacking distinctive Thule traits, particularly the
bow drill.

The main Dorset culture site at which we excavated was 1 mile to the
east of the Sadlermiut site. It was situated on the gently sloping sur-
face of a 70-foot-high headland, a hill or plateau of glacial till, which
had once fronted on the sea but which now les half a mile back from
the present beach (pl. 6, A). Extending east and west over this now
elevated surface and clearly visible only from the air, are a number
of low, closely spaced curving ridges of sand and gravel—remnants
of marine bars that were formed when sea waves washed over the
surface during the post-glacial marine submergence that inundated
the Hudson Bay lowlands following retreat of the glacial ice.
~ It would be difficult to imagine two Eskimo habitation sites more
different than this and the big Sadlermiut site. The Dorset site,

ARCHEOLOGICAL WORK IN ARCTIC CANADA—COLLINS 517

which was much larger than we had anticipated, had the appear-
ance of a flat, level meadow or pasture (pl. 6, B). Its surface
was covered by a sparse, dry growth of vegetation, mostly low-growing
saxifrages, Dryas, grasses, and lichens, in striking contrast to the lush
growth of grass and other vegetation at the Sadlermiut site. This in
itself was an indication of age, for recently abandoned habitation
sites, which still retain much of their organic content, always support
a dense plant growth. At this Dorset site, however, the scanty plant
cover showed that the nutritive elements had long since been absorbed
from the soil. At the edges of the steep bluff and at other places where
wind erosion had removed the vegetation the ground was littered with
flint chips, occasional stone and ivory artifacts, and bleached animal
bones, mostly of seals and birds. We soon found, from testing, that
shallow midden deposits extended discontinuously for an area of
over 30 acres. These middens, covered by scarcely more than an inch
of sod and vegetation, were the only indication that the site had ever
been occupied by man; there were no large stones, no house pits, no
surface irregularities of any kind. But before the summer was
over, our excavations had yielded over 25,000 mammal bones, addi-
tional thousands of bird bones, and about 3,000 artifacts that were
to throw new light on the whole problem of the origin and relation-
ships of the Dorset culture.

We called this old Dorset site T 1, from Tunermiut, the Aivilik
Eskimo name for Native Point. A second, and later, Dorset site,
which we found buried beneath about a foot of windblown sand near
the Sadlermiut site, was called T 2 (pl. 7, A). In 1955 a third Dorset
site, T 3, only slightly younger than T 1, was found on the old beach
line immediately below it, at 40 feet above sea level (pl. 7, B).

Midden areas at different parts of T 1, designated as Middens 1, 2,
3, and 4, were laid off in 5-foot squares, and a number of test pits were
dug at other places. As the midden deposits were shallow and rested
on well-drained sand or gravel, they were not frozen. Permafrost was
encountered only at a depth of 2 feet or more in the underlying gravel.
The first day’s digging was sufficient to show us that this was a very
unusual Dorset site. Flint implements were far more abundant than
any other artifacts, and they were small and delicately chipped, like
Dorset implements generally (pls. 8, 9). Most of them, however,
differed in form from previously known Dorset types, and some of
them were unlike anything known from America. The majority of
the blades would be described as microlithic, and some of them in
shape and technique resembled microlithic types found at early pre-
Eskimo sites in Alaska and at Mesolithic sites in the Old World. The
ivory harpoon heads, though basically Dorset in character, were
specifically different from those found at most other Dorset sites.

518 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Other artifacts of ivory and bone such as dart points, knife handles,
scrapers, and ornaments (pl. 10), were recognizable as Dorset mainly
because line holes and other perforations, when present, were always
cut or gouged out, according to invariable Dorset custom, for these,
like all other Dorset people, had no knowledge of the bow drill. How-
ever, the forms of the implements themselves were for the most part
new to the Dorset culture. The few ornaments and the simple
straight-line decoration on artifacts also had no exact counterparts in
Dorset culture. Finally, we found no trace at T 1 of such typical
Dorset types as closed-socket harpoon heads with two line holes, open-
socket heads with single spur and line hole at edge, harpoon fore-
shafts with lateral line hole, small knife handles with deep side sockets,
ivory runners for hand sleds with ends fitted together, ivory spatulas,
projectile points with deeply concave bases, end scrapers with ex-
panded edges, concave side scrapers, asymmetric knife blades, and
grotesque human and animal carvings. The absence of these typical
Dorset features could hardly have been accidental for the amount of
material excavated here was considerably greater than from any other
Dorset culture site. As the work progressed it became clear that the
T 1 site, though conforming in general to the basic Dorset pattern as
known from other sites of this culture in the central and eastern
Arctic, was in many other respects specifically different. It repre-
sented a new and distinctive phase of the Dorset culture; or, if it
could be proved to be older than other Dorset sites it might more prop-
erly be described as proto- or formative Dorset.

The question that confronted us was whether the T 1 site did, in fact,
represent an older, simpler stage leading up to the classic Dorset cul-
ture, or perhaps a later, somewhat degenerate stage. The former ex-
planation seemed more probable, for several reasons. First, the small
T 2 site, which was typical Dorset, seemed definitely later than T 1.
It was adjacent to the recent Sadlermiut site and was only 25 feet
above sea level in contrast to the 70-foot elevation of T 1. The mate-
rial excavated at T 2 included hardly any of the types that were
prominent at T 1. On the other hand, it was significant that the
limited excavations at T 2 yielded a number of typical Dorset imple-
ments that were not found at T 1. These were harpoon blades with
deeply concave base, asymmetric knife blades, slender knife handles
with deep side socket, ivory sled runners (for hand sled) with ends
fitted together, and late Dorset-type harpon heads (pl. 11). As these
were types that were characteristic of O’Bryan’s late Dorset site on
Mill Island, it seemed clear that T 2 was later than T 1.

The stone implements provided another means of deciding the ques-
tion. As mentioned before, some of the T 1 implements were types
not previously found in America. Among these were long rectangu-

SMITHSONIAN. REPORT, 1956.—COLLINS PLATE 1

A. Loading dog sleds at Coral Harbour for 40-mile trip over the sea ice to Native Point,
June 23, 1954. Boats were lashed to the sleds to hold the cargo and protect it from sur-
face water.

di Fes, anes! =

B. One of the sleds crossing a pool of water on the ice.

PEATE 2

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956 —COLLINS

“JNIULII[peg oy} OF o[qeileav Ajddns pooy JuvpuNqeR a4} O} SUTAJNSO1
‘SUS 9SP][IA P[O 9Y} Iv ope o19M SUOIBALIXS JOAIIOYM Puno} a1aM sau0g
JO suoleiusou0s AAvoy ATfenby ‘soxoy pur ‘sesnjeq “sivaq 1ejod ‘ssop
“‘noqiivo “snijeM “s[vas JO souog JO spuvrsnoy} oie o1oy a[qistA ‘puod dn-poarip
MOU MO][PYS SI} OUT asnfol aUOg ITIYI Mo1Y} S]NIWIs[peg JO suoleIoUuDy “gq

“polRA¥VIXS 919M UOY} JO OM} pur ‘poqliosap pure ‘peddeur ‘poinsrow
a1oM ‘06 punole sulloquinu ‘sasnoy of, “JOUIZX9 9UIed9q dq] oY
usm “¢Q-ZO6T PUNoIe pouopurge Ajqeqoid sem “pos puv sauo}s fo Inq
‘asnoy Sit], “SOUTYSH] NIUIO[pes JOUNX oY} JO JUsWTaIIIa8 [edioutid ayy
aouo ‘(qUIOg 2ATIYN) JNIUWAoUNT, 1e suINI asnoy JUaI01 J10W 34} JO sud “WV

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—COLLINS PLATE 3

3 ae
B. The same burial with covering stones removed. The body was that of a 35 to 40-year
old woman. As in all the Sadlermiut burials, lemmings had built their nests here and
were responsible for partial disarray of the bones.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—COLLINS PLATE 4

A. Excavations at House 30, one of the oldest houses at the Sadlermiut site. The house
depression, at right, and areas adjacent to it were marked off in 5-foot squares.

B. The House 30 excavations at a later stage.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—COLLINS PLATE 5

Artifacts from Sadlermiut graves, middens, and house ruins at Native Point. 4 natural size.

a, Dorset harpoon head, antler; -d, small Sadlermiut harpoon heads, ivory and bone; e-A,
closed- and open-socket harpoon heads, bone and ivory; 7, harpoon finger rest, bone; J, k,
bolas weights, ivory; /, stone end blades for knives, harpoons, and lances; m, stone side blades
and arrow points; , woman’s hair ornament, bone; 0, ~, ivory ornaments; g, ivory wound
pin; r, s, walrus-rib drills; ¢, rim sherd of limestone cooking pot; u, wooden socket; v, bone
shaft for iron-pointed drill.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—COLLINS PLATE 6

A. Helicopter view, July 3, 1955, of plateau on which the proto-Dorset site T 1 was situated.
One of the expedition’s shelter tents is visible at right. Looking inland, toward the south.

B. Excavations at Midden 1 of the T 1 site. The shallow midden was prolific in artifacts
and mammal bones, the latter shown piled up beside the squares. A radiocarbon date
of 2060 + 230 years was obtained from samples of charred animal bones from another part
of the site.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—COLLINS PLATE 7

i

ri

a aS. i - =

A. The late Dorset site, T 2, adjacent to the Sadlermiut site. Sadlermiut artifacts and
well-preserved animal bones were found in the 12-inch layer of windblown sand that
covered the Dorset stratum. The latter, a layer of black earth, contained numerous
stones and weathered and patinated animal bones and artifacts of Dorset origin.

B. Beginning excavations at T
Photograph taken June 23, 195
at its base.

, an early Dorset site only slightly younger than T 1.

3
5, looking ESE. toward the T 1 plateau with snow bank

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—COLLINS PLATE 8

a

Z

Stone implements from T 1. Natural size. a-y, chert, z, nephrite. a-/, end blades, bifaced
and unifaced; m, large bifaced blade with slanting base; -r, side blades (¢, worked on both
surfaces; r, worked on outer surface only); s-v, scrapers; w, blade tang with side notches;
x, burin; y, z, burinlike implements with ground edges and sides.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—COLLINS PLATE 9

Ei
A

Flake and spall implements from T 1, chert. Natural size. a-e, microblades, struck from pre-
pared cores; f-h, microblades with tangs; 7-1, heavy spalls struck from edges of prepared cores
or chipped blades (i, struck from the edge of a bifaced knife or projectile blade, retains the
tip of the parent blade); m-v, knives made from microblades and heavier flakes, with one thick
edge and the opposite edge sharp for cutting; w-y, triangular microliths, usually with one edge
dulled and a spall removed from opposite edge; z, spall implements, some finely retouched
at upper end, probably used for grooving, inserted in composite handles like plate 10, h.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—COLLINS PLATE 107

Representative artifacts from T 1

Natural size.

a-c, ivory harpoon heads; d, harpoon
foreshaft, ivory; e,f, barbed ivory points; g, ivory lance head with side blade socket; h,
half of a composite ivory handle or socket for holding flint spall; 7,7, needles made of bird
bone; k,m,n, ivory objects, use unknown; J, flint flaker made of walrus jaw bone; 0,p, ivory
disks; 7, triangular section of purple clamshell; 7, ivory knife or scraper.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—COLLINS PLATE 11

Artifacts from the late Dorset site T 2. Natural size. a, ivory harpoon head with enclosed
rectangular socket, right half of basal spur broken off; b, barbed dart with enclosed rec-
tangular socket, ivory; c,d, ivory knife handles with deep socket for side blade at upper
end; ¢, harpoon or lance blade with concave base; f,7, asymmetric knife blades; g, section
of ivory runner for hand sled; 4, ivory carving of loon.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—COLLINS PLATE 12

A. Counting and identifying mammal bones excavated at House 30, Sadlermiut site. Over
45,000 mammal bones excavated from this and the early Dorset site T 1 revealed interesting
differences in the food economy and hunting practices of the two groups of Eskimos who
had inhabited the same region 2,000 years apart. Bird bones, numbering in the thou-
sands, were brought back to the Smithsonian for identification.

B. The Peterhead boat Nayavak being loaded with supplies and equipment for an exploring
trip to Coats Island, June 18, 1954.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—COLLINS PLATE 13

A. Two Aivilik members of the boat crew, Okerluk and Napayuk, stand beside a mushroom-
shaped cairn at an abandoned Sadlermiut site on north shore of Coats Island. Cairns of
this shape, peculiar to the Sadlermiut, were used as platforms for storing meat.

B. House No. 3 at the Sadlermiut site on Coats Island, after excavation had revealed the
stone flooring and one of three sleeping platforms, shown at left. At center, stone roof
supports, still in place, hold the flat slabs of limestone that had formed the roof of the
house.

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—COLLINS PEATE 4

A. House No. 3, one of the oldest-looking house ruins at the Walrus Island site. Limited
excavations in and around this house yielded only Dorset artifacts.

vo ee 3 iS yy >. ere - athe “eae

B. House 6, one of the more recent houses at Walrus Island. The house, constructed of
granite slabs and boulders, was cloverleaf in shape.

ARCHEOLOGICAL WORK IN ARCTIC CANADA—COLLINS 519

lar side blades with shallow flaking on one or both surfaces (pl. 8, q,
r) ; spalls struck from the lateral edges of prepared cores or of chipped
blades (pl. 9, 7-2); and knives made from microblades and heavier
flakes, having one edge sharp for cutting and the opposite edge thick,
like the back of a penknife, to serve as a rest for the finger (pl. 9, m-v).
The first two are types that occur at Mesolithic and early Neolithic
sites in Mongolia and Siberia (Maringer, 1950, pl. 30, figs. 1, 4, 5; pl.
95, figs. 7,8; Okladnikov, 1950, fig. 62). The third type is one that was
similar in function, though not in method of manufacture, to the
“backed” blades so characteristic of the Old World Mesolithic. Plate
8, A, is an unusual flake blade, the under or bulbar surface of which
is carefully retouched along the base, lower right edge and upper end,
while the outer surface, illustrated, is unmodified. In form and tech-
nique this blade is closely similar to some of those from Mesolithic
sites (Khina period) in the region of Lake Baikal and the Angara
River (Okladnikov, 1950, figs. 16,17).

There was still another reason for believing that the T 1 material
may have had Mesolithic affinities and that it represented an early or
formative stage of Dorset culture. Microblades—narrow rectangular
or pointed fiakes struck from prepared cores (pl. 9, a—e)—and deli-
cate spall implements (pl. 9,2) were present in large numbers at T 1,
and several burins (pl. 8, 2) were also found. Burins, spalls, and
microblades are among the implements most characteristic of the
Denbigh Flint Complex recently discovered by Dr. J. L. Giddings
on the Bering Sea coast of Alaska (Giddings, 1951). The Denbigh
culture is at least 4,000 years old and probably older, and it has strong
connections with the Old World Mesolithic. Though older than any
known stage of Eskimo culture, there are strong indications that the
Denbigh Complex was one of the sources from which the Dorset cul-
ture was derived (Collins, 1951, 1953; Harp, 1953).

More conclusive evidence of the age of T 1 finally came from radio-
carbon analysis, the newly developed technique which makes it pos-
sible to date organic materials by measuring the amount of carbon 14
which they contain. Pieces of charred mammal bones from one of
the test cuts were submitted to the University of Pennsylvania Car-
bon-14 Laboratory and were found to be 2,060+2380 years old. This
may be taken as a minimum date, for grass roots had penetrated even
the deepest parts of the T 1 middens, and thus could have contributed
an unknown amount of more recent carbon to the bone fragments.

The T 1 finds are also of interest in connection with a larger prob-
lem, that of the origin and relationships of Eskimo culture as a whole.
Close resemblances have previously been observed between the tools
and techniques of the earliest Eskimos and those of the early Neolithic
and Mesolithic peoples of Eurasia, particularly in the region of Lake

4125755784

520 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Baikal and northern Europe. On the basis of these resemblances the
present writer has suggested that Eskimo culture was of Old World
origin, its earliest roots stemming from the Mesolithic cultures of
Eurasia (Collins, 1948, 1951). The T 1 artifacts, which include addi-
tional types resembling those of the Mesolithic, as well as those of the
Denbigh Flint Complex, would seem to lend weight to the hypothesis.
In drawing this conclusion it is recognized of course that the T 1 site
is thousands of years later than the Old World Mesolithic. It is
equally true, on the other hand, that established culture patterns may
persist over long periods of time. The Dorset people, in the isolation
of the Arctic, may have perpetuated Mesolithic techniques and tradi-
tions that had long since faded away in the Old World.

The early Dorset Eskimos who lived at the T 1 site were a hunting
people, like all Eskimos, and sea mammals were their principal source
of food. The village they occupied 2,000 years ago is now half a mile
back from the shore, an inconvenient location for people who were
dependent on the sea for their livelihood. However, when the site was
occupied geographical conditions in the Hudson Bay region were con-
siderably different from those of today. Asa consequence of the post-
glacial marine submergence the sea level stood higher in relation to
the land, so that the T 1 plateau was much nearer the sea than at
present.

Though we uncovered a number of hearths where the people had
done their cooking, we could find no traces of dwellings of any kind.
They might possibly have lived in snow houses, which would have left
no trace, but this seems unlikely as we found no snow knives which
Eskimos always use in constructing these winter dwellings; moreover,
the large number of bird bones in the refuse suggested that the site
had been occupied in summer as well as winter. If the climate 2,000
years ago was milder than at present, for which there is some geologi-
cal evidence, the people could have lived there the year around in light
skin-covered tents. Whatever the climate may have been, we can be
sure that the early Dorset people wore tailored skin clothing, for bone
needles, which could only have been used for sewing skins, were ex-
ceedingly common in the midden deposits. The skins used were prob-
ably those of seals and birds or, less likely, foxes.

In order to learn as much as possible of their food habits we kept
every animal bone that was excavated. These were counted and when-
ever possible identified as to species. The majority of the mammal
bones, such as ribs, vertebrae, and foot bones, were too difficult to iden-
tify in the field, but the skulls, jaws, and body bones such as scapulae,
pelves, and limb bones presented no great difficulty. In 1954 over
25,000 mammal bones were excavated at T 1, of which over 3,000 were
identified, and almost as many were obtained from the excavations
at the Sadlermiut site (pl. 12, A).

ARCHEOLOGICAL WORK IN ARCTIC CANADA—COLLINS 521

TaBLE 1.—Distribution of identifiable mammal bones excavated at T 1 and Sad-
lermiut sites

Mio! Sadlermiut
Number Percent Number Percent

Sea liestene of aes Ao ee ld, 2, 035 66. 5 1, 840 65. 2
VADs Dre Pe 379 12. 4 149 5, 3
IBeCaTrOeCdiseale o. 0 eee ee 299 9. 7 204 dee
TeNO Saeed NI a 2 a aE aa 315 10. 3 75 PA)
Canibus oO a ee ee 25 .8 332 Mab ts)
Ola Casey wetland Dorie. dul 4 a 38 Me)
ID Opi. abe RS BRE ee eee 0 a) 180 6. 4
Vilas meee en ay ys ke 0 0 6 APs

cRopals se ET SU Pee 3) OF 99. 8 2, 824 100. 1

Comparison of the two series reveals some interesting differences
in the hunting practices and food habits of these two groups of Eski-
mos who had occupied the same locality at different times in the past.
The seal was the principal food animal of both groups, represented
by 66 and 65 percent of the bones. Next in importance were the walrus
and bearded seal. Fox bones were much more numerous at the Dorset
site and polar bear bones were relatively rare at both sites. One
somewhat surprising result of the bone count was evidence that the
Dorset people made very little use of the caribou, which was one of
the most important sources of food of the later Sadlermiuts. More
striking still was the fact that not a single dog bone was found at T 1,
though they numbered over 6 percent at the Sadlermiut site. The
absence of dog bones may explain the paucity of caribou bones at T 1.
Since they had no dog sleds and therefore no effective means of winter
travel, the early Dorset people would have been unable to go on long
hunting trips to the eastern side of the island where the caribou mostly
lived.

Birds were also an important element in the diet of the Dorset and
Sadlermiut people if we may judge from the thousands of bones exca-
vated and brought back to the Smithsonian for identification. In the
eastern part of the Dorset site about 90 percent of the bones were those
of birds. It is probable that this part of the site was occupied only
during the summer months when enormous flocks of migratory birds
come north to breed. There are no indications as to how the birds
were captured. We found no bolas weights or bird spears such as
other Eskimos, including the Sadlermiut, used for this purpose. The
early Dorset people may have caught their birds with snares made
from perishable materials such as skin thongs or sinew, which would
not have been preserved.

022 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Identification of the bird bones from T 1 will provide at least a par-
tial inventory of the kinds of birds that migrated to this area 2,000
years ago, for comparison with those now found there. The low-lying
area around Native Point, with its network of ponds and lagoons,
fairly swarms with bird life during the summer. The principal
species that we observed nesting were king eider and Old Squaw ducks,
gulls, terns, various kinds of waders, snow buntings, and Lapland
longspurs. Flocks of Canada, snow, and blue geese were constantly
passing by. Loons, singly or in small groups, seemed to maintain
regular flight schedules over our camp, filling the air with their
strident cacophony as they shuttled at high speed from one pond or
lagoon to another. From two to seven beautiful white swans were
usually visible on the surface of the large pond, which we called Swan
Lake, a few hundred yards from our tents. Longspurs and snow
buntings nested all around the camp area, seeking the protection of
grassy tussocks and of fallen rocks and crevices in the old house ruins.
The snow buntings showed a special predilection for old tin cans and
human and animal skulls lying on the surface around the Sadlermiut
site.

Under a permit from the Canadian Wildlife Service we collected a
small number of migratory birds, mainly jaegers, gulls, ducks, geese,
and loons, as well as lemmings which were particularly abundant in
1954 and 1955. As the avifauna of Southampton Island is fairly well
known, our purpose was not to collect bird skins for museum specimens
but for the ectoparasites—lice and mites—which they might contain.
Each species of bird and mammal has its own species of insect para-
sites, and Col. Robert Traub of the Walter Reed Medical Center was
interested in obtaining these for study in connection with his investi-
gation of the role of such parasites in the transmission of typhus and
other diseases. One of my most tedious afterdinner chores was the
“louse hunt,” in which I would painstakingly examine birds and lem-
mings in search of the elusive quarry. The jaegers, rapacious gulls
with hawks’ habits that prey on smaller birds, were heavily infested
with mites, and several hundred could easily be scraped from a single
wing feather and dropped into a vial of aleohol. Examination of the
other birds and lemmings required constant use of the magnifying lens
and was a much greater strain on one’s eyesight and patience. Often
the most prolonged fluffing of fur and feathers would produce no more
than one or two lice or mites.

Our other afterhours activities involved the collecting of plants,
fossils, fresh-water invertebrates, moths, butterflies, beetles, and other
insects. The most abundant, and unwelcome, form of insect life was
mosquitoes. July was “mosquito month” and life would have been
miserable indeed if we had had no protection against them. Fortu-

ARCHEOLOGICAL WORK IN ARCTIC CANADA—COLLINS 523

nately, however, Dr. S. A. Hall of the U. S. Department of Agricul-
ture had provided us with mosquito repellents that worked like magic.
With faces and hands covered with liquid repellent, we were able
to dig in relative comfort even on warm, calm days, despite the
frustrated buzzing of the clouds of mosquitoes that surrounded us.

We were fortunate, too, in the weather we had. Though many
days were cold and windy and we had to wear our heaviest clothing,
there were many other fine clear days when we could enjoy the warm
sun and wish that there were more hours for digging, for exploring
the surrounding country, and doing the other things we wanted to do.
The average temperature was in the low 40’s, sometimes dipping down
to freezing at night and then rising to 60° or more at midday.

On July 17 Sandy Santiana and three other Eskimos from Coral
Harbour—Napayuk, Okerluk, and Kolugjak—arrived in the Peter-
head boat, Vayavak (Little Gull). They had come to deliver the
rest of our food supplies and take us on an exploring trip to Coats
Island. This island, though the second largest in Hudson Bay, is
still relatively little known. Few scientists have been there, and the
geology, botany, and animal life have not been studied. I planned to
collect plants, fossils, and insects, and was especially anxious to obtain
lemmings, which might be of a different species from those on
Southampton. My lemming traps, however, proved useless, for as I
learned from Sandy and later saw for myseif, this little rodent, so
typical of most Arctic areas, does not live on Coats Island. Another
typical Arctic mammal missing there is the hare.

Our principal purpose was to look for Eskimo ruins, as the arche-
ology of the island was also unknown. Some of the material utilized
by Dr. Diamond Jenness when he first described the Dorset culture
was reported to have been excavated by Eskimos on Coats Island. It
would appear, therefore, that Dorset sites existed somewhere on the
island. We also wished to locate Sadlermiut sites. The Eskimos
whom Capt. Lyon found at the southwest end of the island in 1824
were in all probability Sadlermiuts, but so far as known this was the
first and last time that anyone had seen living Eskimos on Coats
Island, except, of course, the few Okomiuts who were brought there
by the Hudson’s Bay Company almost a hundred years later. The
native inhabitants of Coats Island had simply disappeared from
history. They may have died out or moved away soon after Lyon’s
time, or some of them may have continued to live there, isolated from
other Eskimos, for some years later. From the ruins that we might
find on the north side of the island we hoped to determine whether
the Coats Island Eskimos were, in fact, Sadlermiut, and if so whether
they differed in any way from the main body of the tribe that had
lived on Southampton.

524 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

The Vayavak was a trim little vessel, 40 feet long and powered by
a gasoline motor. Our quarters were in the tiny cabin in the bow,
which was large enough for three men but rather crowded for four
(pl. 12, B).

About an hour out of Native Point we encountered dense fog and
heavy fields of ice. With visibility of 100 yards or less we slowed
down to half speed, about 5 miles an hour. Sandy was now forced
to follow a zig-zag course, steering with his foot as he stood up in
the little wheelhouse peering ahead in search for safe openings among
the ice floes. By midnight we were out of the ice but the fog con-
tinued until we finally anchored at 2a.m. When the fog lifted later
in the morning we found we were about 2 miles offshore from Coats
Island, about midway of the north coast.

The Nayavak then headed eastward and a few hours later was
approaching the north end of little Bencas Island when we saw
four old house ruins on the opposite Coats Island shore. We moved
in closer and went ashore in the canoe to investigate the ruins, pre-
pared to stay all day. The houses were not the only evidence of
human activity at this abandoned settlement. Between the houses
and the beach we found an array of stone structures—caches, cairns,
and a number of others difficult to identify as to function. The most
impressive of these stone structures were two well-preserved cairns
of a peculiar “mushroom” shape (pl. 13, A), a type which had been
reported previously only from Sadlermiut sites on Southampton
Island. This suggested at once that the site was Sadlermiut.

We lost no time in getting to work. Emerson and Taylor began
excavating in House 3, the largest of the group, their first task being
to remove the heavy fill of sod that had accumulated in the sunken
interior. Ostroff photographed the houses and other structures and
then began to excavate in House 4, the westernmost of the group. I
began collecting samples of the grasses, mosses, and flowering plants
that grew around the site, and made notes, measurements, and sketches
of the houses and other stone features. I also made a careful but futile
search of the surrounding area for traces of Dorset occupation.

House 3 was a 8-room structure, built somewhat in the shape of
a cloverleaf (pl. 18, B). It had an over-all width of 22 feet and
measured 15 feet from entrance to rear wall. It had a carefully con-
structed floor of stone slabs and four sleeping platforms, also made
of stones, rising about a foot and a half above the floor. The roof,
still partly intact, consisted of large flat slabs resting on stone up-
rights. The walls were made of stones piled one above the other.
Blocks of sod were banked up along the outside of the walls and over
the roof. The house was entered by means of a narrow passageway
10 feet long and 30 inches wide, at the outer end of which was a small

ARCHEOLOGICAL WORK IN ARCTIC CANADA—COLLINS 525

stone anteroom. The other houses varied somewhat in size and shape,
but had been constructed in the same manner.

By 8 p. m., when we went back to the Vayavak for the night, we had
accumulated a rich store of artifacts, most of them from House 3.
These included harpoon heads of bone and ivory, some equipped with
stone and some with iron blades; ivory knife handles also with stone
and iron blades; harpoon foreshafts and socket pieces, bone arrow-
heads, bolas weights for catching birds, lumps of iron pyrites for
making fire, lamps made of limestone slabs cemented together, iron-
bitted drills with nicely carved ivory handles, harness toggles, whet-
stones, ivory combs, and dish bottons made of whalebone. These
artifacts were all typically Sadlermiut in form, as were the houses
themselves and the curious mushroom-shaped stone cairns. The well-
preserved houses, some with roofs partly intact, could not have been
abandoned for many decades, and the presence of considerable quan-
tities of iron was a clear indication of white contact, probably with
the whalers. We had evidence, therefore, that Sadlermiut Eskimos
had lived here on the north coast of Coats Island, probably within
the past 50 years, though there had been no record of their existence.

The next day we examined two house ruins on the north end of
Bencas Island. They, too, appeared quite recent but much less promis-
ing than those on Coats, so we returned and spent the rest of the day
completing the excavations we had begun there, after which we started
back to Native Point.

The warm, calm weather that had favored us throughout the trip
continued on this last day and the Peterhead glided along over a
glassy sea, surrounded by floating masses of ice that shone like blue
erystal in the brilliant sunlight. We followed a course to the east
and north of Coats and Bencas Islands, where ice conditions were
favorable for hunting walrus and the big bearded seal, or ugchuk,
which the Eskimos prize for its tough skin as well as its meat. One
walrus and three ugchuk were shot by the Eskimos and their meat
and hides stowed away in the hold.

After the Coats Island trip we resumed our work at Native Point,
remaining for another month until the Peterhead AXpa (Guillemot),
under command of Pamiulik, came to take us back to Coral Harbour.

We had realized soon after beginning work at Native Point in June
that another season’s work would be necessary at this remarkably rich
and important old site. Accordingly we returned early in June of
1955, supported in part by a research grant from the American
Philosophical Society. The party consisted of Bill Taylor, Norman
Emerson, Jim Wright, and myself. As in the previous year we went
from Carol Harbour to Native Point by dog team, making the trip
in two days instead of one, a more comfortable arrangement that al-

526 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

lowed us to camp overnight at Prairie Point and examine an old
Sadlermiut village site of 15 stone and sod house ruins.

At Native Point we had another busy and productive summer. Ad-
ditional excavations were made at the Sadlermiut site, at the early or
proto-Dorset site, T 1, the later Dorset site, T 2, and at a third site,
T 3, which appeared to be slightly younger than T1. A large body of
material was excavated which strengthened and rounded out the
archeological picture obtained the previous year.

We planned to make another reconnaissance trip to Coats Island,
this time toward the southwest end, and on July 20 we set out in the
Nayavak for that purpose. As it was not much out of the way we
decided to stop briefly at Walrus Island where there were several old
house ruins we wanted to examine.

Walrus Island is a small granite islet 25 miles off the south coast
of Southampton. The six house ruins lay in a valley extending east
and west across the south end of the island. The three oldest-looking
houses (Nos. 1, 8, and 5) consisted of a single room round to oval in
shape (pl. 14, A). Another (No. 4), more recent in appearance, had
two oval-rectangular rooms. The two remaining houses (Nos. 2 and
6), also recent looking, were cloverleaf in shape, with three rooms
(pl. 14, B). The house walls had been made of massive blocks of
granite piled one above the other. Most of the houses were deep and
all had entrance passages from 5 to 10 feet in length. In some cases
natural rock ledges and huge boulders én situ had been incorporated
into the house structure to serve as parts of floors, walls, or sleeping
platforms. House No. 6, the best preserved of the group, had upright
stone pillars—roof supports—still in place, and fallen slabs indicated
that the roof itself had been made of stones as in the case of the
Sadlermiut houses on Southampton and Coats Islands. The absence
of roofing slabs and supports in the other houses suggested that the
roofs had been made of skins.

When we began to excavate we had naturally assumed that these
well-preserved house ruins were of Sadlermiut origin. They were
similar in general structure and two of them, Nos. 2 and 6, had the
cloverleaf shape characteristic of many Sadlermiut houses. More-
over, some of these Walrus Island houses had been partially exca-
vated in 1936 by the British Canadian-Arctic Expedition (Manning,
1942) and found to contain material described as resembling Sadler-
miut, with only a few Dorset artifacts which might easily have been
explained as relics. We had not been digging long, however, before
we began to suspect that the houses were Dorset rather than Sadler-
miut. With this unexpected development, we stayed at Walrus Island
for five days instead of going on to Coats Island as originally planned.

Our excavations in and around five of the houses produced over 100

ARCHEOLOGICAL WORK IN ARCTIC CANADA—COLLINS 527

typical Dorset artifacts, mostly stone, and large numbers of stone
flakes with retouched edges such as had been found at T 1, and which
were also probably Dorset. In contrast we found only three artifacts
that were unquestionably Sadlermiut and seven others that were non-
Dorset and therefore probably Sadlermiut. Eight of the non-Dorset
artifacts came from House 2, the recent-looking house that was irreg-
ularly cloverleaf in shape; however, the bulk of the material from
this house, found on and between the floor stones, was Dorset. The
other two non-Dorset objects were found in House 4, together with
several Dorset pieces, also from the floor area. The three oldest-look-
ing houses (Nos. 1, 8, and 5) yielded only Dorset material, though
little digging was done in the last two. No work was done in House
6 and no artifacts were found in or around it; this well-preserved
cloverleaf-shaped house, typically Sadlermiut in form, may well have
been built by the Sadlermiuts.

The few Sadlermiut artifacts that we found in Houses 2 and 4 and
the apparently larger amount of such material reported by the British
Canadian-Arctic Expedition indicate that some of the Walrus Island
houses had been occupied by Sadlermiut Eskimos, probably around the
beginning of the present century. Such an occupation, however,
would have been secondary, for our excavations, which revealed Dorset
material in the floor areas of Houses 2 and 4, as well as in Houses 1,
3, and 5, showed that the Dorset people were the original occupants of
these houses.

If the Dorsets had lived in the houses originally they also in all prob-
ability had built them. The Walrus Island ruins thus provide the
first adequate information on Dorset house types. One of the houses
that contained Dorset material, No. 2, was of the cloverleaf shape char-
acteristic of many Sadlermiut houses. This suggests that the Sadler-
miut may have derived their principal house type, like other features
of their culture, from the Dorset. It lends weight to the supposition
that the Sadlermiut were culturally, perhaps even physically, de-
scended from the mysterious Dorset people, who now appear to have
represented the basic, dominant Eskimo population in the eastern part
of the Canadian Arctic. The Walrus Island finds thus rounded out
the cultural reconstruction previously established at Native Point.
There, at the proto-Dorset site T 1 and at the somewhat later site T 3,
we had been able to trace the earlier history of the Dorset Eskimos and
obtain an insight into Dorset culture in the process of formation. The
excavations at these early sites, plus those at the later, classic Dorset
site T 2 and the Sadlermiut site, had thus brought to view a picture of
cultural development and continuity over a period of 2,000 years.

528 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

REFERENCES
Birp, J. BRIAN.

1953. Southampton Island. Canada Department of Mines and Technical

Surveys, Geographical Branch, Mem.1. Ottawa.
Boas, FRANZ.

1901-7. The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay. Bull. Amer. Mus.
Nat. Hist., vol. 15.
CoLiLins, HENRY B.

1948. Eskimo archaeology and its bearing on the problem of man’s antiquity
in America. Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc., vol. 86, pp. 220-235.

1950. Excavations at Frobisher Bay, Bafiin Island, Northwest Territories.
Ann. Rep. Nat. Mus. Canada for 1948-49, pp. 18-43.

1951. The origin and antiquity of the Eskimo. Ann. Rep. Smithsonian
Inst. for 1950, pp. 423-467.

1953. Recent developments in the Dorset culture area. Mem. Soc. Amer.
Archaeol., No. 9, pp. 32-39.

1956. The T 1 site at Native Point, Southampton Island, N. W. T. Anthrop.

Pap. Univ. Alaska, vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 68-89.
Comer, G.

1910. A geographical description of Southampton Island and notes upon
the Eskimo. Bull. Amer. Geogr. Soc., vol. 42, pp. 84-90.
Frerauson, R. (Ed. L. D. Stair.)
1938. Arctic harpooner. Philadelphia.
GippiInes, J. L., JR.
1951. The Denbigh Flint Complex. Amer. Antiq., vol. 16, pp. 193-203.
Harp, ELMER.
1953. New World affinities of Cape Dorset culture. Anthrop. Pap. Univ.
Alaska, vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 87-54.
HOLtvED, ERIK.
1944. Archaeological investigations in the Thule district. Medd. Grgnland,
vol. 141, No. 2. Copenhagen.
JENNESS, DIAMOND.
1925. A new Eskimo culture in Hudson Bay. Geogr. Rey., vol. 15,

pp. 428-437.
Lyon, G. F.
1825. A brief narrative of an unsuccessful attempt to reach Repulse Bay.
London.

MANNING, T. H.

1942. Remarks on the physiography, Eskimo, and mammals of Southamp-

ton Island. Can. Geogr. Journ., vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 17-83.
MARINGER, JOHN.

1950. Contribution to the prehistory of Mongolia. The Sino-Swedish

Exped., Publ. 34. Stockholm.
MATHIASSEN, THERKEL.
1927. Archaeology of the Central Eskimos. Report of the Fifth Thule
Hxpedition, 1921-24. Copenhagen.
Monn, H. T.
1919. Southampton Island. Geogr. Journ., vol. 54, pp. 52-55.
O’ BRYAN, DERIC.

1953. Excavation of a Cape Dorset Eskimo house site, Mill Island, West

Hudson Strait. Ann. Rep. Nat. Mus. Canada for 1951-52, pp. 40-57.
OKLADNIKOY, A. P.

1950. Neolithic and Bronze Ages of the Pribaykalye. Historical and
Archaeological Study, PartsI and II. Materials and Investigations
on Archaeology of the U. S. S. R. No. 18. Moscow and Leningrad.
(In Russian.)

The Cherokees of North Carolina:
Living Memorials of the Past

By Witu1am H. GIBert, Jr.

History and General Research Division
Legislative Reference Service
Library of Congress

[With 8 plates]
THE CHEROKEE STORY

WueEn the first English settlers came to the shores of North America
they encountered a series of environmental barriers to their settlement
that had to be surmounted in the conquest of the continent. First the
Atlantic Coastal Plain, then the Piedmont above the fall line, and
finally the Blue Ridge loomed up as great natural features of the
continent’s terrain requiring subjugation. Almost to the very end
of the Colonial period the Blue Ridge and the Appalachian Mountain
chain constituted a certain natural and formidable limitation to the
horizons of expansion of the new nation then coming into existence.

Finally, however, the Blue Ridge Mountains and their aboriginal
inhabitants, the Cherokee Indians, were conquered and their original
area and range made part of the expanding domain of the newly
formed republic, the United States of America. As the Scotch-Irish,
Germans, English, and other populations spread down from Pennsyl-
vania through Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and into Tennessee
and Kentucky, the Cherokee Indians were gradually displaced and the
greater bulk of them moved westward to a new home beyond the
Mississippi to the west of the Ozark Mountains. Only a fraction of
these mighty warriors remained to guard for all time the inner fast-
nesses of the Appalachians in the Great Smokies of our day.

The story of the Cherokees and their homeland begins back in the
dim recesses of geologic history in the latter part of the Paleozoic
age when the Appalachian Mountains came out of the great thrusts of
the earth’s crust and became a major feature of the earth’s surface.

Throughout the vast period of at least 10,000,000 estimated years of
the Paleozoic Era a gigantic land mass called “Appalachia” existed
along what is now the eastern coast of the United States. Its western

529

530 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

shores were most of the time just east of the present Appalachians,
while its eastern border must have been in the neighborhood of the
present Continental Shelf. The rocks of Appalachia were of pre-
Cambrian age and from them was derived an enormous mass of sedi-
ment in the western sea trough which was latterly uplifted to form
the Appalachian Mountain chain. Hence the home of the Cherokees
is formed by the remnants of deposit of ancient seas of far-off geologic
periods.

The actual origin of the Cherokee tribe has been the subject of con-
siderable speculation by scholars and students of these matters. As
we see them today the Cherokees appear to be a race well adjusted to
a mountain habitat and who may well have dwelled in these areas of
western North Carolina for millennia. The early writers on the
Cherokees thought that they detected many resemblances to the ancient
Hebrews in the priesthood, “cities of refuge,” and ceremonial proce-
dures of these Indians. They even pointed out physical resemblances
in color of skin, shape of face, and other traits which would ally the
Cherokees with the so-called “lost tribes of Israel.”

John Haywood, in his book “Natural and Aboriginal History of
Tennessee” (1823, p. 231 ff.), thought that the Cherokees were a tribe
compounded of two populational elements. The first element was a
group from southern Asia, perhaps from India, or from the ancient
Near East, who established an empire centering at Natchez on the
lower Mississippi River. These people built mounds, erected idols,
performed human sacrifices, erected walled wells of brick, constructed
fortifications, worshiped the phallus, revered the number seven as
sacred, and lived under despotic rulers. The second element, which
entered later, was “from the north” and composed of a savage people,
rude but under democratic institutions, well organized for military
purposes, and who conquered and amalgamated with the first element
to form the Cherokees as the white man encountered them.

In a work entitled “The Cherokees in pre-Columbian Times” (1890)
the great American archeologist Cyrus Thomas traced the Cherokee
Indians as a mound-building group to the upper reaches of the Ohio
River and thence to the Mississippi River and to its upper sources near
Lake Superior. His evidence lay in the discoveries regarding the
distribution of mounds, platform pipes, engraved shell work, tradi-
tions of northern affiliation, and other items.

It has been known since 1798, through the work of Benjamin S.
Barton (New views on the origin of the tribes and nations of America)
that the Cherokee language shows many similarities to that of the
Iroquois Indians of New York. On the basis of this and other north-
ern affiliations it has been assumed that the common ancestors of the
Cherokees and the Iroquois found their way from the Mississippi up

CHEROKEES OF NORTH CAROLINA—GILBERT 531

the Ohio to its origin at the junction of the Allegheny and Mononga-
hela Rivers and that they there divided into two groups, one going
northward and the other southward. Certainly, we may cite in par-
tial confirmation of this the course of the Tuscarora Indians, another
southern Iroquoian tribe, who left their homes in North Carolina
within the historic period and moved up to New York State to join
their ancient kinsmen.

Yet there is much that points to southern affiliations of the Cherokee
tribe. On the basis of their historic culture, John R. Swanton (1928)
classifies the Cherokees as a cultural subtype of the Creeks.

SOCO GAP

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-

m

5

i

-

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.
“~

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_-"

os

eteny

cts

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BOUNDARY [TREE | OCONALUF TEE VILLAGE

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\)

AMPHITHEATRE © O*1 Pas

agency / Pr

ij \
COUNCIL HOUSE; \
MUSEUM ¢f Rn orm SS

\. EASTERN CHEROKEE
\ RESERVATION
NORTH CAROLINA

MILE

Ficure 1.—Eastern Cherokee Reservation, North Carolina.

532 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Studies of Cherokee art motifs and basketry types show that these
were indubitably of southern origin and traced back to the lower
Mississippi River area. The evidence would seem to point to the
Cherokees as hangers-on and pupils of better developed cultures of the
southeastern area. The danger of inferring racial movements from
cultural evidence is likely to be present here, however, and we must
hold in reserve our final judgment as to the origin of the Cherokee
and his civilization.

Today the traveler coming into the Qualla Boundary may approach
from Asheville on the east or from Knoxville on the north. Coming
from Asheville by car he will be impressed by the memorable mountain
scenery and by the carefully engineered road by which, through a se-
ries of magnificent curves, he proceeds over the ridge through the
Soco Gap and down into the valley of the Oconaluftee River, where
the Cherokee Indian Agency is situated. Here he is impressed by the
many tourist courts. Approaching the reservation from Knoxville
he proceeds first through Sevierville, through the fine curves upward
to Newfound Gap, where a magnificient panorama of both Tennessee
and North Carolina is to be viewed. Proceeding down the road he
follows a lively and beautiful mountain stream, the Oconaluftee River,
which dashes over rocks and through glades of delicate and sylvan
character. Further on as he enters the reservation he passes the fine
Boundary Tree Tourist Court built and maintained by the tribe. At
length he arrives at the great outdoor amphitheater built into the
mountainside for the annual summer-long performances of the spec-
tacular drama of Cherokee life, “Unto These Hills.” After the amphi-
theater then he arrives at the modern and well-kept Agency buildings
and the Tribal Council Hall in the center of the reservation.

To rescue and preserve for posterity the unique cultural and other
contributions of the Cherokees to the world’s resources in ways of liv-
ing a typical tribal village of 1750 has been reconstructed in recent
years near Mountainside Amphitheatre, called Oconaluftee Village.
Inside the village during the summer Cherokees carry on the ancient
way of life, practicing basket weaving, aboriginal cooking, beadwork,
pottery and weapon making. Dug-out canoes are hollowed out of
poplar logs with primitive ax and fire, and other arts are pursued.

Near the Tribal Council Hall a Museum of the Cherokees has been
established since 1948, in which are housed tools, household utensils,
ornaments, primitive money, and weapons. Household and daily-
used artifacts made of cane, stone, bone, shell, and wood are on dis-
play. Other items to be seen include an ancient rifled blowgun with its
poised dart, a large bow which could hurl its arrow more than 400
yards, grotesque hand-carved masks of the medicine men, arrowheads
of quartz and flint, stone axes, celts, chisels, stone hammers, and ritual
pipes of stone and clay and catlinite. Here, too, are pictures of the

CHEROKEES OF NORTH CAROLINA—GILBERT 533

great Cherokee chiefs shown wearing their colorful costumes and
turbans.

In the same way in which the turbulence of the ancient seas was
frozen into great rock strata of the Appalachian folds, so the turbu-
lence of the early frontier life and the Indian way of living have been
frozen into the present-day Cherokee Reservation in North Carolina.
The Indians who can be seen there today memorialize the past in a
very real and vivid manner. The conflicts of the Indians and whites
furnish the theme of the drama “Unto These Hills,” given annually at
the Mountainside Amphitheatre. The intertown conflicts are symbol-
ized in the boisterous Cherokee ball game. Everywhere we see action
of the past memorialized in ancient weapons and implements, in the
Cherokee Museum, and in the many products on display in the curio
shops.

Commemoration or memorialization of past events typifies the cul-
tural influences now at work among the Eastern Cherokees. It is as if
the Cherokees had taken to heart the famous lines of Pope:

First follow nature and your judgment frame
By her just standard which is still the same.

and in another context:
All nature is but art unknown to thee.

But before we proceed to expound the details of this theme it might
be well to bring into our consciousness the contemporary condition and
general picture of Cherokee life in North Carolina today.

THE CHEROKEES TODAY

Since 1917 an annual 5-day Cherokee Indian Fair has been held near
the Agency late in September or early in October. The purposes of
the fair have been to stimulate agricultural enterprise by offering
prizes for various products, to encourage arts and crafts (especially
weaving of linen and woolen goods, weaving and braiding of rugs),
art metalwork, silverwork, beadwork, cabinetmaking, wood carving,
jewelrymaking, basketry, and pottery. Various recreational activities
include Cherokee stick ball games, archery contests, dances (both In-
dian and square dances), singing contests, and baby shows.

In 1947 the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual Incorporated was or-
ganized to market the products of 175 Cherokee Indian craftsmen.
In 1950 the Cherokee Indian Farmers Cooperative was organized and
the Boundary Tree Tourist Enterprise was opened for business. In
1955 it was estimated that there were 90 business enterprises owned
and operated by Cherokees on the reservation.

Much of the growth of the Cherokee economy has come about since
the development of good roads, beginning in 1931, brought swarms
of tourists into the area. This has permitted the development of, and

534 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

access of visitors to, the Mountainside Amphitheatre, the Oconaluftee
Village, the Cherokee Museum, and the innumerable curio shops of
the reservation.

Institutional development has kept pace with the economic improve-
ment. The Indian Bureau provides a free school system which in-
cludes five elementary schools and a central high school. The U.S.
Public Health Service, of the Department of Health, Education, and
Welfare, operates a modern 25-bed hospital at the Agency where in-
digent Indians receive free of charge diagnosis, treatment, hospitaliza-
tion, and dental care.

There are 25 or more churches on the reservation, nearly all of which
are served by Indian pastors. Baptists far outnumber other congre-
gations, but there are also Methodist, Episcopalian, and Latter Day
Saints missions among these people. Hymn singing is a favorite
pastime, and all-day “sings” are frequent. Truckloads of singers from
various communities meet at appointed churches to sing, and bring
their basket lunches with them.

THE PHYSICAL TYPE

Along the road the visitor sees the Cherokees, here a mother or two
walking with the children, there an old man humped with age and
plodding his way slowly to some nearby goal. These rather small
brown-skinned people contrast with the neighboring mountain whites,
who are on the average taller and are fair-skinned. The older Indian
men tend to be lean and wiry in build, the women more heavy-set and
stocky. Prominent cheekbones often appear in the women and prog-
nathism or projecting jaws may be present. The straight and jet-black
hair is typical of the fullbloods and the Mongolian eye appears occa-
sionally in the females. A hawklike or beaked appearance of the face
is frequently noticeable and it reminds one of the Maya and Mexican
sculptured faces.

Today about 25 percent of the enrolled Cherokees are fullbloods, and
it is from these people that early students of blood type first recog-
nized the distinctive predominance of type I blood in the American
aborigines. There can be no doubt that in the present-day Cherokees
we are dealing with an aboriginal racial island separated by distinct
racial ancestry from the surrounding mountain people of the Appa-
lachians. Here and there in an area from Georgia, through eastern
Tennessee and the Carolinas, western Virginia, Kentucky, West Vir-
ginia, Maryland, and even Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the occa-
sional appearance of Indian physical traits and ways in the local popu-
lation is attributed, rightly or wrongly, to an infusion of Cherokee
blood.

The long-continued habit of inbreeding or marrying within their
own race has set the Cherokees apart from others. The ensemble of

CHEROKEES OF NORTH CAROLINA—GILBERT 535

genetic traits, including both matters of temperament and ways of
acting, as well as physical traits, conjoined with the maintenance of
the aboriginal speech and home-taught traditions, has made of the
Cherokees a true nationality, sojourning in the same State with those
of European and African descent but clearly differentiated from them.

WHITE MAN VERSUS CHEROKEE

A people firmly rooted in the soil and in their own traditions will
never be extirpated but will persist and grow in spite of an adversity
which may seem to undermine their continued existence. The strength
of a race lies in the tenacity of its attachment to the physical environ-
ment, along with the degree of its adherence to traditional ways of life.

It is quite a problem at this late date to analyze the degree of blood
admixture of Cherokees and whites. However, some indications exist
which point to the continued existence of a considerable body of near
fullbloods as the core of the band. Early descriptions indicate that
the Cherokees were of fine muscular physique and tall in stature.
The hair was described as always black, lank, and straight, and the
beard variously noted as thick or sparse.

Blood admixture with whites, particularly Scotch and Scotch-Irish,
Germans, and English, has been widespread and prolonged over the
entire historic period. Mixing with other Indian tribes has occurred,
particularly with the Catawba. L. H. Snyder (1926) reported on an
examination of 250 individuals wherein the fullbloods showed a per-
centage of 93.6 of blood type I while mixedbloods were 59.3 percent
of blood type I.

An examination of the clan affiliations of the heads of 321 families
was made by the present writer in 1932 and clan affiliations were noted
for 475 persons. Of the families listed, about 8 percent (28 families)
showed no clan affiliation of either father or mother. These may be
taken to be persons of little or no Indian blood. In the case of 71
families, 1. e., 22 percent, only one of the two heads of the families
showed clan affiliation. These may be taken as definitely mixedbloods.
The remaining 216 families, or about 60 percent of the whole, gave
evidence of clan affiliations in both parents.

The mixedbloods and “white Indians” occupied the bottom lands
along streams which furnish the best agricultural possibilities, whereas
the fullbloods and near fullbloods tended to live on the slopes and
upper reaches of the streams. Of all the several communities at
Qualla, the Indians at Big Cove seem to have retained their traditional
culture the most effectively. However, predictions as to the future
complete dissolution of the Cherokee tradition may have been prema-
ture. Much of the traditional culture probably continues through
oral transmission from parent to child in fullblood families.

4125755735

536 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

The activities of anthropologists have undoubtedly contributed
to the conservation of the old cultural traditions, and the demonstra-
tion that the remunerative tourist industry can be developed through
reconstruction of traditional community life and activities has helped
also. What must be noted in this connection is the linkage between
conservation of the culture and the conservation of the race. The one
is inseparable from the other. An enlightened recognition of this
fact by the white man is of the greatest importance to our generation.
Respect for the integrity, not only of the race but also of the culture,
is fundamental, and a characteristic of our times.

The position of the mixedbloods is a difficult one. Drawn by their
diverse racial inheritance partly toward the white and partly toward
the Indian, they have a hard row to hoe. In some respects they form
an entirely distinct group which perhaps could develop a cultural
tradition, partly Cherokee and partly white, with a happy blend of
the best features of both. The history of mixedblood groups has
not been a happy one, however, and time and patience are required
to work out all the many problems that beset them.

THE CORE OF TRADITION

Cherokee life revolves about the traditional institutions that have
survived over the centuries as means of maintaining and perpetuating
the social and biological continuity of the tribe. Of these the most
important is the system of clans. The clan is not what we think of
as in the case of Scottish clans, but rather an outmarrying group
that insures the marriage within the tribe but only within certain
modes of relationship. In early times marriage within the clan was
punishable by death and it is still observable that such breaches are
the exception. Clan membership was transmitted through the mother.
The clan names translated into English are as follows: Wolf, Deer,
Bird, Red Paint, Blue, Wild Potato, and Twister. The following
associations of ideas presented by the Cherokee may explain in part
the derivation of these clan names.

The Wolf Clan was composed of great huntsmen—hunters who in
their assiduity and attention to their profession were keen as wolves.
It was also said that the members of this clan were fond of capturing
young wolves and raising them in captivity and training them just
as dogs are trained. It was and still is regarded as bad luck for any
Cherokee to kill a wolf, although in former times a profession of
wolf killers existed. To the east of Qualla on the reservation is a
section called Wolftown.

Members of the Deer Clan were like the Deer for swiftness. It
was thought that they also kept deer in captivity. They were reputed
to be specialists in the hunting and killing of deer. Just east of the
Agency is an area called Deer-place after this clan.

CHEROKEES OF NORTH CAROLINA—GILBERT 537

The Bird Clan people were always fond of birds and kept captive
crows and chicken hawks. They were also noted for their successful
use of snares and blowguns in bird hunting. Birdtown, near Qualla,
is named after this clan.

Possession of magic was the principal characteristic of the Red
Paint Clan who employed iron oxide or hematite for the purpose
of securing success in love and protection in war. In fact these people
were the great conjurers of the old days and Painttown, to the east
of the Qualla Agency, was named after them.

The Blue Clan was named after a wild plant of bluish color which
was gathered by them in the low swampy grounds along streams and
used for food and medicine. The plant is described as being narrow-
leafed, like grass, and with berries resembling a young cucumber,
but it is explained that only the roots were used by the Indians. At
each new moon, in the old days, children were bathed in a decoction
of this plant to protect them from all diseases.

The Wild Potato Clan was also named after a plant of the swamps
along the streams which was gathered and eaten by this clan. No
tradition of any ceremony connected with this plant survives.

The Twister Clan was so named because of the haughty manner in
which they formerly conducted themselves, twisting their shoulders as
they walked. They were accounted a rather vain people who grew
their hair long and adorned it with elaborate coiffures and decorations.

In order of numbers the most numerous is probably the Wolf Clan,
followed at a distance by the Bird. These two clans, in fact, accounted
for over 50 percent of all Indians in the reservation in 1932. Some-
what less numerous were members of the Twister and Deer Clans, with
the Red Paint, Wild Potato, and Blue trailing at the bottom of the
list.

The clan is an institution of fundamental importance in Cherokee
tradition and way of life. It is symbolized in blood and is associated
with descent from and through the mother. According to the myths
the clan was derived, along with songs, dances, and magical formu-
las, from the great giant “Old Stonecoat,” who was slain by the In-
dians at the beginning of time by being burnt at the stake. As he died
he sang, as was the Cherokee custom, his “death song.” In this song,
uttered as the spirit of Old Stonecoat ascended into Heaven, was the
entire Cherokee tradition. Included in it were the rules and regula-
tions which governed the clan membership and the rituals associated
therewith.

One such ritual was called “going to the water.” This involved a
group of brothers and sisters of the same clan ceremonially bathing
in a stream and the conjuror prayed for the clan by name, prognosti-
cating the future fortunes of the individual members present.

538 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

One’s clan affiliation is of the utmost importance in determining kin-
ship behavior and relationships to everyone else in the tribe. Since the
most important relationships are those sustained by birth or consan-
guinity and by marriage or affinity, the clan is fundamentally involved
with both.

To cite a typical example, let us take the individual W. L., whose
clan, inherited from his mother, is Wolf. AJ] members of this clan
are brothers and sisters to him, in common with his own real brothers
and sisters, and he visits and associates with members of this clan on
the most familiar terms—familiar in all ways except that he may not,
according to the rules of the clan, ever marry a “sister,” that is, a
woman of the Wolf Clan. It is his mother who makes known to him
the rights and duties incumbent on him through his membership in
the Wolf Clan. His mother will never permit familiarities with her-
self and her generation. Nor may W. L. behave otherwise than with
great circumspection toward his sister and her children, who are also
of his clan.

As a child W. L. is gently teased by his father who is of the Wild
Potato Clan. “You must marry my aunt,” he tells his son. W. L.
thinks of the elderly and rather unattractive woman whom his father
calls “aunt” and who is really W. L.’s father’s father’s sister and whom
he himself calls “grandmother.” He learns from his father’s teasing
that it is customary for him to joke with his paternal grandfather’s
sister about this marriage business and since she is of the Deer Clan
he finds that all her “brothers” and “sisters,” including those of his
own age, are also joking about the same theme. Thus as time goes
on his mind becomes accustomed to the idea that he will find his wife
in the Deer Clan, which was the clan of his father’s father. Toward
his father’s clan, i. e., the brothers and sisters of his father, the Wild
Potato Clan, he maintains respectful and circumspect behavior. In
fact anyone whose father is in the Wild Potato Clan is a brother or a
sister to him. W. L.’s mother, like himself, is of the Wolf Clan, but
her father is of the Red Paint Clan. Hence she too can tell him that
he must marry her aunt or a woman of the Red Paint Clan when he
comes of age.

It can be seen that there are four clans with whom an individual
Cherokee is closely concerned: (1) His own clan containing his
“brothers” and “sisters,” both actual and classificatory; (2) his fa-
ther’s clan containing “fathers” and fathers’ “sisters,” toward which
he must always show respect and deference; (3) his father’s father’s
clan which contains “grandmothers” and “grandfathers” with whom
he can marry; and (4) his mother’s father’s clan, containing “grand-
mothers” and “grandfathers” with whom he can marry.

Let us carry the type case a stage further. W. L. marries a wife of
the Deer Clan. Her father, let us say, is of the Blue Clan which she

CHEROKEES OF NORTH CAROLINA—GILBERT 539

must always respect. Her father’s father, however, was of the Wolf
Clan and she marries a man of that Clan (W. L.). Her mother’s
father is of the Bird Clan, which also contains potential mates for her.
W. L.’s children will have two clans to choose mates from, the Wild
Potato Clan and the Blue Clan, i. e., provided the selected mates have
grandfathers and grandmothers in the Deer Clan.

Thus it can be seen that lineage through the mother is of the essence
in Cherokee life. One acquires a clan membership by birth, through
the mother, and by no other way. Even after marriage the individual
is still a member of the same clan and remains so until death. The
solidarity of the clan lineage is the most important single element of
traditional Cherokee culture and the most effective influence toward
conservation of the race and the culture.

THE TIDES OF LIFE

Anyone who has ever spent time at the seashore is familiar with
the phenomenon of the tides, those regular daily risings and fallings of
the water level. The regularity of the tides, like the regularity of day
and night, and the alteration of the seasons, impresses itself on the
mind of man to the degree that he memorializes it in his ceremonies
and rituals in a variety of ways. Thus the rituals of a primitive people
commemorate, not only the events of past importance to their an-
cestors, but also the cyclic or rhythmic aspects of life generally.

Observations on Cherokee festivals by the missionary, D. S. Butrick,
and others early in the nineteenth century were recorded and sum-
marized in a manuscript by John Howard Payne, the famed author
of the song “Home Sweet Home.” This manuscript, now in the New-
berry Library at Chicago, contains a very extensive and detailed ac-
count of the regular monthly and seasonal feasts of the Cherokee.
From this account it can be seen that the great principle at work in
primitive art forms, and perhaps in all art forms, is the commemora-
tion of the past in terms of stressing the continuity between the lives
of the many generations. In fasting as a ritual, we cannot fail to
observe the periods of starvation and want in wintertime when game
was scarce and the future problematic. The dances, lustrations, prog-
nostications, ceremonial hunts, new-fire making, and the like, were
artistic delineations of the great natural rhythms that tie together
the life of the past, the present, and the future. The celebration of
these festivals was basic in Cherokee life, even as it was in all Indian
life, and constituted the logical and motivational basis of the social
order.

In his book entitled “Moon Up and Moon Down,” John Alden
Knight (1942) has outlined the feeding activities of fish as related to
the height of the tides. A regular “solunar” rhythm exists, he says,
and the higher tides at new moon and full moon are directly cor-

540 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

related with good fishing because the fish are biting and feeding at
those times. Thus activities of the fisherman would in turn be in-
fluenced by the recurrence of good fishing in accordance with the
phases of the moon. Some marine animals appear in great abundance
once or twice a year in accordance with special phases of the moon.
One such animal is the palolo worm which appears in great numbers
in the waters off Samoa during the last quarter of the November
moon. Here breeding and feeding go hand in hand in the rhythms of
nature as large numbers of fish find sudden accessions to the food
supply.

So it was possible, in the human world, to correlate activities of
animals with periods of hunting and fishing which would be sym-
bolized in feasts. The regular sequence of new-moon feasts among
the Cherokees was, so far as we are able to judge, connected with the
rhythms of human breeding and feeding. The monthly friendship
dances of today still commemorate the cleansing of menstrual taboos,
which are imposed by clan sanctions and relate to the monthly feasts
of an earlier period. The shedding of blood, from whatsoever cause,
invokes sanctions of uncleanliness which must be given recognition.
The avenger of blood could not slay the fugitive who reached a city
of refuge, or a “white town” because it would produce an uncleanness.
The special clan that killed a particular animal in the hunt had to be
absolved from blood revenge by the animal’s clan relatives by special
rituals.

Among the early Cherokees the year was divided into two sequences.
The first, for winter, began with the Great New Moon feast of October
and the second with the New Moon feast of April, and included the
summer months. The two important New Moon festivals were each
seventh in a continuous series reckoning from the other and each began
a new season and a new year.

Each of the two main festivals of April and October were celebrated
with hunts, dances, lustrations, divinations, and a feast. Each was
succeeded a short time afterward by a festival in which new fire was
made to renew the life of the tribe for the new season. The principal
purpose of all new-moon feasts seemed to have been to purify from
uncleanness and to protect against harmful forces. They celebrated
renewal of life and life’s friendships after segregation for impurities
and uncleannesses.

There were six major new-moon feasts pointed out as of special
significance, and which were as follows:

1. The First New Moon of Spring, celebrated when the grass began to grow in

April and possibly represented by the Corn Dance of today.

2. The New Moon of August when the corn first became fit to eat, the roasting-

ears time of today.

CHEROKEES OF NORTH CAROLINA—GILBERT 541

3. The Green Corn Feast of September when the corn crop was harvested; still
celebrated.

4, The Great New Moon of October, which was called the Great Medicine Feast
Since at that time the leaves of many curative plants fell into the streams
and imparted their properties to the water.

5. The Cementation of Reconciliation Festival at the end of October which
involved cleaning of all houses, the use of new utensils, forgetting of
differences between people and cases of blood revenge, donning of new
clothes and exchange of clothes, pledging of eternal friendship and soli-
darity, and making of new fire (probably represented today by the
“Woman Gathering Wood” Dance).

6. The Exalted or Bounding Bush Feast, held in December, characterized by
the waving of pine boughs; thought to survive in the Pigeon Dance of
later times.

THE DANCE OF LIFE

Dancing is of primary importance in the traditional Cherokee cul-
ture. It is difficult to gather up all its varied meanings into one sen-
tence, but it is possible to say that in the dance rhythms all the essen-
tial life activities are memorialized and the continuity of the race is
maintained. The so-called Friendship Dance, for example, gives one
the impression that for the Cherokee all the world is a ballroom and
all the men and women merely dancers, each with his exits and his
entrances. This is in a way a community opera in which the drama
and the music induce a state of emotional exaltation which commemo-
rates the ancestors and assures them of the loyalty of the present gen-
eration to the principles of the race. In the cheerfulness of the occa-
sion those who mourn find comfort. In the participation in com-
munity of demonstration the young as well as the old find a primary
life satisfaction. In the dance the familiarity with joking clan rela-
tives is carried on freely so that on such occasions the young people
may find their mates in the proper clans.

Three musical instruments are employed: the skin drum, the tor-
toise-shell legging rattle, and the gourd hand rattle. The drum con-
sists of a barrel fastened with wooden hoops and with a groundhog
skin stretched across the top. The skin must be moistened at times
from the inside for proper tonal effects. Usually a little warming
at the fire will lessen the tautness of the skin. The diameter at the
top of the drum is 6 inches and at the bottom 8 inches, and the length
is about 12 inches. The beater is of carved wood and about 8 inches
long.

In making a tortoise-shell legging rattle five terrapins of approxi-
mately the same size are caught and boiled and the flesh scraped out
four days later. Small gravel or pebbles are put in each shell and
the ends of the hinged parts are tied up with strings and set before
the fire until they harden shut. The tops are perforated with small
holes and strings put through them. Four terrapin shells are then

542 § ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

placed together on a piece of groundhog skin or buckskin about one
yard square in size and the fifth tortoise shell placed on top of the other
four and tied with them to theskin. Thongs of skin are used for tying
one of these combination rattles to each leg.

The hand rattles are made from gourds. A small hole is bored at
each end of the gourd and a slender piece of wood a foot long is run
through the oval or egg-shaped gourd. The typical gourd shell is
about 4 inches long and about 3 inches in diameter and contains smal]
pebbles to make the rattling sound.

Dance teams are organized in the different communities—at Big
Cove, Birdtown, and elsewhere, especially for Friendship Dances.
Each team has a “caller” who calls forth the names of those who are
to lead each song step, and directs the sequence with the proper sig-
nals. The caller endeavors to pick out the best and most effective sing-
ers to lead the songs. The number of songs in each dance averages
about four, and the song consists in the repetition of a single melodic
theme to the accompaniment of archaic words. An alternation of slow
and fast tempos can be noted, with the faster tempos predominating
at the close. Dances may be held as often as once a week, generally
in the evenings.

The action and speech simulates and refers to basic life activities
such as playing the game of Cherokee ball, planting and tilling the
soil, curing and preventing disease, hunting various wild animals, and
joking with familiar clan relatives. Clapping the hands together is
a common feature of the Friendship Dances and expresses the hap-
piness and the good time being enjoyed by all the participants. Solo
dances are sometimes given in which the dancer sings and tells a story
as he dances, occasionally poking fun at his familiar clan relatives.

The names of the principal dances of the Cherokees and the signifi-
cance of each is given below.

Name of Dance Significance
Anti Dances: 2. sore ghee ted Imitates the movements of ants
Ball Dancens oot tA do Magic for obtaining victory in ball game
Bear Dances-2228 1. ~ fey rs Imitative of the bear
Beaver Dance_______________. Imitative of killing beaver
ButtaloDanee@ss = Imitative of killing buffalo
Bugah’Dancest): soot SEP Buffoonery
Chickens Dance##. Soe) Near Mimetic of birds
Coat sDances eee Buying a wife
CorniDancesii sau aie ae se ae Corn planting
HMaglewmances. we ee a, Victory in war
Friendship Dance___________. Promotes social intercourse
Green Corn Dance! 22-23" Celebrates the harvest of corn
Groundhog Dance___________- Hunting the groundhog
Horse Dance. 228828 ae 2 es Mimetic of the horse
Knee-deep Dance____________. Mimetic of knee-deep spring frog

Medicine Dance__________--.. Physic dance for health

CHEROKEES OF NORTH CAROLINA—GILBERT 543

Name of Dance Significance
Partridge Dance2=s-2--<>=- Mimetic of quail movements
Pheasant: Dancen= 222 22-— =.= Mimetic of pheasant drumming
Piccone ances a ee Hunting of pigeons by hawks
Raccoon Dance=222— 222022 5—= Hunting raccoon
Hound) Dances feos Se Dance around the fire
Snakelike Dance_____-__----~- Magic power from the snake
Wine ances 2525 SS ee: Magical protection in war
Woman Gathering Wood

TOPS CG as ee, ee ee aes New-fire making

CHEROKEE INSPIRATION: THE ORAL TRADITION

An idea or a feeling grandly expressed lives forever and gives immortality to
the words that enshrine it—Viscount Bryce.

Speech can be looked upon as a system of signals or symbols, not
only of ideas but also of sentiments, feelings, and emotions. The
first words and the nursery songs that are learned orally at the parent’s
knee form the basis of all subsequent language learning and stay with
the individual to the very end of his life. Nothing can be more im-
portant to the preservation of a race and its culture than the continued
oral transmission of ideas, principles, and sentiments within the do-
mestic household, from generation to generation.

This is particularly true of the religious and moral sentiments, those
ultimate realities with which language, in its most exalted use, is par-
ticularly concerned. Hence many religious systems have evolved
ritual or liturgical languages which commemorate the religious senti-
ments in fixed linguistic forms and which stand in contrast thereby to
everyday language with its multitude of vulgar innovations and
neologisms. In India the Vedic language represents an even more in-
tensive conservatism of speech wherein a liturgical language, San-
skrit, has preserved in Vedic texts the remnants of a still earlier liturgi-
cal form. In his work on the Swimmer manuscript, Olbrechts (1932,
pp. 160-165) has discussed the liturgical language of the Cherokee
sacred prayers or formulas. In a matrilineal clan society, such as that
of the Cherokees, the transmission of both oral and written liturgical
material is from mother or mother’s brother to the daughter and son.

So it is that, in the same way that we of the Western civilization at-
tempt to learn the elements of Latin and Greek in our youth for the
better preservation of those ideas, sentiments, and values most intrinsic
to our culture, the Cherokee student learns the ritual language of the
prayers or formulas that in part have been preserved in written form
through the good offices of Sequoia’s syllabary and given literary rec-
ognition by Mooney and Olbrechts, in their printed texts with English
translations. Thus the mentality of the Cherokee and the values of
Cherokee traditional culture are made manifest and enter into the

544 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

modern inheritance of a pattern of world cultural and racial pluralism.
The inspirational works or formulas are accompanied by a collection
of narrational commentaries, or the so-called “myths” of the Cherokee,
assembled by James Mooney (1891, 1900.)

THE PRAYERS OR FORMULAS

The Cherokee ancestors believed that the earth was flat and that the
sun sets through a hole in the ground in the west every night and rises
through a hole in the ground in the east every morning. Four ropes
are attached to the four corners of the earth to hold it up, stretching
horizontally outward. At the edge of the earth there is “something
hammerlike” which keeps pounding on the ground constantly. When
people die their souls must go through this gauntlet and the good suc-
ceed but the evil are crushed by the hammer. Heaven is beyond the
edge of the earth and is like this world, only more beautiful, with all
sorts of fruits and deer meat in plenty. It is also very light there.
The moon has a path like the sun and goes down through one hole in
the earth and rises through another. <A different version has the sun
and moon passing around the edge of the four-cornered earth, when
invisible in the sky. ‘There are seven worlds above the flat one on
which men dwell, and correspondingly there are seven suns and seven
moons which go through each world like ours. There are also thought
to be seven sets of stars. When one’s soul reaches the seventh heaven
or world it dies of old age.

The various natural forces and elements of the world are personi-
fied. Fire is regarded as a mother, grandmother, or the old mother
(i. e., ancestress). Cure of many diseases is secured by use of the
heat of fire and by charcoal and ashes. The moon is the most im-
portant heavenly body and is personalized as a man, an elder brother
or grandparent. The Cherokee are said to have had a high regard for
James Mooney because of his last name. The sun is personalized as a
female and generally reckoned as a maternal grandmother, the source
of the blood of the clan. The Cherokee mother sings lullabies before
daybreak to her child in which she invokes the dawn and the rising
sun, in terms of mythical words and ideas. Wind, clouds, lightning,
snow, and thunder are also personalized. Control of the weather is a
foremost object of Cherokee prayers. All the above-mentioned ele-
ments of nature are thought of as causes of disease in man and as re-
quiring placation in removing the disease.

Although the major part of the Cherokee tradition has always been
a matter of oral transmission, the invention of a syllabary by Sequoia
about 1824 furnished a medium of writing for preservation of the
mantic and magical formulas of the conjurers. The existence of these
documents was first called to the world’s attention by James Mooney
in the late nineteenth century (1891).

CHEROKEES OF NORTH CAROLINA—GILBERT 545

The magical formulas consist of prayers or conjurations for curing
disease, for securing game and fish, for prognostication, for protection
against supernatural influences, for long life, for weather control, and
for attracting the affections of a woman. Most of the formulas are
composed of two parts, one part dealing with actual technique and a
second part dealing with the incantation to secure the desired result.
It is doubtful whether the native practitioner of the magical arts ever
made any distinction between the two different elements or between
the formulas devoted to one purpose and those devoted to another.
For to him the fundamental pattern of events and the means of con-
trolling the events is the same, namely, the merging on a temporary
basis of the suppliant’s personality with some stronger personality in
the universe which has the magical powers to accomplish the end de-
sired. The undesirable things are magically separated from the desir-
able and the latter are then assimilated to the self.

The philosophy of the formulas may best be understood by taking
an example from Mooney’s published Cherokee love charms (1891,
pp. 876-377). The following is the text of the formula.

Concerning Living Humanity (Love)

Ku! Listen! In Alahi’ yi you repose, O Terrible Woman, O you have drawn
near to hearken. There in Hlahiyi you are at rest, O White Woman. No one is
ever lonely when with you. You are most beautiful. Instantly and at once you
have rendered me a white man. No one is ever lonely when with me. Now you
have made the path white for me. It shall never be dreary. Now you have put
me into it. It shall never become blue. You have brought down to me from
above the white road. There in mid-earth (mid-surface) you have placed me. I
shall stand erect upon the earth. No one is ever lonely when with me. I am
very handsome. You have put me into the white house. I shall be in as it
moves about and no one with me shall ever be lonely. Verily I shall never be-
come blue. Instantly you have caused it to be so with me.

And now there in Hlahiyi you have rendered the woman blue. Now you have
made the path blue for her. Let her be completely veiled in loneliness. Put her
upon the blue road. And now bring her down. Place her standing upon the
earth. Where her feet are now and wherever she may go, let loneliness leave its
mark upon her. Let her be marked out for loneliness where she stands.

Ha! I belong to the (Wolf) Clan, that one alone which was allotted into for
you. No one is ever lonely with me. I am handsome. Let her put her soul
(into) the very center of my soul, never to turn away. Grant that in the midst
of men she shall never think of them. I belong to the one clan alone which was
allotted for you when the seven clans were established.

Where (other) men live it is lonely. They are very loathesome. The com-
mon polecat has made them so like himself that they are fit only to be with
him. They are very loathesome. Even the crow has made them so like himself
that they are fit only for his company. They are very loathesome. The miser-
able rain-crow has made them so like himself that they are fit only to be with
him.

The seven clans all alike make one feel very lonely in their company. They
are not even good looking. They go about clothed with mere refuse. They even
go about covered with dung. But I—I was ordained to be a white man. I stand

546 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

with my face toward the Sun Land. No one is ever lonely with me. I am very
handsome. I shall certainly never become blue. I am covered by the everlasting
white house wherever I go. No one is ever lonely with me. Your soul has come
into the very center of my soul, never to turn away. JI ~-_----___ take your
soul. Sge!

In the first paragraph there is established a solidarity between cer-
tain benevolent spirits and the reciter of the formula, while a pre-
liminary statement of the reciter’s own attractiveness and charm is
made. The second paragraph sets up barriers of avoidance between
the woman the reciter desires to conquer and the rest of humanity,
with blueness and loneliness assigned as her lot until she recognizes
her true interest, which is with the reciter of the charm. In the third
paragraph the reciter begins to set up a bond of familiarity between
himself and the woman desired in the course of which he names him-
self and his clan and reminds her that she has been allotted to his clan
in marriage from the beginning of the world, so that he alone of that
clan is suitable for her asa mate. In the fourth paragraph he creates
a barrier of avoidance between himself and the rest of mankind, com-
paring them to noxious and repulsive animals. The fifth paragraph
ends the prayer with a reiteration of the assertions of the first para-
graph, the charms and attractiveness of the reciter, and concludes with
a statement of solidarity by identification with the woman of his
choice.

The use of such a love charm is most frequently at midnight and the
man sings his formula in a low voice while facing in the direction of
the girl’s house. This will make her dream about him and become
lonesome for him unless she has fortified herself, on going to bed, with
counter spells. The next time she meets him she will be irresistibly
drawn toward him and become attached by strong and permanent
bonds.

After he has gained her favors, however, his labors are not over.
He must retain her only by constant spells, especially if she be at all
attractive on her own account and liable to the magical spells of male
rivals. In order to retain a mate a man must affirm the strength of
the bonds existing between himself and his wife by a magical formula
and anointing her breast, while sleeping, with his spittle. Sometimes,
despite his best efforts his mate will be attracted away from him by
the superior magic of a rival. To overcome this reverse and recall
the woman the man uses a prayer reaflirming his attractiveness and
allying himself with the all-powerful grandmother fire.

The rival who is intent on detaching a man from his mate makes
use of negative love formulas. These are of two types: (1) Designed
to separate a man and wife preparatory to uniting the wife with him-
self through his own attractiveness; and (2) to render a man unattrac-
tive so that no woman will want him. In the case of separating a man

CHEROKEES OF NORTH CAROLINA—GILBERT 547

and wife the wording of the formula likens each unto a noxious animal
so that repulsion is set up between the conjugal pair. The wife will
then leave her husband or vice versa, unless counterspells are
resorted to.

At times the love spell fails to move the object of attention and the
reciter’s love interest is then turned to hatred and a desire for revenge.
He may practice a spell of unattractiveness on her and make her re-
pulsive to all men. Or he may continue to ply her with love spells
until she makes a clown of herself through her overdemonstration of
passion toward him. Thus he attains revenge on her.

FORMULAS AND DISEASE

Disease and its causes have always been a moot problem for man-
kind. About the simplest explanation would be that of Pandora’s Box
in which the disobedience of a command brought sorrows and disease
on man through feminine curiosity. The Cherokees, like other races,
found it necessary to deal with disease both from the psychosomatic
approach as well as from the practical or herbal approach. As in the
case of the ancient Aryan Atharva- Veda the Cherokee formulas enable
the apothecary to confront the many ills to which the flesh is heir.

The suffering caused by disease is associated in the Cherokee mind
with the suffering caused by the anger of some other personality,
whether mental or physical anguish. Disease is the requital for the
anguish caused some other personality for actions, conscious or uncon-
scious, on the part of an individual. Ina sense then, disease is a form
of conflict in which the symptoms are the equivalent of the blows ex-
changed by the boxers in a pugilistic contest. The animal spirits,
as Olbrechts says (1932, p. 19), such as the Little Deer, the White Bear,
and others, are the tireless and valiant defenders of their particular
animal clan and mete out justice or take vengeance by sending disease
to neglectful and disrespectful hunters. In other words, all disease
is from due cause and this cause must be searched out and compen-
sated for before the disease can be cured.

Diseases of one class are sent by medicine men to other people and
are made to display symptoms calculated to inspire the wrong remedy.
These are spoken of as “ordeal” diseases and are sent by conjurers to
each other “as a joke” or to test their knowledge and aptitude in ward-
ing off attacks.

The curative methods pursued by the medicine man, as well as the
matter of materia medica, are treated at length by Olbrechts (1932,
pp. 60-77, and ff.). Suffice it to say here that the treatments were
often well conceived and well administered in terms of the theory of
disease herein presented. Many examples of curative formulas are
given by Olbrechts in the work cited.

548 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

THE MEANING OF THE MYTHS

The Cherokee myths collected by Mooney do not give a full story
of how the tribe originated. Rather they are extremely fragmentary
remnants that have survived from a much more complete account now
lost. The myths explain the ways of the past and the motivations of
behavior characteristic of the traditional life. Ina sense the myths are
rationalizations of the life of the ancestors and justifications of the
world as we now see it, in terms of the continuity of life.

The various species of animals are pictured in the myths as having
clans just like the Cherokee, and townhouses, towns, and other social
forms like men. Each of the animal] clans is pictured with its own clan
council which made decisions of importance regarding the future
of the species. Fire and tobacco are pictured as having been ac-
quired by stealing animals at the behest of the clan councils. There
seems to be some identification of important conjurers with the various
animal clans. The animals play tricks on each other just as the
conjurers do. All the animal clans, however, seem to be involved in
a perpetual state of war or blood revenge against man because he slays
them or otherwise menaces their welfare.

Plants are regarded as the friends of man because they furnish the
basis for cures of disease and also because they yield food for man.
Corn, or maize, is especially revered and the myths clustering about
the old woman of the corn are highly regarded and important.

Certain other beings exist in the cosmos who may help or hinder
human purposes depending upon the magic power wielded by the
human being. Such beings are: (1) The Man of the Whirlwind who
stirs up tornadoes and dangerous winds; (2) the Rainmaker who
brings or withholds rain; (3) the Cloud People who often come to
visit and commune with humans; (4) the Red Man of Lightning; (5)
the Thunder Men who make known their presence during the storm;
(6) the Snow Man; (7) the Hot and Cold Weather Man who dispenses
temperature changes; (8) the Rainbow Man; (9) the Hail Man; (10)
the Frost Man; (11) the Waterfall Man; and (12) the Long Man of
the River who incarnates the power of running water.

The dramatis personae of the myths are involved in frequent quar-
rels with each other and with man, and the struggle for power between
the various conjurers is reflected in the myths in various ways. Kill-
ing and revenge for killing, clan sanctioned, are basic themes. Con-
flicts may also arise through a stealing of something valuable which
requires compensation. Blood revenge was of primary importance
in the older days but now seems to have subsided into conjuring “wars”
and other such sublimated conflicts.

The joking or trickster element in the myths may be regarded as
another phase of the conflict relationship. In the myths the rabbit
tricks the otter, opossum, turkey, wolf, flint, and the deer. The wolf

CHEROKEES OF NORTH CAROLINA—GILBERT 549

is very gullible and is tricked not only by the rabbit but also by the
terrapin and the groundhog. The terrapin is tricked by the turkey
and the partridge. The tricks and practical jokes between the animals
are quite frequently reciprocated and the animal tricked returns with
interest the tricks of the trickster. The favorite mode of trickery is
for the trickster to lure the unsuspecting butt of the joke into a situa-
tion wherein he is made to appear ridiculous and loses something of
value. In incidents of this nature the bear loses his tail, the otter his
coat, the deer his sharp teeth, and the opossum his furry tail.

The trickster element is highly suggestive of the joking that goes
on between relatives today and the teasing of persons in the grand-
parent clan relationship to one’s self which leads to the intimate re-
lationships of marriage.

Fundamentally the purpose of the myths is to explain the present
in terms of the past as the following story well indicates.

THE STORY OF THE CREATION OF MAN

At first there was a Great Spirit or “apportioner” living in this
world called by a name which means “He has prepared.” This name
came about because of the fact that he had already prepared or created
the sun, the moon, and the earth.

One day while walking about on the earth the Great Spirit became
lonely and thought to himself, I will make a human being to live
with me temporarily. As he walked on his way he came to a place
where there was a mass of pale soil caused by a fallen tree with up-
turned roots. The soil being thin and sandy and just right for the
purpose, he took some of it and molded a human being and breathed
the breath of life into him. As the man stood up and walked the Great
Spirit saw that he was so hairy from the rootlets of the fallen tree and
so pale from the nature of the soil from which he was made that
displeasure with his creation took hold of him.

He decided to try again and walked on to another place where
another fallen tree had exposed its roots with a mass of black soil.
He then took of this earth and created another man. But he was
displeased when he saw the black color of the man, too dark to be
of good appearance. So he walked on and came to another fallen
tree, which in falling, had exposed a mass of red clay. From this
earth the Great Spirit made a third human being whose skin was light
red in color and very smooth. And this time the Great Spirit was
greatly pleased with his creation.

He then stood up the three human beings in a row, the white man,
the black man, and the red man, and commanded them to stand and
be blessed. And as he did so he prepared each of them for his occu-
pation in the future. He created a book and a bundle of roots. He
offered the book first to the red man who refused it, and then to the

550 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

black man who also refused it; finally to the white man who accepted
the book. The Great Spirit then offered the bundle of roots to the
black man who refused it, and next to the red man, who accepted
it. That is why the Indians have become wise in the use of roots
for medicines and the white men in the use of books.

THE TOWN LIFE

From the earliest times the Cherokees have lived in settlements
or towns. The five towns of the Qualla Boundary today are Birdtown,
Yellow Hill, Painttown, Wolftown, and Big Cove. Yellow Hill and
Birdtown are located in the valley of the Oconaluftee while Big Cove
is on the Raven Fork branch, Painttown on Wright’s Creek branch,
and Wolftown on Soco Creek branch. Each of these towns consisted
originally of a number of log cabins strung out at intervals of from
a quarter to a half mile apart. In the case of Big Cove two divisions
are noticed, an upper Big Cove proper or Raven and the lower Big
Cove or Calico. The town of Big Cove itself had in 1932 about 50
families of which possibly half a dozen were white families. Each of
the families possessed about 30 or 40 acres of hillside or woodland
and of this area perhaps six acres would be cultivated and planted
with corn, beans, and potatoes. The stock was and is scant, consisting
of a horse, cow, a few hogs, and some chickens.

The five towns mentioned above, together with a sixth consisting of
Graham County households, are organized as the Eastern Band of
Cherokees with a chief elected every four years, vice chief, and town
delegates who compose a band council. Town unity is evidenced in
cooperative societies called gadugi, funeral societies, poor-aid societies,
town ball team, and town dance team. The towns differ in their clan
composition. The Wolf Clan predominates in Wolftown, Painttown,
Yellow Hill, and Birdtown, and disputes first place with the Deer
Clan in Big Cove. The Wolf Clan is not found in any degree in
Graham County. The Deer Clan claims the most members in Big
Cove and is numerous in Graham County. The Bird Clan is most
numerous in Graham County and ranks second in Wolftown, Paint-
town, and Yellow Hill. The Paint Clan predominates in Painttown,
the Blue Clan is found mostly in Big Cove, the Potato Clan is most
numerous to the westward, and the Twister Clan is strongest in Bird-
town and Yellow Hill.

Stated in another way, clan distributions by towns show: 57 percent
of Big Cove consists of Deer and Wolf; 60 percent of Yellow Hill,
Wolf and Bird; 50 percent of Wolftown and Painttown, Wolf and
Bird; 65 percent of Birdtown, Wolf and Twister; and 73 percent of
Graham County, Bird and Deer. On the whole the less thickly settled
areas of Graham County and Big Cove show a greater predominance

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—GILBERT

i i Sa yi

Outacite, Chief of the Cherokees, one of the Cherokees

who visited London in 1762 with Henry

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2. Austenaco,

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—GILBERT PLAT Es

Cunne Shote, ‘“‘The Stalking Turkey.” From painting by F. Parsons, 1762.

PLATE 3

1956.—GILBERT

SMITHSONIAN REPORT,

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SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—GILBERT PLATE 4

1. Cherokee Eagle Dance at Big Cove, 1932.

2. Group of Cherokees dancing the Horse Dance at the reservation, Cherokee, N.C., during the

31st annual Cherokee Indian fair, October 1948. (State Department photo, O’Donnell.)

PLATE 5

SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—GILBERT

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Cherokee Ball Game,

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SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—GILBERT PLATE 6
C~ ld

I. Arts and crafts have long been a part of Cherokee culture and have provided oppor-
tunities for income. ‘The Cherokee Historical Association has been instrumental in
increasing production through its arts and crafts school and in reviving old Cherokee arts

and crafts such as beadwork. (Photo courtesy Cherokee Historical Association, ca. 1956.)

s for their baskets and these basket weavers shown
above practice their art in the Cherokee Historical Association’s re-created 200-year-old
Oconaluftee Indian village. (Photo courtesy Cherokee Historical Association, ca. 1956.)

2. The Cherokee have long been famou

PLATE 7

1956.—GILBERT

SMITHSONIAN REPORT,

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SMITHSONIAN REPORT, 1956.—GILBERT PLATE 8

1. This Cherokee Indian boy is explaining how in ancient times the Cherokee trapped fish
for their food with such implements as this handmade fish trap in Oconaluftee Indian
village. (Photo courtesy Cherokee Historical Association, ca. 1956.)

2. The log structure shown is one of several progressive types of structure depicted in
Oconaluftee village. (Photo courtesy Cherokee Historical Association, ca. 1956.)

CHEROKEES OF NORTH CAROLINA—GILBERT 551

of one or two clans over the others than do the more densely populated
Painttown and Yellow Hill. Examination of the record of marriages
between clanspeople indicates that the chance propinquity of residence
has little to do with choice of mate.

Intertown rivalry is expressed in the ball game. Great stress is laid
on magical power or the lack of it as the sole detriment to the winning
or losing of ball games. These games, together with the ball dances,
resolve themselves into a rivalry between teams of conjurers in the
opposing towns. The magical rites surrounding the ball game are ex-
tensive and esoteric but include a weakening of the opponents through
trickster joking of familiar clansmen in the opponent’s town. Ex-
traordinary measures are resorted to in order to obtain the more pow-
erful conjurers for one’s ball team. In fact the entire community has
been known to turn out to hoe the fields and perform work on the con-
jurer’s fields in order to show their good will and regard for the
conjurer’s abilities. The conjurer prays and divines the future. If
he finds the opponents stronger than the home team, he takes magical
measures to strengthen the latter.

The life in Cherokee towns in early times has been described in great
detail in the Payne-Butrick manuscripts. The number of dwellings
varied from a dozen to 200, depending upon the importance of the
settlement. 'Townsites were usually on small creeks near the mouth,
while larger streams were used for water travel and fishing. Stock-
ades surrounded those settlements whose exposed position rendered it
necessary. In the center of the town stood the town house or council
house on a level area adjacent to the stream. The council house was
7-sided and in arrangement and use served as a temple for the Indians.
Within the council house was an altar of clay at which the sacred new
fire was kindled at certain specific times.

Houses within the village were built with posts and wickerwork
plastered with clay and with a bark or thatched roof. There were
also hothouses for sweat baths and for cold-weather habitation. Store-
houses were used to hold stored food. There was a dance square in
front of the council house at which important ceremonies were held.
Nearby were ball grounds for the ball play and chunkey yards for the
chunkey game.

Towns were classified as white towns and red towns, depending upon
their traditional ceremonial affiliation. There was a complete hier-
archy of so-called white or peace officials and a similar hierarchy of red
or war Officials.

CHEROKEE PERSONALITIES

The preservation of Cherokee culture and traditions is largely an
affair involving personalities, particularly the medicine men. In John
412575—57-_36

902 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Howard Payne’s time (1830) information regarding the traditions
was gleaned by the missionary, D. S. Butrick, from Nutsawi Pinelog,
Awayu, Corn Tassel, Deer-in-the-water, Nettle, Nutsawi Saddler,
Rain, Raven, Thomas Smith, T. Smith, Jr., Shortarrow, Situegi, Ter-
rapin Head, and Toleta.

In Mooney’s time (1890-1910), the principal informants were Swim-
mer, John Axe, Suyeta, Catawba-killer, Chief N. J. Smith, Salali,
Jessan Ayasta, and James and David Blythe.

In recent years of the twentieth century there were Will West
Long, Deliski Climbing Bear, Morgan Calhoun, and others. The tend-
ency of medicine-making to run in families was noted by Olbrechts
(1932, p. 106).

A detailed study of the matrilineal pedigrees among the Cherokees
would reveal much of the background of the prominent personalities
of the band. This is true both of the earlier period and the later his-
tory of this group. The science of human genetics is only in its in-
fancy, yet a brilliant future may be forecast for it in the study of groups
like the Eastern Cherokee. The tracing of clan descents, together with
historical notices of the personalities and the lineages achieving con-
tinued distinction in the Cherokee tribe, is of the greatest importance.
Whether the distinction was socially inspired or biologically trans-
mitted is of little account in our present state of knowledge. The
important thing is to trace the genealogy of achievement within the
group.

The famous Atakullakulla or Little Carpenter was a nephew of
Old Hop of Chote, who was principal chief in the early eighteenth cen-
tury. Little Carpenter was noted as a man of superior abilities who
was peace chief of the tribe through many difficult years. One of his
sisters was said to have been the mother of the famous Nancy Ward,
who was described by William Martin as “One of the most superior
women I ever saw.” Since Nancy Ward is described as having been
of the Wolf Clan, we may assume that her mother and Little Carpenter
were also of this clan and possibly Old Hop also. Little Carpenter’s
son, Dragging Canoe, was another famous Cherokee leader. Also of
the Wolf Clan was Charles R. Hicks, principal chief, and son of
Nancy, a daughter of Chief Broom, and a white man, Nathan Hicks.

Still another lineage development is suggested in the case of Old
Tassel, principal chief of Chote, and of the Twister Clan, a lineage
noted for its pride and haughtiness. John Watts was a nephew of Old
Tassel and son of a white trader, John Watts, and a sister of Old
Tassel. He was a headman of the Cherokees and a chief of the
Chickamaugas. It is said that Nathaniel Gist, a Pennsylvania Ger-
man, married another of the sisters of Old Tassel and became the
father of George Gist, the famous Sequoia, inventer of the Cherokee

CHEROKEES OF NORTH CAROLINA—GILBERT 553

syllabary. Two other distinguished nephews of Old Tassel were
Tolluntiskee, a principal chief, and his brother, John Jolly, also a
principal chief.

The Wolf Clan, the line of Little Carpenter as we have seen, has
also given in more recent times the famous medicine woman, Ayasta,
mother of Will West Long, Climbing Bean Calhoun, Lawyer Calhoun,
Morgan Calhoun, and John Calhoun. Of these, Will West Long and
Morgan Calhoun were famous medicine men of the Wolf Clan at Big
Cove. The famous Swimmer, Mooney’s formula informant, was of
the Wolf Clan and married a Blue Clan woman. His daughter Mary
had a son Uweti who had a son, Luke Swimmer, living in the reserva-
tion in 1932.

Yonaguska or Drowning Bear was a peace chief and the best orator
of histime. He married twice, in both cases women of the Wolf Clan.
His son Julio married Ensi of the Deer Clan and had a son Faidil
Skiti or Waving Ears, who was a householder in Big Cove in 1982.

From this and other examples, it may be seen that descent can be
traced back to the period of the middle nineteenth century and be-
yond. The continuity of descent afforded by the clan traditions of su-
perior achievement, especially in the cases of the Wolf and the Twister
Clans, doubtless accompanies the transmission of formulary lore
and other cultural items. Thus it is made to appear that a tribal
society such as the Eastern Cherokee is essentially made up of contend-
ing lineage groups (clans) each of which carries its own placement
status within the society. The personalities produced by the lineage
are but facets of the clan and the social standing of the clan. This is
because behavior in a primitive society is always conditioned by lineage
affiliations and by the prestige attaching thereto.

CONCLUSION

We have examined a number of facets of the Cherokee tribe oper-
ating in relation to its natural environment. In this brief paper the
idea has been stressed that culture is mainly an ecological adaptation
of a race to its environment and is designed to enable survival and
expansion of the biological heritage of that race. In other words the
culture is not regarded as operating, per se, ina vacuum. It is thought
of as inseparable from the natural ecology of the race or people under
consideration. The people are primary objects of consideration, their
culture secondary.

The first principle of social continuity of the generations is illus-
trated by the clan or matrilineal lineage. Next, attention is called to
the principle of rhythms in nature and the commemoration of these
rhythms in the ancient monthly feasts. ‘These in turn are shown to be
the likely antecedents to the modern Cherokee dances which commem-

554 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

orate the rhythmic recurrence of needs just as did the ancient monthly
feasts.

Then, turning to the Cherokee prayers or sacred formulas, which
are in some cases hundreds of years old, it was found that they lend
force to social continuity through their conservation and commemora-
tion of traditional values, both orally and in writing. The prayers
are in turn buttressed by the myths or stories that illustrate the think-
ing of the ancestors and explain the present in terms of the past.

The town or community life of the Cherokees shows its roots in the
clan lineage system and its relation to the civil and military needs of a
primitive people. Out of this lineal emphasis of the community life
emerges a view of the Cherokee personality, a product of lineage and
social status, but permissive nonetheless of special individual achieve-
ment.

The final conclusion is that Cherokee life today is a going concern
and gives no evidence of dying out or disappearing through absorp-
tion within the non-Indian society that surrounds it. Commemora-
tion and innovation are the two forces still constituting the cycle of
life as far as the stream of Cherokee existence is concerned.

REFERENCES
BARTON, BENJAMIN S.
1798. New views on the origin of the tribes and nations of America.
Philadelphia.
Broom, LEONARD, and SPECK, F. G.
1951. Cherokee dance and drama. Berkeley, Calif.
DONALDSON, THOMAS.
1892. The eastern band of Cherokees of North Carolina. Extra Census
Bull., 11th U. S. Census.
GILBERT, WILLIAM H., JR.
1943. The Hastern Cherokees. Anthrop. Pap. No. 23, Bur. Amer. Ethnol.
Bull. 133, pp. 169-418.
Haywoop, JOHN.
1823. Natural and aboriginal history of Tennessee. Nashville.
KNIGHT, JOHN ALDEN.
1942. Moon up and moon down. New York.
Lewis, T. M. N., and KNEBERG, MADELINE.
1954. Oconaluftee Indian village, an interpretation of a Cherokee com-
munity of 1750. Cherokee Historical Association, Inc.
Mooney, JAMES.
1891. Sacred formulas of the Cherokees. 7th Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol.,
1885-86, pp. 301-397.
1900. Myths of the Cherokee. 19th Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol., 1897-98,
pt. 1, pp. 3-540.
OLBRECHTS, F'RANS M., and Mooney, JAMES.
1932. The Swimmer manuscript. Cherokee sacred formulas and medicinal
prescriptions. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Bull, 99, 319 pp.
Snyper, L. H.
1926. Human blood groups; their origin and social significance. Amer.
Journ. Phys. Anthrop., vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 233-263.

CHEROKEES OF NORTH CAROLINA—GILBERT 555

SPEcK, F. G.
1920. Decorative art and basketry of the Cherokee. Bull. Publ. Mus.
Milwaukee, vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 54-86.
SWANTON, JOHN R.
1928. Aboriginal culture of the Southeast. 42d Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer.
Ethnol., 1924-1925, pp. 673-726.
THOMAS, CYRUS.
1890. The Cherokees in pre-Columbian times. New York.

Supplemental Reading

Thirty-eighth Annual Cherokee Indian Fair, Oct. 4-8, 1955. 30 pp. Cherokee,
N.C.

“Unto These Hills,” brochure describing this drama of the Cherokee Indians,
Mountainside Theatre, Cherokee, N. C. (Published by Cherokee Historical
Association, 1955.)

The Official Guide to Cherokee, official publication of the Qualla Boundary
(Cherokee Reservation) by sanction and appointment of the council of the
eastern band of Cherokee Indians. 38 pp. Cherokee, N. C., 1955.

The Official Guide to Cherokee. 30pp. 1956.

Reprints of the various articles in this Report may be obtained, as long as
the supply lasts, on request addressed to the Editorial and Publications
Division, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 25, D.C.

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Dried Meat—Karly Man’s Travel Ration’

By Epwarp N. WENTWORTH

Past President, Agricultural History Society
Chesterton, Ind.

PRIMITIVE MAN originated three methods of meat preservation—
freezing, salting, and drying. Later on, according to skills and lati-
tude, he developed further offshoots of each through refrigeration,
spicing, and smoking. Some tribes that lived near salt springs, dead
seas, or ocean flats discovered that salt was a good preservative, while
the subarctic tribes naturally learned the efficacy of cold. Drying
came from experience on the edges of the desert or in mountain alti-
tudes where the air was light and arid. When the atmosphere proved
too humid for the sun- and wind-drying process, these methods were
supplemented by fire, either in outside frames or in the hut, and the
smoke from the wood or brush imparted distinctive flavors.

Drying as a method of preservation was just as natural a discovery
as were the other two. Any meat left on a carcass by a predator or
hunter would dry quickly in the regions were humans first emerged
from the anthropoid. Possibly this location was Asia or Africa; and
most probably it was north of the Himalaya Mountains. Perhaps the
method of drying was worked out independently in several locations.
For example, archeologist William A. Ritchie of the State of New
York has found extensive sites in Cayuga County, which radio-carbon
dating by Dr. W. F. Libby of the Atomic Energy Commission shows
to have been in existence about 3500 B.C. Apparently large racks for
meat and fish drying were erected, and numerous remains of bones
(principally deer) were present—either whole or cracked for the mar-
row. Dried meat has been found in the ancient Sumerian sites, on
the lower Egyptian Nile, and in the extreme northern and eastern
edge of Mongolia. Ina few cases it can be determined definitely that
the meat was dried before storing. Perhaps the first tradition in
Kurope was learned from the experiences of Genghis Khan, Tamer-
Jane, and other “Hun” invaders. In their first expedition, the Mon-
gols ran short of the cattle they drove en route, but they apparently

*Reprinted by permission from Agricultural History, vol. 30, January 1956.
557

558 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

had enough dried meat in their haversacks to last until they could find
additional food in the civilized settlements.

In the days before wheeled transportation, it was very important to
carry meat in some form that would not spoil and yet could be con-
veniently borne by travelers on foot or horseback. Even before re-
corded history began, swarms of warriors, traders, and travelers were
traversing the trade routes along the Mediterranean Sea—the famed
“Course of Empire.” Wild food animals disappeared rapidly, and
farmers that dwelt along the highways could not raise enough cereals
or domestic livestock to meet the needs of the villages already in the
course of development. Ultimately, market centers grew up where
pastoral tribes, hunters, and farmers, operating in areas lying off the
trade routes, could bring their meats and grains for sale in a form the
wayfarer could use. Jerky was a prime market product.

The practice of meat drying undoubtedly came to this continent by
the great migration across the Bering Strait several millennia ago.
It was the most convenient method of preserving meats, at a minimum
weight, that the Asiatic tribes reaching North America then knew. No
one can date the calendar for this event, but it was at least 40 to 60
centuries ago. Possibly the method of desiccation with which this
continent was acquainted had originated in several places but, because
it was so uniform among all the primitive tribes in America, it seems
likely that it sprang from one source.

In the Western Hemisphere, dehydration of meat was practiced all
the way from the Arctic Circle to Patagonia. On the east coast of
South America, numerous Brazilian and Paraguayan tribes, including
those in the swamp areas, dried their seasonal meats over smoke. The
Portuguese explorers called this meat xarque; the Spanish explorers,
char-qui; and the English, jerky. In North America the term jerky
was confined principally to the United States, with only slight usage
in Canada—probably adopted from the fur traders. However,
Charles J. Lovell calls attention to the fact that references to pemmi-
can were in the literature of Canada as early as 1743 and 1772.5 The
Mexicans used still another word, ¢asajo, which may be nearer the
original Indian sound, but now it cannot be identified.

2 V. Stefansson to author, February 16, 1955.

> Charles J. Lovell to author, February 16, 1955, quotes James Ishman’s Ob-
servations on Hudson’s Bay, 1743, p. 156, Toronto, 1949, where it is called
“Pimmegan,” and the Cumberland House Journal of the Hudson’s Bay Com-
pany, September 23, 1777, which lists 2,924 pounds of beat meat, 1,720 pounds of
“Fatt,” and 100 pounds of “Pimmacon.” The first citation in print in England
is in the Oxford Dictionary in 1801, from Alexander Mackenzie, the great
Canadian explorer, and the first citation from an American source was from
the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804, though the dictionary purports to in-
clude only words that first entered the English language in the United States.

DRIED MEAT—WENTWORTH 559

In the fifteenth century dried meats were known traditionally by
the Celts in Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, as used by their warrior
forebears 8 or 10 centuries earlier. The Basques in the Pyrenees, as
well as the French races of old Provence, were familiar with the prod-
uct during the ascendency of Rome. Earlier still, the ancient races
of lake dwellers in the Balkans, Switzerland, and islolated regions of
the Alpine mountain chains, left remnants of dried meats around their
ancient dwellings that indicated their use of the product.

In his study of the American Indian, Clark Wissler divided the
North American continent according to basic meats consumed.‘
Throughout the arctic and subarctic regions the chief dependence was
placed on the flesh of the caribou, although in the northeast musk
oxen were occasionally substituted. The salmon area extended as far
south as San Francisco and eastward to the crest of the Sierras. The
heart of the continent, however, depended on the bison, which even
today contributes the best flavored jerky produced under conditions of
sun and wind drying. In eastern Canada and New England, deer and
moose, with an occasional elk, furnished the foundation; while along
the Atlantic coast to the south, and in the Gulf region, deer and an
infrequent bear seemed most important.

The first historical reference to jerky in the Western Hemisphere
was furnished by Castafeda, who prepared the records of the Coro-
nado expedition (1540-1542). Two standard translations exist, the
older being by George Parker Winship:

They dry the flesh [of the bison] in the sun, cutting it thin like a leaf and, when
dry, they grind it like meal to keep it, and make a seasoup of it to eat. A handful
thrown into the pot swells up so as to increase very much. They season it with
fat, which they always try to secure when they kill a cow [bison]. 5

The other standard translation, by Hammond and Rey, renders, “sea-
soup” as “mash” and romanticizes the “pot” by calling it an “olla.” ¢
Some students have tried to assume that Castafieda referred to pem-
mican rather than jerky because of his allusion to fat, but it seems
rather obvious that he was discussing fat added during cooking or
eating. Pemmican itself seldom required added fat to improve its ap-
petite appeal, as it usually consisted of 35 to 50 percent fat and on the
northern plains it might contain as much as 60 to 80 percent.

The chief problem was to gather enough meat during the hunting
season to warrant drying. Both the plains Indians and trappers re-
lied on the bison, but the forest-dwelling tribes also sought caribou,
moose, and deer. Indian attempts to catch numbers of salmon during

‘Clark Wissler, The American Indian, 2d ed., pp. 2-3, New York, 1922.

5 George Parker Winship, The Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542, Fourteenth
Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol., Pt. I, pp. 527-528, 1896.

*George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey, Narratives of the Coronado Expedi-
tion, 1540-1542, pp. 262, Albuquerque, 1940.

560 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

the seasonal runs have been well described by explorers and anthropol-
ogists. But not many are familiar with methods used by the tribal
hunters of the Mississippi Valley before the horse age, who dwelt on
the borders of the bison range. They hunted the bison afoot, a difii-
cult and dangerous procedure.

Back in 1700 Nicholas Perrot, French commandant of the North-
west, described an even earlier buffalo hunt among the Illinois tribe.”
Long before daylight a hunting party of young braves started out in
three groups. One section went to the right, another to the left, and
the third served as gap closers, dividing into two parts—able to sup-
port the right or left groups as they needed re-enforcement. The bison
was more than a match for single hunters who approached on foot.

A long section or file was formed on each side, and after traveling
about a league toward the bed grounds of the herd, some of the party
remained to await daylight. After another league had been covered,
a second party was detached, while the rest marched another half
league and waited there. When the dew had dried, they closed the
opening between the right and left groups and encircled the entire
area, setting fire to the dried herbage. At this moment, the old men
and boys from the tribal village joined them, and the completed fires
on four sides surrounded the game. <A few of the bison would try to
break through the burning barriers, but the hunters could usually turn
single animals back to their companions in the fiery enclosure. Perrot
reports that sometimes a single village would obtain as many as 1,500
animals.

Bison killed during the summer when the animals were fat and their
coats thin proved the best. The flesh was then of the finest quality and
the pelts were easiest to remove and dress. The meat was cut along
the muscle fibers instead of across them as we commonly do, so the
flavors inherent in the juice could be preserved while dehydrating.
However, the slices were cut into as thin strips as stone knives would
permit. Our American Indians were Stone Age men when Europeans
first reached here, except for a limited number of tribes which had
access to impure natural lead or copper ores. These metals were
beaten into knives with hammers and then ground along the edges.

The flesh was dried as rapidly as possible in the sun and wind or, if
too humid, in the smoke of the fire inside the lodge. “This process ac-
tually mummified the meat and made it quite tough. Meat dry enough
to last in damp, warm climates was difficult to chew. Hence it was
usually pounded into small fragments and placed in skin bags

7Emma Helen Blair, ed., The Indian tribes of the upper Mississippi Valley,
pp. 121-122, Cleveland, 1911, contains translation of Nicholas Perrot’s “Memoirs
of the Manners, Customs and Religion of the Savages of North America,” origi-
nally published by Jules Tailham, Leipzig and Paris, 1864.

DRIED MEAT—WENTWORTH 561

(christened by the French Canadians parfléches) to make it convenient
for travel or storage. Pulverizing was customarily accomplished by
use of stone hammers or wooden clubs against stone. Many fragments
of rocks were thus included in the “beat meat” or “pounded meat,” as
the fur trade came to call it. When fully dried, a bison cow was esti-
mated to yield 45 pounds of dried meat which was quite a saving in
weight in comparison with the original carcass.

The meat-drying operation was a community and tribal affair.
In 1843, Thomas J. Farnham reported quite vividly a picture of meat
drying by the Kaw tribe on the Pawnee Fork of the Arkansas River
in Kansas, near present-day Larned:

Their wigwams were constructed of bushes inserted into the ground, twisted
together at the top, and covered with the buffalo hides which they had been
gathering for their winter lodges. Meat was drying in every direction. It had
been cut into long narrow strips, wound around sticks standing upright in the
ground, or laid over a rick of wicker work, under which slew fires are kept
burning. . . . They make a yearly hunt to this region in the spring, lay in
a large quantity of dried meat, return to their own territory in harvest time...
and thus prepare for a long and merry winter. They take with them, on these
hunting excursions, all the horses and mules belonging to the tribe, which can
be spared from the labor of their fields upon the Konzas River, go south until
they meet the buffalo, build their distant wigwams, and commence their labor.
This is divided in the following way between the males, females, and children;
the men kill the game; the women dress and dry the meat, and tan the
hides ...; the younger shoots of the tribe during the day are engaged in
watering and guarding the horses and mules that have been used in the hunt—
changing their stakes from one spot to another of fresh grass, and crouching
along the heights around the camp to notice the approach of foes and sound
the alarm. .. . Uniess driven from their game by the Pawnees, or some other
tribe at enmity with them, they load every animal with meat and hides about
the first of August, and commence the march back to their fields, fathers, and
wigwams on the Konzas River.®

Not much has been written about half-dry meat. Stefansson states
that this is the favorite form of preparation, when the caribou are
fat, over Canada from Lake Athabaska northward.® First the carcass
is split down the back and the side is boned out. The choicest lean for
making this preparation is taken from the hams and tenderloins.
Some persons, principally traders, do not wish to have too much
fat, so the excess is stripped off. Then the boneless side or “rib
blanket” is hung like clothes on a wash line. A rawhide or other
rope is used for suspension, or the meat may be spread over the branch
of atree. If the flesh is laid on the ground it must be turned at fre-
quent intervals. The intention is to have the meat dry on the outside,
but on the inside it still retains considerable moisture. Where the

8 Thomas J. Farnham, Travels in the great western prairies (2 vols.), vol. 1,
pp. 63-67, London, 1843.
*Stefansson to author, January 26, 1955.

562 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

sun strikes it, a sort of glaze is formed which is airtight, and the fur
trader was very fond of the resultant flavor. Stefansson remarks
that the outside “skin” protects it through the months of hot weather,
and the half-dry meat is highly appetizing.

The usual method of cooking is to roast the sides by the fire, but
the half-dry meat is also excellent if boiled. Since tooth decay is
normally an affliction of starch, sugar, and cereal eaters, there was
no trouble in chewing this meat among tribes north of the Mandan
country. Of course, traders from England, France, New England,
and eastern Canada, with teeth already decayed, did have some diffi-
culty in chewing. However, the natives never faced that problem
and Stefansson states that meals of good half-dry boned caribou ribs,
properly roasted, are the most delicious he has ever eaten.

During World War II the author was on the advisory staff of the
Quartermaster General (with various explorers and geographers
like Stefansson and Ear] Parker Hansen), and had opportunity to
learn several interesting criticisms of dehydrated meats. One of the
first objections came from the members of our own committee, who
felt that the meat did not “taste right.” It was prepared at low
temperatures and with a minimum of light and air. Sun drying
permits the development of flavors arising from the natural enzymes
ir: the meat, as well as from the crusting, or membrane, which appears
on the outside during the drying process.

Some people less practiced in the use of jerky and pemmican com-
plained that the sun-dried product had a “fishy flavor.” Others ex-
pressed the opinion that the taste was due to the fats rather than to
the proteins. Not much scientific research has been conducted on the
relationships between the amino-acid composition of various proteins
and their flavors. However, it is known that when the fats are com-
pletely removed, there seems to be little difference in taste between
the flesh of various orders, genera, or species.

Sun drying required thin slices so as to obtain rapid removal of
water under the hot sun and the circulation of dry air. There are two
kinds of reactions in the proteins; one due to the enzymes natura] in
the meat and the other from enzymes of the micro-organisms. The
action of the enzymes of the meat takes place normally, and produces
the “aged” flavors to which we are accustomed. On the other hand,
undesirable flavors may be developed by enzymes of organisms that
act on amino-acids and the derivatives, converting them into highly
odorous substances such as amines, mercaptans, and skatole.

This strong flavor in carelessly handled meat dried in the more
humid regions provides one of the reasons why jerky has never found
an important outlet in the civilized areas. In more recent times a
second cause of unpopularity was the time required in the home to

DRIED MEAT—WENTWORTH 563

soak and cook it before it was usable. During the early 1940’s, an
attempt was made to manufacture so-called “dehydrated meat,” which
was of very good quality, but on account of the war and the employ-
ment of so many homemakers in defense industries, it was not possible
for them to obtain the time to dehydrate it and prepare it for the table.

With further reference to enzyme action, it should be noted that
neither the naturally occurring enzymes found in the meat nor those
caused by micro-organisms can act if the water content of the meat is
reduced rapidly. When the percentage of water is dropped to 6 to 8,
enzyme action is extremely slow, and by the time it is reduced to 2 or
3 percent, it is stopped. Thus dehydrated meat, during this period, as
prepared for military and civilian personnel, had the water content
carried down to 3 or 4 percent as quickly as possible.

It proved very difficult to pulverize half-dry meat evenly for stor-
age in the parfléches of the frontier, and both condition and flavor
were often affected adversely when exposed granular fragments had
different water contents. Since the chief part of the ofi-flavors
that come in the proteins arise from outside action after the meat is
ground, when it was dehydrated for wartime use the temperature was
raised to 165° to 170° to “pasteurize” it. There are some enzymes in
the flesh that, even at that temperature, may still be active, but the
primary purpose is to destroy vegetative forms of life that act on the
product through the elaboration of their own enzymes.

In the packing house, during World War II, the meat to be dehy-
drated was ground just as in hamburger or sausage. One of the large
companies dried the product through a tunnel with a current of air
passing over it, and another used a louver process. A third dried the
ground meat in open pans and then transferred it toa vacuum. The
latter process took care of the final drying, as well as any undesirable
volatile products. *°

The chief factor in developing the “fishy” taste in sun-dried jerky,
to which inexperienced people objected, came from the fats. In sun
and wind drying, unsaturated fatty acids tend to oxidize, producing
substances that contribute to their distaste. Of the unsaturated
fatty acids whose oxidation produces unrelished flavors, the two most
important are linoleic and linolenic (characteristic of linseed oil and
very important in the skin health of mammals). The higher the
temperature of the process, the more these oxidized fatty acids develop
and the more pronounced the “fishy” flavor.

To most people, a degree of “fishy” taste is not so bad. The rarer
flavors of aged cheese and the epicurean delights of well-hung game
arise through similar aging, or proteolytic conditions. However,
during World War II housewives were not accustomed to these flavors,

*” Byron T. Shinn to author, February 18, 1955.

564 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

so processes were used that held them in check. Also a small amount
of salt (1 to 2 percent) was added to increase the appeal to the average
consumer. In spite of the most superior techniques, the dehydrated
meat never became popular. In the military service, helicopters, air-
planes, and parachutes made possible the delivery of canned meats to
which the military personnel in isolated posts was accustomed. At
such posts as radar stations along and over the Himalayan hump, well
within the enemy lines, delivery by air was almost regular.

An early discovery of prehistoric days was that dried meat was so
difficult to swallow that it could not be eaten in a hurry, and dipping
it in water made it even more tasteless than before. However, when
the dried meat was dipped in melted fat, or even in oils that were
liquid at ordinary temperatures, the ease of swallowing was greatly
improved. Where the fats were too hard at normal temperatures,
melting was often impossible during the chase or in the proximity of
enemies, so that hunter or warrior introduced pieces of fat into his
mouth at the same time that he bit off a chunk of jerky. This practice
may have led to the manufacture of pemmican.

Hodge states that the word “pemmican” means more than the simple
thought of fat—it also implies its manufacture." He translates the
Cree Indian word pimiy as meaning “he makes grease.” The Indians
boiled the crude fat in water and skimmed off the supernatant oil.
However, it may be going wide of the mark to derive the word pem-
mican from the Cree language.

Catlin and other early travelers report the collection and cracking
of buffalo bones, which were broken and boiled to extract the marrow
fat which the tribes prized highly. The marrow from the long bones,
when cracked, could be easily extracted by physical methods, but the
fat from the cell cavities at the end of the bones (or any other bones
that had a spongy structure) was usually obtained by crushing and
boiling. Furthermore, Catlin states that the fat was put into bison
bladders, which had been distended, for storage and later consumption.
He says that marrow fat after cooling became quite hard “like tallow,”
and possessed the appearance and very nearly the flavor of richest
yellow butter. A second motive in keeping the marrow fat separate
was that it required more careful handling to prevent rancidity—it
would not keep as well as ordinary tallow. At feasts, chunks of the
marrow fat were cut off and placed in a tray or bowl with the jerky,
so both could be eaten together. He suggests that this was a good
substitute for bread and butter, and might even be considered the
dietary equivalent of that food for the tribesmen.

11 Frederick W. Hodge, ed., Handbook of American Indians north of Mexico,
Pt. 2, p. 228, Washington, 1910.

* George Catlin, The manners, customs and condition of the North American
Indians, p. 116, London, 1841.

DRIED MEAT—WENTWORTH 565

There was never enough marrow fat to make the amounts of pem-
mican which the Indians and frontiersmen required, so this type was
known as sweet pemmican.’* The ordinary pemmican was made by
adding the fat from the hump of the bison, from under the skin, or
from the body cavity. The latter was the hardest, and was preferred
to the fat nearer the exterior of the body. Both caribou and buffalo
pemmicans were formed by the addition of their own fats. Their
range was treeless, and the natives had to hunt as fast as their quarry
moved. Most of the time it was impossible to dry the meat and make
the pemmican while the hunt was in progress, so the meat was stripped
off the animals as fast as possible and cached each day. When enough
was secured, it was dried, assembled, and the pemmican was manu-
factured.

In some cases, as a variant, wild cherries (pits and everything) were
dried, pulverized, and mixed with the pounded meat. Thornapples
were also used, as well as June berries and chokecherries, and, still
farther north, “sarvis” berries. While these introduced special flavors,
most of the trappers and explorers preferred the simple jerky and fat.
However, in the winter camps some squaws were said to like more
variety, and it was in part to satisfy the feminine tastes among Indians
that berries were added. Also it may have been a white man’s idea.
Stefansson states that at the height of pemmican’s use by whites
around 1820, from 1 to 5 percent of it was of the flavored or holiday
sort (salt, raisins, dried berries, sugar, etc.), the cake variant of the
“bread of the wilderness.” * In many cases where the fruit pemmican
was prepared for the men on long or difficult expeditions, the simple
dried-meat and fat type was prepared for the dogs used for transpor-
tation. After a few weeks’ experience, almost without exception, the
men exchanged their ration for the “dog pemmican,” and the dogs got
the “cake” variety.

For fish pemmican in the northwest area, salmon was dried and
soaked and then pounded fine in stone mortars. These dried fish could
be stored in baskets, or fish fats could be added to make standard-type
pemmican.** In either case it was considered an emergency food, since
most of the tribes (especially those of the interior) preferred the
product made from bison or deer meat. The sturgeon provided the
principal fish oil, although in some cases seal fat was used.

The Eskimos did not produce jerky, although they were familiar
with the Indian product south of them. Their substitute was known
as akutok and was based on caribou meat, which was sliced thin and
wind dried until an outside crust was formed.** The inside, though,

8 Hodge, ibid., pp. 223, 224.

* Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Not by bread alone, p. 182, New York, 1946.

* Wissler, The American Indian, p. 9.

** Stefansson to author, February 16, 1955; Not by bread alone, p. 37, n.

566 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

was merely half dry. The resultant meat did not grind satisfactorily
to form jerky, as only an occasional piece was dry enough to be suit-
able. Consequently they chewed their meat instead of grinding it, and
spat it out to be dried.*”

In the old days when pemmican was being manufactured it was
poured into the bag, and watch was kept to flatten the sides to a thick-
ness of 6 to 7 inches—thereby giving it more of a brick shape when it
was cooled. This aided in stacking and storing it, and in general made
it convenient to handle. Gradually these bags were standardized for
the fur trade at about the size of an old-fashioned bed pillow, and
would weigh, when filled, from 80 to 90 pounds. In this form the bags
were known as “pieces of pemmican.” Each bag was of buffalo raw-
hide, the hair side out. When filled, the mouth was sewed shut and
all the seams were greased with fat, which was applied when cool
enough to congeal. This excluded air from the contents, and pre-
vented water from reaching the interior—if a canoe was upset, for
example.

The French fur traders and trappers, as stated previously, chris-
tened these rawhide bags parfléches, and specified slightly different
shapes. They required that they be roughly cylindrical and taper
toward the bottom. Usually they were fringed on one side, and were
used for storage rather than for shipment.®

Around the turn of the twentieth century the rawhide bags were

also called taureauax (bulls). Alexander Henry reported receiving in
the Red River country of Dakota four tawreauxw of pemmican per
canoe, each load weighing over 800 pounds. These taureaua were
also rawhide bags whose contents totaled about 80 pounds. Some-
times the name tawreaua was transferred to the same amount of pem-
mican when it was packed differently. The best quality of pemmican
came from the upper Red River in Dakota, and when circumstances
prevented Henry from getting other food he wrote:
We now were obliged to eat pemmican, and had a few bags which had been lying
all summer in a heap covered with a leathern tent. I was apprehensive that it
was spoiled from the complaints made by my friends about the bad quality of
Lower Red River pemmican, but was surprised to find every bag excellent. This
was clear proof to me that the bad pemmican [of which they spoke] came from
another quarter—I suspect Portage-la-Prairie [west of modern Winnipeg and
not on the Red River].”

Pemmican was a summer food, used in hot weather by Indians, trad-
ers, trappers, and explorers. Contrary to usual modern dietitians’

“ Hodge, ibid., pp. 223, 224.

8 Robert H. Lowie, The Crow Indians, p. 79, New York, 1935.

* Blliott Coues, The Red River of the North in New lights on the early history
of the greater Northwest. The manuscript journals of Alexander Henry and of
David Thompson, vol. 1, p. 276, New York, 1897.

DRIED MEAT—WENTWORTH 567

teachings, the percentage of fat desired was as high in summer as in
winter. A convenient method of figuring the proportion of fat is by
the calories furnished from it in proportion to the calories coming
from the lean. Most Americans tasting pemmican for the first time
prefer 50-50, or at most 60-40. But for the hard-working coureurs-
de-bois 70-30 was too small, and 80-20 was preferred. When Earl
Parker Hansen, the tropical explorer, went to Liberia a few years
ago, Armour and Company manufactured both 70-80 and 80-20 varie-
ties for him, but in a few days he came to the conclusion that only the
latter suited his needs. Similarly, for cold climates, R. E. Priestley,
favored an even higher proportion, 60 percent of fat by weight, which
probably provided more than 90 percent of the calories.?°

The problem of bulk was another question leading the way from
jerky to pemmican. The original strips of dried meat were never flat
enough to pack well and the “beat meat” was too fluffy. When ready
for manufacture into pemmican, the bag, bladder, or other membrane
receptacle, was filled loosely (like feathers in a pillow), and melted
tallow, about the temperature of lard for frying doughnuts (365° F.),
was poured into the container.??

An excellent illustration of the importance of this reduced bulk oc-
curred during the Gold Rush in California. The hordes of prospec-
tors soon exhausted the game supply, the surplus from the Mexican-
and Spanish-owned ranches, and the animals that could be driven
from nearby territories like New Mexico and the Midwest. So im-
portant amounts of Oregon jerky and pemmican (especially the
former) were shipped by vessel to San Francisco or transported by
pack animals to the northern California mining regions.

The food value of pemmican is surprising. Considered from the
standpoint of calories the maximum of energy that can be crammed
into a pound of digestible food is around 4,000 to 4,200 calories—the
amount in a pound of pure lard.??, Pemmican often yielded 3,200 to
3,500 calories, depending on the ratio of fat. Three-quarters of a
pound of pemmican was needed for the day’s ration, although the
hard-working coureurs-de-bois of the fur brigade often consumed a
pound and a half to two pounds, when making long portages.

These French Canadians (especially those working for the Hud-
son’s Bay Company) carried their pemmican by the “piece.” Since
a piece of pemmican varied from 80 to 90 pounds in weight, the Hud-
son’s Bay porters carried one, two, or three “pieces”—80 to 90, 160

Raymond EF. Priestley, Antarctic adventure, p. 344, New York, 1915.

*1'V. Stefansson, ‘“Pemmican,” Activities Report—Research and Development
Associates, Food and Container Institute, Inc., vol. 3, pp. 243-244n, 1951. His
principal work on pemmican is in Not by bread alone, pp. 185-187.

* Shinn to author, February 18, 1955.

412575—57——37

568 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

to 180, or 240 to 270 pounds. In addition, they were “allowed” to
carry anything like their own equipment, such as their blankets,
hatchet, pipe, tobacco, mosquito net, spare clothes, and even a present
for the wife.** “Three-piece” men were rare, famous from Edmonton
to the Arctic Ocean, and well-nigh Dominion heroes.

One of the fears expressed regarding a pemmican diet arose at the
beginning of World War II, when the military and naval physicians
worried about the development of ketosis in the average soldier or
sailor—especially if he received only a fat and protein diet without
carbohydrates to serve as a source of quickly available glycogen (ani-
mal sugar as it exists in the blood). When the available supply of
glycogen gets low, one undergoes a form of nerve poisoning by the
ketones, which are one of the products of fat metabolism and which
are very active chemically since they characteristically have only an
atom of oxygen to one of carbon and are really “predatory” on the
nervous system. Peary and other Arctic explorers offset this by using
a supplement of ship’s biscuit, but the hard-working trappers and
voyagers seemed to have grown into adjustment to the high-fat low-
carbohydrate diet as a matter of long conditioning.

While some military subjects on an experimental pemmican diet
during World War II developed the odor of ketones on their breath,
apparently the only ones who believed themselves seriously affected
were those who had been informed of such a possibility in advance.”
Ketosis, in the extreme, is what causes athletes to collapse at the end
of a strenuous race, but it is quickly overcome by the introduction of
glucose into the circulation. Under ordinary military conditions,
where one would choose in an emergency between the consumption of
pemmican or the possibility of starvation, pemmican seems to be far
the more intelligent selection. Men accustomed to eating it would
scarcely exchange such food for anything else, as noted later.

A second worry arose over scurvy. ‘This last disease is caused by a
deficiency of vitamin C inthe diet. Nearly a century ago it threatened
winter life on the frontier, and was not a disease expected solely at
sea or in the barren north. Col. Philippe Regis de Trobriand
struggled against it among his troops in Dakota in the winter of
1867-68. He begged for cattle for fresh meat as early in the fall as
September for, he said, “some cases of scurvy have already broken out
in the garrison as a result of using salted meat and being without vege-
tables too long.” ?® Many times authorities believed that scurvy was

* Stefansson to author, February 16, 1955.

* Interview of Col. E. C. Mattick by author, January 28, 1942.

7 Phillipe St. Regis de Trobriand, Military life in Dakota, ed. by Lucile M.
Kane, p. 71, St. Paul, 1951.

DRIED MEAT—WENTWORTH 569

caused by lack of exercise and by filth, but by March, de Trobriand
was convinced that it was due to something lacking in the food. He
blamed the “limitation of fare which, because of the absence of fresh
vegetables, eggs, fowl, veal, mutton, and even game, had reduced us to
a diet that brings scurvy to the soldiers and takes the edge off the
appetites of the officers.” 7°

Meat may lack the concentrations of vitamin C to bring instant
therapeutic response, but by de Trobriand’s time commanders in the
field knew that it would bring early relief, and when used in advance
would prevent the appearance of the disease. <A half-century later,
Dr. Alfred Hess presented a paper on scurvy before the American
Medical Association in New York.?? He stated that he used fresh
lemons, limes, grated oranges, and grated raw vegetables, but on meat
alone Stefansson obtained the same results. Both diets required four
days for recovery. Furthermore, they were found to be equally quick
acting in cases of scurvy when the patients were gloomy in spirit, too
weak to stand, and had pain in every joint.

Another decade was required after de Trobriand to give proper
credit to pemmican on these points. A serious outbreak of scurvy
took place among the members of the Arctic expedition of Sir George
Nares in 1875-76 and a committee was appointed by the British ad-
miralty to conduct his court-martial. The most effective witness was
Rear Adm. Sir Leopold McClintock, who had been the outstanding
personage to emerge from the numerous searches for the lost Sir John
Franklin expedition of the late 1840’s.7* He testified that he used lime
Juice (the standard remedy of that date) on only one expedition, and
that whenever he could use fresh meat—and he stated emphatically
that he considered the dried meat in pemmican equally as efficient as
fresh—he had no trouble with scurvy.

During World War II some authorities objected to the assumed
high percentage of protein in pemmican, and recommended the ad-
dition of carbohydrates. Protein requires more water in human
metabolism than starches and sugars. In fact the water requirement
is more than seven times as great in protein. But starches and sugars
cannot rebuild the muscular tissue and human vigor declines, while the
energy-releasing foods accumulate uselessly because the human ma-
chine is running down. The fat in pemmican is particularly import-
ant in this connection for it releases relatively large amounts of water,

= EpIG:, p. cos:

** Stefansson quotes Hess in Not by bread alone, p. 171.

Report of the Committee Appointed by the Lords Commissioners of the
Admiralty to Enquire into the Causes of the Outbreak of Scurvy in the Recent
Arctie Expedition—presented to both Houses of Parliament—London, 1877. Ad-
miral McClintock’s testimony was given January 20, 1877, on p. 110 ff., questions
on pp. 3248-3399.

570 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

about 1.1 grams of metabolic water to each gram of fat. Popular
knowledge of this phenomenon comes from the fat of the camel’s
hump, the water tank of the “ship of the desert.” Hence, plane crews
bailed out on the arid plains, or sailors cast out in a life boat can live
much longer on pemmican because the fat conserves the body water
and the protein rebuilds the body tissue. If lost for a short time carbo-
hydrates are satisfactory, but if the time is longer protein must be in
the ration for survival. If one has room enough for starchy products
there is a slightly greater amount of metabolic water formed per
calorie of energy from starch than is formed per calorie of energy
from fat. However, the difference is very small, and the fat and
protein combination is a much more compact unit of energy than is
the starch and protein combination.”®

Pemmican was not planned to be a regular food supplanting all

others, but was really an explorer’s, adventurer’s, or traveler’s ration.
It was intended for hungry men, not for epicures, gourmets, or con-
noisseurs. The remarkable thing about it was that it could be used
so long, be completely nutritive, and still appeal to the man using it.
It creates no appetite when first placed in the mouth, but the longer
it stays, the better it tastes, and the longer one eats it the more he
appreciates it. After living on it for months at a time, on several
polar trips, Admiral Peary wrote:
It is the most satisfying food that I know. I recall innumerable marches in
bitter temperatures when men and dogs had worked to the limit and I reached
the place for camp feeling as if I could eat my weight of anything. When the
pemmican ration was dealt out, and I saw my little half-pound lump, about as
large as the bottom third of an ordinary drinking glass, I have often felt a sullen
rage that life should contain such situations. By the time I had finished the
last morsel, I would not have walked around the completed igloo for anything
or everything that the St. Regis, the Blackstone, or the Palace Hotel could
have put before me.”

In a similar vein Raymond R. Priestley, who was a member of the
scientific staff of the first Shackleton Expedition, 1907-09, and the
second Scott Expedition, 1910-13, is equally full of praise:

Under ordinary circumstances, when one first starts on a journey, one’s full
allowance is seldom eaten, but, as time passes and the work and the keen air
take effect, one becomes hungrier and hungrier, until the sledging allowance of
pemmican is not sufficient to satisfy the cravings aroused. It is then that pem-
mican is truly appreciated at its full worth. Nothing else is comparable with
it. 1 have taken all sorts of delicacies on short trips when the food allowance
is elastic, I have picked up similar delicacies at depots along the line of march,
and I have even taken a small plum-pudding or a piece of weddirg-cake for a

® Shinn to author, February 18, 1955.
” Admiral Robert E. Peary, The secrets of polar travel, pp. 77-79, New
York, 1917.

DRIED MEAT—WENTWORTH 571

Christmas treat, but on every such occasion I would willingly have given either
of these luxuries for half its weight of the regulation pemmican.”

Stefansson caps it all by writing:

Pemmican ... has been found to continue tasting good to those with good appe-
tites, even when no food but pemmican has been used for weeks on end... .
So it is about pemmican as the Scots are said to remark about whisky—there is
no bad pemmican, but some are better than others.”

That this statement applies to a man with his heart in his work
rather than to one with play in his heart is obvious, but which man
cf the two converted our “wide-open spaces” into our modern economic
scene ?

" Priestley, Antarctic adventure, p. 344.
"2 Stefansson, “Pemmican,” p. 251.

Reprints of the various articles in this Report may be obtained, as long as
the supply lasts, on request addressed to the Editorial and Publications
Division, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 25, D.C.

“we

INDEX

A
Abbot, C. G., ix
Accessions, 13, 14, 16, 61, 68, 89, 113, 118,
193
Bureau of American Ethnology, 61,
63
Freer Gallery of Art, 89
Library, 193
National Air Museum, 113
National Museum, 13, 16
National Zoological Park, 14, 118
Achenbach, P. R., 139
Albright, William F., 94
Aldrich, Stanley L., vii, 66
American Ethnology (See Bureau of)
Anderson, Clinton P., Regent of the In-
stitution, v, 2, 7
Anderson, Edgar (Man as a maker. of
new plants and new plant communi-
ties), 461
Anglim, John E., vi, 25, 36-37, 40
Animal behavior, The sources of (G. P.
Wells), 415
Appropriations, 1, 8, 36, 40, 46, 117, 135,
167, 170, 179, 211
Astrophysical Observatory, 8
Bureau of American Ethnology, 8
Canal Zone Biological Area, 8, 167
Exhibits modernization, 36
International Exchange Service, 8,

170
Museum of History and Technol-
ogy, 1, 8, 40

National Air Museum, 8

National Collection of Fine Arts, 8

National Gallery of Art, 179

National Museum, 8

National Zoological Park, 8, 117,
135

River Basin Surveys, 8, 46

Arthur lecture, 9, 215
Astrophysical Observatory, vii, 8, 18, 65

Activities, 73

Appropriation, 8

Astrophysical Research, Division
of, 65

Field station, vii, 66

Meteoritic studies, 67

Publications, 72

Radiation and Organisms, Division
of, 69

Report, 65

Satellite Tracking Program, 68

Solar radiation, work on, 66

Staff, vii

Astrophysics, Research in, 5
Atmospheric pollution in growing com-
munities (Francois N. Frenkiel), 269

B

Baerreis, David A., 54
Baker, James G., 68
Bales, Maj. George C., 102
Barnes, Irston R., 36
Bartsch, Paul, ix
Bass, William M., 48, 49
Bassler, R. S., ix
Bayer, Frederick M., vi, 33
‘Project Coral Fish looks at Palau),
481
Beall, Carlton G., 138
Beau, Gen. Lucas V., 104
Beggs, Thomas M., Director, National
Collection of Fine Arts, vii, 75, 76, 86,
88, 103
Belin, Ferdinand Lammot, Vice Presi-
dent, National Gallery of Art, viii,
178, 179
Bender, George A., 38
Benn, J. H., vi
Benson, Ezra Taft, Secretary of Agri-
culture, member of the Institution, v
Berman, Alex, 28
Bio-Sciences Information Exchange, 6,
10
Blaker, Mrs. Margaret C., 60
Blanchard, Ruth, 195
Bliss, Robert Woods, 75
Borhegyi, Stephen, 30
Bouvet, Maurice, 27
Boving, A. G., ix
Bowman, T. E., vi
Bradley, Wilmot H., 56
Branson, Carl, 30
Bredin, Mr. and Mrs. Bruce, 34
Bredin Caribbean Expedition, 1956, 34,
443
Brooks, Overton, Regent of the Institu-
tion, v, 2, 8
Brown, John Nicholas, 75, 76
Brown, Roland W., ix
(Plantlike features in thunder-eggs
and geodes), 329
Brown, William L., vi, 35, 40
Brownell, Herbert, Jr., Attorney Gen-
eral, member of the Institution, v
IBTUNS Wh weet wih
Buchanan, L. L., ix
Building needs, 2

573

574

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Bureau of American Ethnology, vii, 8, | Collins, Henry B., Jr., vii, 18, 43, 44, 45

13, 42

Appropriation, 8
Archives, 60
Collections, 61, 63
Editorial work and publications, 62
Illustrations, 62
Miscellaneous, 63
Report, 42
River Basin Surveys, 45
Staff, vii
Systematic researches, 42

Burrows, Millar, 10

Bush, Vannevar, 7

Cc

Cairns, Huntington, Secretary-Treas-
urer and General Counsel, National
Gallery of Art, viii, 178, 192

Caldwell, Warren W., 49

Canada, Arctic, Archeological work in
(Henry B. Collins), 509

Canal Zone Biological Area, viii, 8, 14,
161

Acknowledgments, 167

Appropriation, 8, 167

Buildings, equipment, and improve-
ments, 164

Finances, 167

Rainfall, 163

Report, 161

Requirements, urgent, 166

Scientists and their studies, 161

Visitors, 163

Cannon, Clarence, Regent of the Insti-
tution, v, 2, 8, 211

Carmichael, Leonard, Secretary of the
Institution, v, viii, 1, 37, 38, 39, 75, 95,
178

Carriker, M. A., ix

Cartwright, O. L., vi

Case, Capt. C. C., 102

Chace, Fenner A., Jr., vi, 34, 35

Chancellor of the Institution (Earl
Warren, Chief Justice of the United
States), v, viii, 7

Chapman, Carl H., 60

Chase, Mrs. Agnes, ix

Cherokees of North Carolina, The: Liv-
ing memorials of the past (William
H. Gilbert, Jr.), 529

Chief Justice of the United States (Earl
Warren, Chancellor of the Institu-
tion), v, viii, 7, 178

Chilton, Mrs. Alexander, 11, 12

Christensen, Erwin O., 187, 188

Clark, Mrs. Leila F., librarian of the
institution, v, 196

Clark, R. S., ix

Clark, T. F., treasurer of the Institu-
tion, Vv

Clarke, Gilmore D., 75

Clarke, J. F. Gates, vi, 34, 35

Cloud, Preston, ix

Cochran, Doris M., vi

(Archeological work in Arctic
Canada), 509

Colombia, Pioneer settlement in eastern
(Raymond BH. Crist and Ernesto
Guhl), 391

Compton, Arthur H., Regent of the In-
stitution, v, 8

Conger, P. S., vi

Cooke, Hereward Lester, 187, 188

Cooper, G. A., vi, 32

Cosmie rays, The story of (W. F. G.
Swann), 245

Cott, Perry B., 187, 188

Crandell, Dwight R., 56

Crist, Raymond E. (Pioneer settlement
in eastern Colombia), 391

ce Angela (The Kitimat story),
+95)

Curbin, Charles G., 139

Curtis, Lawrence, 2

Cushman, R. A., ix

Cutress, Charles E., Jr., vi, 40

D

Dale, Chester, President, National Gal-
lery of Art, viii, 178, 179

Darter, Oscar H., 26

Davis, Harvey N., 7

Dawson, Mrs. Ruth W., 195

DeGolyer, Everette L., Regent of the
Institution, v, 7,8

Deignan, H. G., vi

Densmore, Frances, ix, 63

Docent service, 11

Douglas, Carl L., 95

Doyle, Maj. Gen. John P., viii, 102

Dried meat—early man’s travel ration
(Edward N. Wentworth), 557

Drucker, Philip, 18, 45

Dulles, John Foster, Secretary of State,
member of the Institution, v, viii

Dunbar, Carl, 32

Dunkle, David H., vi, 30, 31, 37

E

Editorial and publications division

(Paul H. Oehser, chief), v
Report, 197

Hisenhower, Dwight D., President of
the United States, Presiding Officer
ex officio, v

Kisenmann, Eugene, 167

Elder, R. A., Jr., vi

Elstad, V. B., vii, 70

Emerson, Guy, 36

Emerson, J. N., 43

Establishment, 6

Ettinghausen, Richard, viii, 96, 97, 98,
99

Evans, Clifford, Jr., vi, 25
Evers, Mrs. William, 12
Ewers, John C., vi, 36, 40

INDEX

Executive Committee of the Board of
Regents, v, 204, 211
Members, v, 211
Report of, 204
Appropriations, 211
Assets, 208
Audit, 211
Cash balances, receipts, and
disbursements during fiscal
year, 956, 207
Endowments, Smithsonian, 204
Summary of, 206
Freer Gallery of Art fund, 206
Gifts and grants, 209
Investments, classification of,
206
Unexpended funds and endow-
ments, 208
Exhibitions, 82, 87, 184, 185
Special, 87, 184
Traveling, 82, 185
Exhibits, 3, 36, 91, 105, 118
Freer Gallery of Art, 91
Modernization of, 3, 36
National Air Museum, 105
National Zoological Park, 118
Exploration and fieldwork, 25, 42, 49
Bureau of American Ethnology, 42
National Museum, 25
River Basin Surveys, 49
Eyestone, Willard H., 134

Fr

Feidler, Ernest R., Administrator, Na-
tional Gallery of Art, viii, 178
Field, W. D., vi
Finances, 1, 8, 36, 40, 46, 117, 135, 167,
170, 179, 204, 209, 211
Appropriations, 1, 8, 36, 40, 46, 117,
135, 167, 170, 179, 211
Grants, 6, 209
Finley, David E., 6, 75, 178, 179, 187
Fischelis, Robert P., 38
Fleming, Robert V., Regent of the In-
stitution, v, 7, 8, 211
Folsom, Marion B., Secretary of Health,
Education, and Welfare, member of
the Institution, v
Foshag, William F., 40, 67
Freer Gallery of Art, viii, 14, 89
Attendance, 94
Auditorium, 94
Building, 93
Collections, accessions, 89
Repairs to, 91
Exhibitions, changes in, 91
Library, 92
Publications, 93
Report, 89
Reproductions, 93
Staff, viii
Activities of, 96
Frenkiel, Francois N. (Atmospheric pol-
lution in growing communities), 269
Friedmann, Herbert, vi, 36
Froiland, A. G., vii, 66
Fyfe, Howard, 138

575

G

Garber, Paul Edward, head curator,
National Air Museun, viii, 95, 116
Gardner, Paul V., vii, 75, 87
Gazin, C. Lewis, vi
(Exploration for the remains of
giant ground sloths in Panama),
341
Gebhard, Bruno, 27
Gentry, R. C. (Hurricanes), 301
Gettens, R. J., viii, 97, 98, 99, 100
Gifts, 122, 167, 180, 192, 198, 209
Canal Zone Biological Area 167
Library, 193
National Gallery of Art, 180, 192
National Zoological Park, 122
See also Accessions
Gilbert, William H., Jr. (The Cherokees
of North Carolina: Living memorials
of the past), 529
Gill, Minna, 195
Glance, Grace E., vi
Goethe, C. M., 167
Goggin, John M., 25
Gombrich, Ernst H., 189
Gomez, Mrs. Adela, 168
Goodrich, Mrs. George, 12
Goodrich, Lloyd, 75, 76
Goyne, Richard, 26
Grabar, Oleg, 94
Graf, John E., Assistant Secretary of
the Institution, v, 36, 75, 168
Graham, D. C., ix
Graves, Mrs. Walter, 12
Greeley, F. A., vii, 66
Greene, C. T., ix
Greenewalt, Crawford Hallock, Regent
of the Institution, v, 7,8
Greenwood, Mrs. Arthur M., ix
Griffenhagen, George B., vii, 27, 28
Ground sloths, Exploration for the re-
mains of giant, in Panama (C. Lewis
Gazin), 341
Guadagni, G. D., 30
Guest, Grace Dunham, ix
Guhl, Ernesto (Pioneer settlement in
eastern Colombia), 391
Guilford, Joy Paul, 95

H

Hagans, Orville R., 26

Hancock, Walker, 75

Handley, Charles O., Jr., vi, 33, 34

Harrington, John P., ix, 63

Harry, R. R., 33

Harry-Rofen, Robert R. (Project Coral
Fish looks at Palau), 481

Haskins, Caryl Parker, Regent of the
Institution, v, 7, 8, 211

Hayes, Bartlett H., Jr., 75

Heizer, R. F., ix

Henderson, E. P., vi, 30, 67

Hess, Frank L., 41

Hilger, Sister M. Inez, ix

Holden, F. E., 30

Howard, James H., 58

576

Howe, Elton, 117

Howell, A. B., ix

Hower, Rolland O., 25, 40

Hull, Mrs. Harold, 12

Humphrey, George M., Secretary of the
Treasury, member of the Institution,
v, viii, 178

Hunsaker, Jerome C., Regent of the In-
stitution, v, 8

Hurricanes (R. C. Gentry and R. H.
Simpson), 301

Hurt, Wesley R., 58

Huscher Harold A., 55, 58

Hynek, J. Allen, 68

I

International Exchange Service, viii, 8,
14, 169
Appropriation, 8, 170
Foreign depositories of governmen-
tal documents, 170
Foreign exchange service, 176
Interparliamentary exchange of the
official journal, 173
Publications received and shipped,
169
Report, 169
International Geophysical Year, 6, 14

J

James, Macgill, Assistant Director, Na-
tional Gallery of Art, viii, 178

Jarett, Col. Burling, 104

Jellison, W. L., ix

Johnson, David H., vi, 33

Jones, David, 31

Jones, I. W., 31

Jones, Robert E., Jr., 2

Judd, N. M., ix

Junior League docent activities, 11

K

Kainen, Jacob, vii, 29

Keddy, J. L., Assistant Secretary of the
Institution, v

Keefer, C. E. (Sewage treatment—how
it is accomplished), 363

Kellogg, A. Remington, Director, Na-
tional Museum, vi, 41, 95

Kendall, Edward C., vii, 26, 28

Kern, Mrs. John W., III, 12

Kestner, FEF. B., chief, photographic
laboratory, v

Key, Fred, 103

Killip, E. P., ix

King, W. J., vii

Kitimat story, The (Angela Croome),
355

Kivett, Marvin F., 55

Klapthor, Mrs. Margaret W. Brown, vii,
32

Klein, W. H., vii, 70

Knight, J. B., ix

Koford, Carl B., resident naturalist,
Canal Zone Biological Area, viii, 14,
161

Kortum, Karl, 26

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Krayenbuhl, Mary L., 12
Krekeler, Heinz L., 86
Kress, Rush H., viii, 178
Kress, Samuel H., 178
Krieger, H. W., vi

L

Lachner, Ernest A., vi, 34
Larrick, George P., 39
Laverdirere, Abbe, 31
Lawless, Benjamin, 27, 28, 40
Lectures, 9, 10, 189
Anthropological Society of Wash-
ington, 10
Archaeological Institute of Amer-
ica, 10
Arthur, 9
Freer Gallery of Art, 94
National Gallery of Art, 189
Lee, D. S., 167
Lee, Sherman E., 94
Leonard, H. C., vi
Lewton, F. L., ix
Librarian of the Institution (Mrs. Leila
I’, Clark), v
Library, 15, 92, 190, 193
Freer Gallery of Art, 92
National Gallery of Art, 190
Smithsonian, 193
Aeccessions, 193
Report, 193
Statistics, 196
Lindsay, G. Carroll, vi, 40
Lippe, Aschwin, 94
Loeblich, A. R., Jr., vi, 32
Loeblich, Mrs. Helen N., ix
Loehr, Max, ix
Loening, Grover, Viii
Lombard, Louise, 134
Long, John C., 37
Lyon, Rowland, 87

M

MacDonald, Mrs. Peter, 12

Mack, Peter, 104

Madison, Lee G., 56

Main, Robert J., Jr., 31, 32

Male, Walter M., viii, 106

Manfuso, Mrs. John, 12

Mann, W. M., Director, National Zo-
ological Park, viii, ix, 160

Manship, Paul, 75

Mars, The mystery of (H. P. Wilkins),
229

Marshall, John K., 10

Marshall, William B., 41

Martin, Edward, 2

Martin, Glenn J., 87

Mashburn, Mrs. John, 12

Matalas, Nicholas, 67

McClure, F. A., ix

McClure, Mrs. William, 12

McCormick, Mrs. Robert, 12

McCully, Lt. R. M., 134

McKern, T. W., ix

McKim, Mead and White, 1, 39, 101

McLean, W. H., 39

INDEX

McNeil, Mary, 12
Meggers, Betty J., ix
Mellon, Paul, viii, 178, 179
Members of the Institution, v
Méndez P., Alejandro, 35
Menzel, Donald H., 9-10
(The edge of the sun), 215
Metcalf, George, 50, 52
Meyer, F. G., 26
Miller, Carl F., 42, 48, 49, 51, 54
Miller, Gerrit S., Jr., 41
Mintner, Bradshaw, 39
Mitchell, James P., Secretary of Labor,
member of the Institution, v
Moh, C. C., 72
Mongan, Elizabeth, 187
Moore, Bruce, 103
Moore, J. P., ix
Morrison, J. P. E., vi
Morrissey, J. H., 40
Morton, C. V., vi
Mosher, Stuart M., 40
Muesebeck, C. F. W., ix
Multhauf, Robert P., vi, vii, 26, 28
Mundy, Maj. Gen. George W., 102
Museum of History and Technology, 1,
2, 8, 39-40, 211
Appropriation, 1, 8, 40, 211
Committee on Construction, 2
Myers, George Hewitt, 75

N

National Air Museum, viii, 8, 14, 101

Accessions, 113

Advisory Board, viii, 102

Appropriation, 8

Building, status of proposed, 101

Exhibits, improvements and
changes in, 105

Informational services, 107

Publications, 110

Reference material and acknowl-
edgments, 111

Report, 101

Special events, 103

Staff, viii

Stephenson bequest, 101

Storage, 106

National Collection of Fine Arts, vii, 8,
14, 75

Appropriation, 8

Art works lent, 78

Barney, Alice Pike, memorial fund,
81

Information service and staff activi-
ties, 86

Loans returned, 79

Myer, Catherine Walden, fund, 77

Ranger, Henry Ward, fund, 82

Report, 75

Smithsonian Art Commission, 75

Smithsonian lending collection, 80

Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition
Service, 82

Special exhibitions, 87

Staff, vii

Withdrawals by owners, 77

577

National Gallery of Art, viii, 8, 15, 178
Accessions, 15, 179
Activities, curatorial, 186
Other, 191
Appropriations, 179
Attendance, 8, 15, 179
Audit of private funds, 192
Building and grounds, maintenance
of, 191
Edueational program, 189
Exhibitions, special, 184
Traveling, 185
Fifteenth anniversary celebration,
179
Gifts, 180, 192
Index of American Design, 190
Library, 190
Officials, viii, 178
Organization, 178
Personnel, 179
Publications, 188
Report, 178
Restoration, 187
Trustees, viii, 178
Works of art, exchange of, 182
Lent, 183
On loan, 182
Returned, 183
National Museum vi, 8, 16
Accessions, 13, 16
Appropriation, 8
Buildings and equipment, 39
Exhibitions, 13, 36
Modernization of, 13, 36
Exploration and fieldwork, 25
Organization and staff, changes in,
40
Report, 16
Staff, vi

National Zoological Park, viii, 8, 14, 117,

211

Accessions, 14, 118

Animals in collection on June 30,
1956, 141

Appropriation, 8, 117, 211

Births and hatchings, 129

Cooperation, 138

Depositors and donors and their
gifts, 122

Deposits, 122

Exhibits, 118

Finances, 117

Fiftieth anniversary, 131

Improvements and maintenance.
135

Needs, 189

Report, 117

Research, 132

Staff, viii

Status of the collection, 160

Veterinarian, 133

Visitors, 8, 14, 186

Nelson, Mrs. Robert, Jr., 11, 12
Neuman, Robert W., 55, 58

Newman, J. B., chief, personnel division,

Vv
Newman, Marshall T., vi, 25

578 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Nichols, Mrs. Grace Drexler, 39

Nichols, Harry C., 167

Nicholson, V. BE. B., 34

Nicol, David, vi, 31

Nixon, Richard M., Vice President of
the United States, member of the
Institution, v

Nunn, Joseph, 68

oO

Oberdorf, J. W., 35

Oehser, Paul H., chief, editorial and
publications division, v, 203

Officials of the Institution, v

Ohwi, J., 26

Oliver, L. L., superintendent of build-
ings and grounds, v

Oliver, S. H., vii

Olson, R., 67

O'Neil, R., 67

Osborne, Douglas, 49

P

Palau, Project Coral Fish looks at
(Frederick M. Bayer and Robert H.
Harry-Rofen), 481

Palmer, Theodore §S., 41

Pancoast, John, 187, 188

Paradiso, John L., 33, 34

Pearce, Franklin L., 30

Pearson, John C., 138

Pearson, Mrs. Louise M., administra-
tive assistant to the Secretary, v

Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co., 211

Perry, K. M., vii

Perry, S. H., ix

Personnel division
chief), v

Peterson, Mendel L., vii, 32

Phillips, C. W., 139

Phillips, Dunean, viii, 178, 179

Photographic laboratory (F. B. Kestner,
chief), v

Pioneer settlement in eastern Colombia
(Raymond E. Crist and Ernesto
Guhl), 391

Plants and new plant communities, Man
as a maker of new (Edgar Anderson),
461

Poiley, Samuel M., 138

Pope, Mrs. Annemarie H., Chief, Smith-
sonian Traveling Exhibition Service,
vii, 86, 87

Pope, J. A., Assistant Director, Freer
Gallery of Art, viii, 97, 98, 99

Potter, Stanely, 107

Powell, Mrs. Bolling, 12

President of the United States (Dwight
D. Hisenhower, Presiding Officer ex
officio), v

Presiding Officer ex officio (Dwight D.
Hisenhower, President of the United
States), v

Price, Leonard, vii, 71

Price Waterhouse and Co., 192

(J. B. Newman,

Project Coral Fish looks at Palau
(Frederick M. Bayer and Robert R.
Harry-Rofen), 481

Publications, 15, 62, 72, 86, 93, 110, 188,
197

American Historical Association,
202

Astrophysical Observatory, 67, 198

Bureau of American Ethnology, 62,
201

Daughters of the American Revolu-
tion, 203

Distribution, 198

Freer Gallery of Art, 93, 202

National Air Museum, 200

National Collection of Fine Arts, 86,
202

National Gallery of Art, 188

National Museum, 200

Report, 197

Smithsonian, 198

Traveling Exhibition Service, 202

R
Radiation and Organisms, Division of,
vii, 69
Report, 69
Staff, vii

Reed, Theodore H., viii, 133
Reeside, J. B., Jr., ix
Reeves, Mrs. Jay B., 12
Regents, Board of, v, 7, 204
Annual meeting, 7
Members, v, 7
Executive Committee, v, 211
Report, 204
Rehder, Harald A., vi, 33
Reichert, Philip, 28
Remon C., Alejandro, 35
Rhinehart, John S., Assistant Director,
Astrophysical Observatory, vii, 67
Rhoades, Katherine N., ix, 94
River Basin Surveys, vii, 8, 45
Appropriation, 8, 46, 211
Columbia Basin, 49
Cooperating institutions, 60
Missouri Basin, 49
Report, 45
Washington Office, 48
Rivers in the sea (EF. G. Walton Smith),
431
Roberts, Frank H. H., Jr., Assistant
Director, Bureau of American Eth-
nology, Director, River Basin Sur-
veys, vii, 13, 42, 43, 45, 48
Roberts, Owen Josephus, 7
Rogers, Grace L., vii
Rudd, Velva E., vi
Russell, Rear Adm. James S., viii, 102

8

Saltonstall, Leverett, Regent of the In-
stitution, v, 2, 7

Satellite Tracking program, 14, 68

Sawyer, Charles H., 75

Schaller, W. T., ix

INDEX

Schmitt, Waldo L., vi, 34, 35
(A narrative of the Smithsonian-
Bredin Caribbean Expedition,
1956), 443
Schoenfeld, Mrs. John, 12
Schultz, L. P., vi
Schwartz, Benjamin, ix
Schwartz, Ray, 97
Searle, Mrs. Harriet Richardson, ix
Seaton, Fred A., Secretary of the In-
terior, member of the Institution, v
Secretary of the Institution (Leonard
Carmichael), v, viii, 1, 37, 38, 39, 75,
95, 178
Seiders, R. W., 139
Setzer, Henry W., vi, 33
Setzler, Frank M., vi, 11, 25
Sewage treatment—how it is accom-
plished (C. E. Keefer), 3638
Shapley, Mrs. Fern R., 188
Shepard, Katherine, 187
Shoemaker, C. R., ix
Shropshire, Walter, 71
Sickman, Laurence, 95
Simmons, Mrs. Hope Hanna, 195
Simpson, R. H. (Hurricanes), 301
Sirén, Osvald, 95
Sirlouis, J. R., vii
Slowinski, Mrs. Walter, 12
Smith, A. C., vi, 34, 35
Smith, Carlyle S., 55
Smith, F. G. Walton (Rivers in the sea),
431
Smith, G. Hubert, 49, 53, 56, 58, 59
Smith, H. Alexander, Regent of the In-
stitution, v, 2, 7
Smith, L. B., vi
Smithsonian Art Commission, 14, 75
Smithsonian-Bredin Caribbean Expedi-
tion, 1956, A narrative of the (Waldo
L. Schmitt), 443
Smithsonian Traveling ExhibitionServ-
ice, vii, 14, 82
Snodgrass, R. E., ix
Sohns. Ernest R., vi
Solecki, Ralph S., ix, 63
Sollenberger, Howard, 95
Soper, Cleveland C., ix, 167
Souza, J. A., 35
Spitz, Armand N., 69
Squier, R. J., ix
Stephenson, George H., 103
Stephenson, Robert L., 50, 58
Stern, Harold P., viii, 97, 98, 100
Sternberg, George F., 30
Stevenson, J. A., ix
Stewart, T. Dale, vi, 7, 25
Stirling. M. W., Director, Bureau of
American Ethnology, vii, 13, 42, 64
Stout, William B., 102, 103
Straub, P. A., ix
Stubbs, B. A., viii
Sturtevant, William C., vii, 63
Sugiura, T., 91
Suida, William, 188
Suits, C. G., 37
Sullivan, Francis, 187, 188

579

Summerfield, Arthur E., Postmaster
General, member of the Institution, v

Sun, The edge of the (Donald H. Men-
zel), 215

Superintendent of buildings
grounds (L. L. Oliver), v

Supply division (A. W. Wilding, chief),
Vv

Swallen, J. R., vi

Swanton, John R., ix, 63

Switzer, George S., vi, 29

Symington, Stuart, 2

and

7

Taylor, Frank A., Assistant Director,
National Museum, vi, 28, 40

Taylor, William E., Jr., 43

Taylor, W. W., Jr., ix

Thom, Robert A., 38

Thorek, Max, 28

Thorson, Gunnar, 10

Thunder-eggs and geodes, Plantlike fea-
tures in (Roland W. Brown), 329

Tobin, W. J., ix

Tomsyck, Lawrence L., 59

Traveling Exhibition Service (See
Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition
Service)

Treasurer of the Institution (T. F.
Clark), v

U

Urdang, George, 28
Usilton, Mrs. Bertha M., 92, 97

vV

Vallarino, Bolivar, 35
Verville, Alfred, 102
Vice President of the United States
(Richard M. Nixon, member of the
Institution), v, 7
Visitors, 8, 9, 14, 39, 94, 136, 163, 179
Canal Zone Biological Area, 163
Freer Gallery of Art, 94
National Gallery of Art, 8, 179
National Museum, 39
National Zoological Park, 8, 14, 136
Vorys, John M., Regent of the Institu-
tion, v, 2, 8

Ww

Wagner, W. H., 26

Walker, Egbert H., vi, 26

Walker, Ernest P., Assistant Director,
National Zoological Park, viii, 133,
139

Walker, John, Director, National Gal-
lery ‘of Art, viii; 5, 178, 187, 188

Waring, Antonio J., Jr., ix, 63

Warren, Earl, Chief Justice of the
United States, Chancellor of the In-
stitution, v, viii, 7, 178

Watkins, C. Malcolm, vi, 25, 26

Watkins, W. N., vii

Watson, Joseph, 134

580

Wedderburn, A. J., Jr., vii

Wedel, Waldo R., vi, 50, 52, 53, 54, 59

Weeks, Sinclair, Secretary of Com-
merce, member of the Institution, v

Wegenroth, Stow, 75

Weiss, Helena M., vi

Wells, G. P. (The sources of animal
behavior), 415

Wenley, Archibald G., Director, Freer
Gallery of Art, viii, 75, 95, 97, 98, 99,
100

Wentworth, Edward N. (Dried meat—
early man’s travel ration), 557

Wetmore, Alexander, ix, 35

Wheeler, Richard P., 52, 56, 59

Whipple, Fred L., Director, Astrophysi-
cal Observatory, vii, 7, 72, 74

White, Lawrence Grant, 75

White, P. Alton, 167

Wilding, A. W., chief, supply division, v

Wiley, Mrs. Harvey W., 39

Wilkins, H. P. (The mystery of Mars),
229

Williams, D. G., Chief, International Ex-
change Service, viii, 177

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956

Wilmeth, Roscoe, 54

Wilson, Charles E., Secretary of De-
fense, member of the Institution, v

Wilson, John A., 31

Wilson, Mrs. Mildred S., ix

Withrow, Mrs. Alice P., vii

Withrow, R. B., Chief, Division of Ra-
diation and Organisms, vii, 69, 70, 72

IWiOlit Jai.) Viljudde

Woolworth, Alan R., 538, 54, 58

Wright, James V., 43

Wyeth, Andrew, 75

Wyeth, Mrs. George, 12

Y

Yee, Chiang, 95
Young, Mahonri, 75

Z

Zetek, James, ix, 14, 161
Zoological Park (See National Zoologi-
cal Park)

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