The two expeditions to Alaska under the liberal patronage of Mr. John Wanamaker are accomplishing good results and have already sent valuable collections to the Museum. Mr. Louis Shotridge is continuing his studies among his own people, the Chilkats, in Southeastern Alaska. Mr. W. B. Van Valin, who arrived at Nome in July, has sent back some very interesting archaeological and ethnological specimens from that regions. He expects to spend the winter among the Eskimo along the coast between Nome and Point Barrow.
Mr. Alfred Hendrickson has presented to the Museum a stone axe found by him near Swedesboro, New Jersey.
Dr. Charles D. Hart has presented an elaborately carved dragon from China.
Miss Florence Sibley has presented a valuable collection of Egyptian scarabs and amulets.
Mr. John B. Stetson has loaned to the Museum a mummified head of an Indian collected 200 years ago at the foot of the Andes, and formerly in the Alvarado Collection at Quito, Ecuador. Mr. Stetson has also placed on loan a beautifully decorated shirt of bark, an elaborate feather headdress, a native spear and other implements.
Miss Emmeline Goodman has placed on loan in the Museum an American Indian collection consisting of fine Navaho blankets, Sioux beadwork, California baskets, and costumes from the Northwest Coast.
Mrs. John Kearsley Mitchell has kindly loaned to the Museum a valuable collection of pottery. Three very interesting Greek vases from the collection are published in the current number of the JOURNAL.
Letters have been received from Mr. Alexander Scott stating that he expects to return to this country early in 1918. Mr. Scott has been collecting for the Museum in India since 1915 and will bring back with him the results of his work.
The George G. Heye North American Indian Collection which has been on exhibition for the past eight years, has been withdrawn from the Museum and will be exhibited in the new Museum of the American Indian in New York which has been founded by Mr. Heye.
The halls formerly occupied by the Heye Collection will now be devoted to the collections made by the recent South American Expedition and to other collections of the North and South American Indians which have been in storage owing to lack of sufficient exhibition room. The work of installing these new collections will occupy several months.
Dr. G. B. Gordon, the Director of the Museum, is away on a six months’ leave of absence and Dr. Farabee has been appointed Acting Director in his place.
Mr. H. U. Hall, the Assistant Curator of the Section of General Ethnology, left the Museum on July 15th in order to give his services to the country. He is now with the Second Pennsylvania Field Artillery at Camp Hancock, Augusta, Georgia.
Mr. B. W. Merwin, the Assistant Curator in the American Section, left the Museum on September 18th for military service. He is stationed at Macon, Georgia.
Since the last issue of the JOURNAL the Museum has published in the Babylonian Series a work by Dr. Stephen Langdon, Curator of the Babylonian Section, entitled A GILGAMESH EPIC.
Dr. Langdon will leave this country during September to give a course of lectures at Oxford University. He expects to return to the Museum in the early part of 1918.
The Museum has published in the Anthropological Series, Dr. Franz Boas’ work on GRAMMATICAL NOTES ON THE LANGUAGE OF THE TLINGIT INDIANS.
The Museum has published reproductions by the photostat process of two manuscripts in the Berendt Linguistic Collection. One of these manuscripts, DICCIONARIO POCOMCHI-CASTELLANO Y CARTELLANO-POCOMCHI, is the work of a Dominican missionary written about the end of the sixteenth century. It was presented to Dr. Berendt in 1875 by the cura of San Christobal Cahcoh in Guatemala. The second manuscript, PLATICAS DE LA HISTORIA SAGRADA EN LENGUA CACCHI, was written in the seventeenth century. Both manuscripts form part of the Daniel Garrison Brinton Collection in the Museum library.