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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION    1223

Important collections of mammals came from the Indo-Pacific region, including species hitherto unrepresented in the museum. A collection of nearly 600 birds came from Panama, 500 from Ceylon, and about 100 from the Admiralty Islands. Most important of the year's insect accessions was the large amount of mosquito material received from various units of the Army and Navy.

On July 16, 1945 in an appropriate ceremony held in the Regents Room, the Sheffield Corporation, Dayton, Ohio, presented to the Institution four precision measuring instruments, pioneers of their kind and the progenitors of devices that today permit the high quality of product in volume production. The outstanding accession of the Division of Engineering and Industries was the first experimental jet-propelled plane built and successfully flown in the United States, by the Bell Aircraft Company.

The year's visitors to the Museum totaled 1,730,716 a considerable increase over the low point reached during the war.

National Zoological Park: Attendance has been well above the two-million mark.

Additions to the collections have included numerous poisonous reptiles from Okinawa, received from the Medical Corps of the United States Army, which has been studying the venom, particularly of the habu, a snake allied to the American copperhead.

National Collection of Fine Arts: Special exhibitions have been held each month since July with much public interest.

Freer Gallery: An illustrated catalog of Chinese bronzes in the collection is now in page proof and should be out in the next few months. A new publication to be called "Freer Gallery of Art Occasional Papers" is

A.W.