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United States National Museum Under direction of The Smithsonian Institution Washington, October 17, 1885. Professor G. Brown Goode, Assistant Director of National Museum. Sir: In accordance with your instructions, received October 1st, 1885, I herewith respectfully submit the following semi-annual report with regard to the work accomplished in the Section of Materia Medica of this Museum between January 1st and June 30th, 1885. The work may, for convenience sake, be divided into: 1st. [[underlined]] Experimental Work. [[/underlined]] --- The experimental portion of the work which has been accomplished during these six months consists in an investigation of the physiological actions of atropia, cocaine and caffeine on the circulatory apparatus: the paper giving the results of these researches in detail, is published in the July number of the American Journal of the Medical Sciences. Some further experiments on the action of atropine on the heart, and of blood of different temperatures upon the same form the subject of separate small papers published in the Proceedings of this Museum. 2d. [[underlined]] Chemical Work. [[/underlined]] --- Several specimens of Cinechona barks from Guatemala and Costa Rica have been chemically and quantitatively examined and their alkaloids determined. A chemical examination of all the different species of cinchona barks in this collection, numbering over 100, was begun early