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turkey buzzard, the object being to learn something of the secrets of flight and their possible application to the development of the flying machine. Later a third visit was made to Mexico during which interesting studies, scientific and artistic, were made.
On the death of Major Powell in 1902, Holmes became Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology, retaining, however, the honorary position of Head Curator in the National Museum. It should be explained here that the National Museum and the Bureau of American Ethnology are co-ordinate bureaus under the Smithsonian Institution. A noteworthy feature of this period was the publication under his immediate direction, and to the contents of which he was a leading contributor, of the two volume "Handbook of the American Indians," edited by Mr. F. W. Hodge. In 1909, being deeply interested in Museum work, he retired from the Bureau of Ethnology to devote his entire time to that work and to archeological researches, conducting investigations in many fields. Perhaps his most important achievements of this period were the classification and installation in the National Museum, second floor, of the great collections of American Archeology, and in 1903 the establishment of the Division of Physical Anthropology in the National Museum with Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, the noted physical anthropologist, as Curator. The latter achievement was the direct result of his accidental observation of the fact that in the Army Medical Museum, adjoining the National Museum on the Mall, there was a collection of 2200 human skulls assembled for research purposes, but which,