Needy American Museum

President Henry Fairfield Osborn of Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History* wrote out a curtain raiser for his trustees. It was his 1929 budget, prepared for their annual meeting last week.

The budget stated that the American Museum's endowment was some $13,000.000. But because the dollar's present purchasing value is little more than half its pre-War value (when most of the endowments were set up), the Museum lacked enough money to pay for its multifold activities. This year's deficit is $106.,00. To make it up President Osborn asked the trustees to contribute their own cash, as they had done for previous deficiencies.

The $106,000 was of course supplied at once. Among the trustees are J. P. Morgan. George F. Baker Jr., Felix M. Warburg.

But passing the timbrel each year for money irks a good manager. President Osborn declared that he was going to stop it. He needed $8,000,000 more endowment. If he did not get it, forthwith he would dismiss 35 employes, suspend others, set a stationary wage scale, cut off trustee support of field expeditions, reduce the number of publications, and close down many other museum activities. Such cessations would strangle educational and scientific work of one of the world's best natural history museums. It was a lugubrious threat. But the trustees admonished President Osborn to make himself content for a further while. They would get him the $8,000,000 endowment. Until then they would pay the bills that he could not pay.

Field expeditions organized or sponsored by the American Museum last year were to many a site, for many a purpose. The most important:

Central Asiatic Expedition to Mongolia under Roy Chapman Andrews. The discoveries of this year include an extraordinarily large rhinoceros-like animal and the lower jaw of a mastodon having large lower tusks, flattened so that they have a shovel effect and measure thirteen inches across.

Stoll-MacCracken Siberian-Arctic Expedition, supported by Charles H. Stoll, Manhattan lawyer, collected some fine specimens of brown bear and the material for the Pacific Walrus Group to be placed in the Hall of Ocean Life.

Vernay Expedition to Indo-China for the Sondaicus rhino, and to India and Africa for field studies for the Asiatic and African Hall groups. Financed by Arthur S. Vernay, antique dealer, Manhattan.

Lee Garnett Day Expedition which returned in February with birds and mammals collected on Mt. Roraima in British Guiana, financed by Lee Garnett Day, importer of South American products, Manhattan.

Olalla Brothers, in Peru and Ecuador, are supplying the museum with birds from those localities.

Whitney South Sea Expedition, under the direction of Hannibal Hamlin, is collecting birds of the Pacific at Solomon Islands. Financed by Harry Payne Whitney, Manhattan banker.

*And retiring president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.