American Collecting Expeditions

Abstract

DURING 1935 the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, founded in 1812, the oldest institution of its kind in America, has sponsored twenty-four expeditions for collecting and field work in thirteen foreign countries and various parts of the United States. The most thrilling of these are perhaps the African expedition headed by George Vanderbilt, which has secured gorillas and okapis for new habitat groups and large collections of other mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes and insects; Brooke Dolan's expedition to western China and eastern Tibet; R. M, de Schauensee's collection of birds, fishes and orchids from the central highlands of Guatemala, and aquatic life from Lake Atitlan, 5,000 feet above sea-level. In Siain this collector-naturalist, after his third expedition there, organised a permanent field staff with headquarters in Bangkok which continues to gather much interesting material; and in Siberia Dr. E, B. Howard is searching for fossil remains of man which woxild link up with the earliest human arrivals on tho American Continent. In America, expeditions are at work on the high plateau of Central Mexico, in the mountains of Panama, Cuba and the West Indies, Alaska, Wyoming, Bolivia, New Mexico and Louisiana.