Recent Acquisitions at the Natural History Museum

Abstract

AMONG the recent acquisitions at the British Museum (Natural History), the Department of Zoology has received as a donation from the Rowland Ward Trustees an exceptionally fine mounted head of the Tian-Shan wapiti, and from Sir Arnold Hodson, Governor of the Gold Coast, a further skull of the so-called dwarf elephant, or ‘Sumbi’, from the Gola Forest, Sierra Leone. This specimen is a young individual of the forest elephant. The horns of a white rhinoceros from the Belgian Congo have been presented by Mr. Stanley C. Tomkins. This gift is of special interest in that the Museum already possesses the skull to which these horns belong. One hundred and fifty birds of 76 different kinds collected in the dry thorn bush region of the West Usambara Mountains, Tanganyika Territory, have been purchased, and also an interesting collection of more than 200 birds from Serbia and Macedonia. Extensive collections of insects made during the summer months of 1931, 1932 and 1933 by members of the staff of the Department of Entomology in the Scottish Highlands are beginning at last to yield interesting results. More than 7,000 specimens were obtained and added to the collections, and among them so far more than 50 species have been recognised that have not previously been recorded from Great Britain, including at least 13 new to science. The particular aim of the collecting undertaken was the study of the fauna occurring in association with the relict arctic-alpine flora peculiar to elevations above 2,500 ft. In one group alone, consisting of the saw-flies, four species new to science, and 13 new to Great Britain were obtained, with a total of 18 species peculiar to the region specially investigated.