Recent Acquisitions at the Natural History Museum

Abstract

AMONG recent acquisitions in the Department of Zoology are the mounted head of a Mexican bighorn sheep presented by Mr. John Lawson, the head of a Newfoundland caribou presented by Mr. W. Lawson, and the head of a woodland caribou presented by Captain D. A. Lawson. The study collection has been enriched by an Argali sheep skin from Samarkand, the gift of Mr. Douglas Carruthers, and a tiger skin and skull from Perak presented by the Zoological Society. Miss Emma Hutchinson of Grantfield, Leominster, Herefordshire, has presented to the Museum the collection, contained in four cabinets, of British Lepidoptera made at Leominster by her mother and other members of the family, mostly between 1860 and 1900, though Miss Hutchinson has added to it odd specimens and notes up to 1936. The specimens number some 10,000, and included with them are Miss Hutchinson's note-books in which all the records are kept. Among donations to the Geological Department is one from Mr. C. T. A. Gaster, who collected the material during many years of intensive study of the chalk of the South Downs. This collection includes 10,000 Polyzoa, 3,200 Echinoderms, 700 Sponges, 360 Annelids, 85 Mollusca, and 450 Brachiopods, and forms a valuable source of information on the succession of faunas in the Chalk. The Mineral Department has acquired by gift from Dame Maria Ogilvie Gordon, a carefully labelled series of rocks and minerals which were collected by her in the Monzoni district, Val di Fassa, Italy. She first visited this region in 1891 when on Baron von Richthofen's geological excursion. Since then she has carefully studied the structure of the western Dolomites and has made a geological map of the whole area. The present gift is a first selection of all the original material studied. Prof. S. J. Shand, of Stellenbosch University, has given a fine series of igneous rocks from localities in South Africa, South-West Africa, and Kenya Colony.