Recent Acquisitions at the Natural History Museum

Abstract

AMONG the recent acquisitions to the Department of Zoology is the Bird collection of reptiles and amphibians from eastern Asia Minor. This collection, consisting of 196 specimens, contains representatives of one new subspecies of lizard and of two others not previously represented in the Museum's collections. It is of especial interest as coming from a region which is comparatively little known and which is intermediate, both geographically and faunistically, between the better-known regions of Iraq and western Asia Minor. A collection of 280 land snails from Cyprus has been purchased and is of interest in connexion with an intensive study which is being made of insular variation in the land Mollusca of various Mediterranean islands. The Department of Geology has received the Pleistocene vertebrate remains (chiefly mammals) which have been collected by Dr. L. S. B. Leakey in considerable quantity and from a large number of localities in East Africa in the course of his recent expedition. Purchases for the Department include a number of rare fossil fishes from the Middle Eocene of Bolca, Italy. The Mineral Department has received by gift from Mr. V. Koren a specimen of gold in quartz from Tanganyika Territory; from Mr. E. E. A. Leach a large crystal of platinum, showing magnetic poles, from Potgietersrust, Transvaal; from Dr. R. Kirkpatrick a series of moldavites, mostly collected by himself, from Czechoslovakia; and from Dr. Germaine Joplin a series of rocks from Ben Bullen, New South Wales. The purchases include a series of Brazilian minerals, among them being a large, pale blue and white, zoned, tabular, and waterworn crystal of topaz, a cut citrine (yellow quartz), weighing 647.35 carats, a large cut, pink and green tourmaline weighing 57.47 carats, a golden beryl crystal, and several specimens of quartz. A cut lemon-coloured orthoclase, weighing 31 carats, has also been bought.