208 Field Museum of Natural History — Reports, Vol. X 



New York. The expedition was under the leadership of Mr. Rudyerd 

 Boulton, Assistant Curator of Birds. It sailed from New York in 

 January direct for Dakar, Senegal, on the west coast of Africa. In 

 addition to Mrs. Straus and Mr. Boulton, the party included the 

 following: Mr. Frank C. Wonder, of the Museum's taxidermy 

 staff, who collected mammals; Mr. John F. Jennings, of Chicago, 

 who was in charge of photography; and Mrs. Rudyerd Boulton, 

 who made studies of African native music under a grant from the 

 Carnegie Corporation of New York, 



The expedition left Dakar by motor early in February and made 

 its first camp at Fatick, about 100 miles inland on a brackish arm of 

 the sea. Thence it moved on about 700 miles to Bamako, capital of 

 the French Sudan. Mr. Wonder, at this point, began working back 

 to the coast, collecting mammals and birds, while the rest of the 

 party continued to Mopti, on the Niger River, where a great abun- 

 dance of water birds was found. The expedition then moved to 

 Sangha and to Gao. From there Mrs. Straus and Mr. Boulton 

 motored across the Sahara Desert to Oran, Algeria, whence Mrs. 

 Straus returned to the United States. The journey to Oran and the 

 return to Gao, some 3,000 miles largely over waterless, uninhabited 

 desert, was a difficult one. 



After a trip to Timbuktu, the expedition journeyed south through 

 Dahomey and Nigeria to Mount Cameroon, a 13,000-foot, isolated 

 peak near the coast, where several weeks were spent in intensive 

 collecting and in making ecological and zonal studies from sea level 

 to the treeless summit. Later, a stop was made in lowland forests of 

 southern Nigeria. 



Results from this expedition include much material new to the 

 Museum, since the route traveled was wholly in a part of Africa 

 little represented in American collections. The material obtained 

 comprises specimens and accessories for two habitat groups of 

 birds, one of a nesting colony of weaver-birds, and one of the curious 

 plantain-eaters or turacos of the mountain forest; and general col- 

 lections of 641 mammals, 650 birds, 1,000 reptiles and fishes, 2,000 

 insects, 1,000 still photographs, and 15,000 feet of motion pictures. 



The work of the Leon Mandel Guatemala Expedition of Field 

 Museum, which was well under way in 1933, and of which a pre- 

 liminary account appeared in last j^ear's Report, was carried to 

 a successful conclusion. In December, 1933, the field party (con- 

 sisting of Mr. Karl P. Schmidt, Assistant Curator of Reptiles and 

 Amphibians; Mr. Emmet R. Blake, of Pittsburgh; Mr. F. J. W. 



