2 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol. 80 



winter. No one had ever collected birds in this region before, but 

 the avifauna is much the same as that of northwestern Yunnan, 

 with the exception of a few species that have not been recorded from 

 that Province to date. Doctor Kock returned to Yunnan to spend 

 the winter and to prepare for a journey still farther north in the 

 spring through an unexplored region of Szechwan. While winter- 

 ing in Yunnan at Nguluko, on the east slopes of the Likiang Moun- 

 tains, he had his men collect in tlie vicinity. 



With the return of spring, early in April, 1929, Doctor Rock and 

 his party moved northward into Muli territory again on his way to 

 explore the Minya Konka snow range to the northeast of the Yalung 

 River and south of Tatsienlu. On this journey he went as far as 

 Tatsienlu, which was reached some time in May. After a couple of 

 weeks' rest there, he returned to the Yulonglisi Valley, south of Tat- 

 sienlu, and went eastward to explore the Minya Konka Range, the 

 highest peak of which reaches a height of 25,600 feet, with several 

 others almost as high. To the westward of the Minya Konka Range 

 there is another high parallel chain some 20,000 feet in height, and 

 it is this ridge that is visible from the mountains to the westward 

 of Tatsienlu and not the Minya Konka.^ 



The party then started the return journey by a route to the west- 

 ward of the one pursued on the northward march, crossing the 

 Yalung at Baurong in July, and were back in Yunnan by August. 



When the expedition reached Yungning on the return journey, 

 Doctor Rock found all the ferries across the Yangtze River destroyed 

 by rebels, and the party was marooned for two months on an island 

 in Yungning Lake, but he managed to send some of his men to col- 

 lect in the northwest corner of Yunnan in August, where they started 

 operations in the Luddii Mountains west of the Yangtze ; they then 

 moved northward to the Fuchuanshan, between the Mekong and the 

 Salween, in September ; to Weihsi, between the Mekong and Yangtze, 

 the same month; and during October collected at two stations on 

 Ndamucho, on tlie divide between the Yangtze and Mekong, south of 

 Liitien, at 11,000 and 14,000 feet. Being threatened by Konkaiing 

 bandits from the northwest and rebel forces from the south, the 

 party at Yungning Lake found themselves in a precarious position. 

 Doctor Rock appealed to a friendly Mongol chief for aid, and the 

 chief sent a number of his best swimmers with a lot of goatskins, 

 These were inflated to form rafts, and the party managed to cross 

 under great difficulties without losing any of its valuable collections 

 and to reach its base again at Nguluko, on the east slopes of the 

 Likiang Mountains. Doctor Rock's men collected some birds here 



' See Nat. Geog. Mag., vol. 58, pp. 385-437, 1930, many illustrations and a small 

 map of the route; and vol. 60, pp. 1-65, 1981. 



