2 BULLETIN 15 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



by Wednesday evening and was able to spend three consecutive days 

 a week in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. President A. S. 

 Pease, of Amherst College, not only took a sympathetic interest in 

 the work but actively aided it by obtaining a special grant to offset 

 the expense involved in constantly traveling between Amherst and 

 Cambridge. To the donor of this grant, Mr. Cornelius J. Sullivan, 

 one of Amherst's most valued alumni, I take this opportunity of 

 expressing my thanks for his support. Another, smaller grant from 

 the research funds of Amherst College also lightened the financial 

 difficulties always present in any research work. 



Dr. James P. Chapin of the American Museum of Natural History 

 in New York, Prof. Einar Lonnberg of the Naturhistoriska Riks- 

 museum in Stockholm, Prof. Oscar Neumann and Dr. Erwin Strese- 

 mann of the Museum fiir Naturkunde in Berlin, and M. J. Berlioz of 

 the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris have generously given me 

 information about certain specimens in their respective institutions. 

 The American Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum, the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia, and the Cleveland 

 Museum of Natural History have all loaned material for study in 

 connection with the present report. 



In the matter of photographic illustrations used in this report, I 

 am greatly indebted to Mr. Childs Frick for the use of 16 pictures 

 taken by him during the course of the expedition. Mr. T. Donald 

 Carter, of the department of mammals in the American Museum of 

 Natural History, has generously permitted me to use six photographs 

 taken by him in Arussiland and in Shoa. 



HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 



The study of the ornithology of northeastern Africa may be said to 

 have begun with the voyages of Petrus Forskal and of James Bruce. 

 The former touched merely the low coastal plains along the Red 

 Sea, and his work " Descriptiones Animalium, Avium, Amphibiorum, 

 Piscium, Insectorum, Vermium; quae in Itinere Oriental! Obser- 

 vavit," published in 1775, deals more with the fauna of the Yemen 

 district of Arabia, and with that of Egypt than of the Ethiopian- 

 Eritrean-Somali area. Bruce, on the other hand, penetrated inland 

 and, although his writings were looked upon with doubt and sus- 

 picion for some years, there is no longer any reason to treat his work 

 with anything but the respect due to a pioneering enterprise. The 

 bird notes of his trip are in the appendix to the fifth volume of his 

 " Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in Eg^s^pt, Arabia, Abys- 

 sinia, and Nubia," printed in 1790. H. Salt made an adventurous 

 journey into Eritrea and northern Ethio])ia in 1809-10, the ornitho- 

 logical results of which were reported on by Stanley in the appendix 



