REPORT OF THE SECRETARY: NATIONAL MUSEUM 103 



lection; prepared for publication three reports on cetaceans in the 

 Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, the Condon 

 Museum of the University of Oregon, and the Field Museum of 

 Natural Ilistor}^; and cooperated with specialists in other groups in 

 the preparation of a tentative draft of the zones comprising the 

 California Tertiary. 



The curator of birds, Dr. Herbert Friedmann, completed work on 

 the birds collected by the Smithsonian African expedition under 

 Theodore Roosevelt, and also the report on the birds collected in 

 Gaboon by the Garner expedition. He also reported on a large col- 

 lection of bird bones from St. Lawrence Island, and on three smaller 

 lots from the mainland of Alaska and from Kodiak Island ; and began 

 work on the remaining parts of Ridgway's unfinished work "The 

 Birds of North and Middle America" and nearly completed the 

 compilation of literature for all the groups remaining to be published 

 on. He also wrote papers relating to the nictitating membrane of 

 the domestic pigeon, to parasitic cowbirds and cuckoos, to early 

 observations on North American birds, to racial variations in certain 

 African shrikes, to the display of Wallace's bird of paradise, and other 

 subjects. The associate curator, J. H. Riley, studied and identified 

 the large collections of Siamese birds sent in by Dr. H. M. Smith 

 and published descriptions and notes on some of the novelties and 

 more interesting forms. A. C. Bent, collaborator, completed the 

 manuscript of the tenth volume of his " Life Histories of North Ameri- 

 can Birds", on part of the falconiform birds. Dr. Wetmore pub- 

 lished on the birds collected by the Parish-Smithsonian expedition 

 in Cuba and Haiti ; described several new forms of fossil birds from 

 North America; continued his editorial work on Swann's "Mono- 

 graph of the Accipitres", part of which was issued during the year; 

 and wrote various other articles. 



The curator of reptiles and batrachians, Dr. L. Stejneger, worked 

 on a revision of the Testudinata of North and Middle America; 

 finished a report on some collections from the Galapagos Islands and 

 Polynesia; and in collaboration with Dr. Thomas Barbour, of the 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology, brought out the third edition of 

 their "Check List of North American Amphibians and Reptiles." 

 Dr. Doris M. Cochran, assistant curator, completed a report on the 

 herpetology of Hispaniola and published several descriptive papers 

 on new species. 



Dr. G. S. Myers, assistant curator of fishes, nearly completed a 

 revision of the genera of oviparous cyprinodonts, a group of small 

 fishes of great value in the destruction of malarial and yellow-fever 

 mosquitoes in the Tropics. He also began work on the deep-sea 

 fishes obtained by the Johnson-Smithsonian Deep-Sca Expedition and 

 on the fishes from western China collected bv Dr. D. C. Graham. 



