MUSEUM NOTES 79 



too hot nor too cold, because of danjjjer of the animals flying in transit. 

 Dr. Townsend (h'vised an ingenious method hy which the porjwises woukl 

 travel comfortal)Iy and be left free to breathe, and dispatched an assistant 

 to Cape Hatteras. After considerable work and delay half a dozen fair- 

 sized examples were selected, packed, and started on tlieir way to New 

 York, only to be killed by the sudden settling down over the east of record- 

 breaking cold. 



Mr. Edward Paul, chief of the Penobscot Indians, Old Town, Me., 

 called at the Museum in January to see the Eastern Woodland collections 

 and especially those of his own people. Mr. Paul is an educated man. He 

 says that notwithstanding the fact that his people outwardly conform to 

 our mode of life, they at home preserve many aboriginal traits and cus- 

 toms. He thinks that this is chiefly due to the fact that his tribe still owns 

 the island home of its ancestors, whose shores are seldom visited by white 

 people. The Indian men work for the whites but each evening come 

 back to the island, where they are isolated completely. ]\Ir. Paul \olun- 

 teered to assist in arranging the Penobscot section of the new Eastern 

 Woodland Indian hall. 



Dr. Ed\\ard a. Sapir, director of the anthropological survey of Canada, 

 and H. Barbeau, a member of his staff, recently spent a few days at the 

 Museum studying the anthropological collections. 



During the fall months, Messrs. Allen and Millei-, who with two native 

 assistants now form the Colombian expedition, worked in the Central 

 Andes, along the Quindio trail and on the paramo of Santa Isabel. In a 

 letter dated Cartago, November 16, Mr. Miller states that sixteen hundred 

 specimens of birds and mammals had already been secured, and that the 

 expedition was then about to penetrate the little-known coast range to the 

 westward. Here only foot-trails exist and all supplies will therefore have 

 to be transported on the backs of men. 



Eield work in Elorida carried on during November by Messrs. F. E. 

 Lutz and C. W. Leng in company with Mr. W. T. Davis, was primarily for 

 the purpose of obtaining information which would facilitate future work in 

 what is an easily accessible subtropical region almost unexplored biologically. 

 The party covered about fifteen hundred miles, incidentally collecting more 

 than five thousand specimens which will gi\e new records as to either date 

 or locality or both for one thousand species. The faunti of Florida is of 

 especial interest to the department of in\ertel)rate zoology in its bearing 

 upon problems of distribution, for Florida is the last step in the journey of 

 such species as may have come to the United States b\- way of the West 

 Indies. 



