EXPEDITION TO EGYPT 25 
showing its efforts to disseminate knowledge outside the Museum. 
Japanese Sharks, Hag Fishes and other curious marine forms were 
very interesting to the specialist, and Economic Entomology was illus- 
trated, in part, by the photographs, transparencies and specimens illus- 
trating recent progress in New Jersey in the extermination of the 
mosquito and in methods of educating the public on the subject. 
EXPEDITION TO THE DESERT OF FAYOUM, EGYPT. 
N January 5 Professor Henry F. Osborn sailed for Egypt 
accompanied by Messrs. Walter Granger and George 
Olsen of the Department of Vertebrate Palzeontology 
on an exploring expedition of three months into the 
Fayoum desert. In 1900 Professor Osborn*  pre- 
dicted that the remote ancestors of the Proboscidea, 
Sirenia and Hyracoidea would prove to be of African origin, and soon 
afterward, through the extensive exploration and study of this region 
by the Egyptian Survey, this prophecy came true. This desert has 
yielded some of the most remarkable recent discoveries in paleontology, 
among which may be cited, besides those in the three orders above 
mentioned, many entirely new and unique forms, one of which is Ars?- 
noitherium. Dr. C. W. Andrews of the British Museum and Mr. 
Hugh J. N. Beadnell of the Egyptian Survey have been the principal 
students of this fauna and have described their discoveries in a series 
of papers published during the last five years, culminating in a large 
quarto memoir published last year by Dr. Andrews. 
Ever since the fulfillment of his prophecy and the discovery of this 
fauna, new to science, Professor Osborn has been anxious to visit and 
explore the Fayoum, but he felt that he could not go before the publi- 
cation of Dr. Andrews’s report freed the field to all scientific workers. 
Palzontologists at present regard Africa as the storm center of their 
work and look to the revelation of its secrets for the solution of many 
of the problems which confront them in the unraveling of the past. 
If the expedition is successfu!, the addition of this fauna to the collec- 
tion of fossil vertebrates in our Museum will greatly enhance its interest 
to the public and its value to the student. 
‘Faunal Relations of Europe and America during the Tertiary Period and 
Theory of the Successive Invasion of an African Fauna into Europe. Ann. N; Y. 
Acad. Sci., Vol. XIII, No. 1, July 21, 1900, pp. 1-72. 
