102 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
An attractive feature of the reception was the series of exhibitions of 
stereopticon views illustrating recent field work of the Museum and 
associated institutions in the Fayoum Desert, East Africa, the Bahamas 
and elsewhere. 
THe Department of Mammalogy has recently obtained the skins 
and complete skeletons of two specimens, a male and a female, of the 
extremely rare Solenodon paradoxus which were collected by Mr. A. H. 
Verrill in the island of Haiti during the early part of this year. The 
Solenodont, called the Agouta in Haiti, is a small insect-eating animal, 
rarely more than twenty inches in total length, ‘with a long naked nose 
and a long scaly tail and strong claws. Heretofore it has been known 
in museums by a single skin and skull which are in St. Petersburg, and 
even the Cuban Solenodont, though more common, is found in but 
few collections. Another important recent accession in this department 
is the skeleton and skin of an adult Sea Otter, Latax lutris nereis, which 
was captured in the latter part of last July near Point Lobos, California. 
The skin is five feet two inches long from tip of nose to tip of tail, but 
the animal may have been longer than this when alive, since the skin has 
been stretched sidewise. ‘The Sea Otter ranged formerly from the Be- 
ring Sea southward along both coasts of the Pacific Ocean. On the 
east coast its range extended to northern Lower California, but the 
animal has become nearly extinct on American shores, and a hunter 
considers himself well repaid for a year’s search by the taking of a single 
fine specimen. 
THe Japanese Room, which attracted much attention in the Japanese 
government exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis 
in 1904, has been recently opened to the public in the Southwest Hall 
(Hall No. 201) of the second floor of the Museum. ‘The room is richly 
decorated in silk, carved native woods and lacquer to illustrate the adap- 
tion of oriental materials and patterns to occidental uses. ‘This exhibit 
has been presented to the Museum by the Nippon Yusen Kaisha through 
Baron Kaneko of Japan. 
Mr. FRANK CHAPMAN, Associate Curator of Mammology and 
Ornithology, accompanied by Mr. J. D. Figgins of the Department and 
Mr. Bruce Horsfal, the artist, visited the coast of South Carolina in May 
for the purpose of collecting material for the Egret group. Mr. Chap- 
