136 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
This exquisite basket, which is a masterpiece of Aleutian workman- 
ship, was given to the Blue Anchor Society by the chief of the Attu in 
token of appreciation of certain assistance rendered the tribe during 
a period of distress, and it has been given to the American Museum 
for permanent preservation. Mary Lots KIssett. 
AN ANT-HUNTING TRIP TO EUROPE IN THE SUMMER 
OF 1907. 
— Ze past summer was devoted by Dr. W. M. Wheeler to 
- 2. a study of the European Formicidee (ants) and to secur- 
oy 
ing extensive series of these insects for the Museum. 
This study was necessary for the purpose of throwing 
light on the structure, habits and relationships of our 
North American forms, many of which are regarded as 
mere subspecies or varieties of well-known palearctic (European and 
North Asiatic) species. After collecting for a short time at Ponta Del- 
gada in the Azores, a locality in which no ants had been collected pre- 
viously, at Gibraltar and at Genoa, Dr. Wheeler selected Switzerland 
as the best place in which to continue his work, because this country 
presents an extraordinary variety of physical and biological conditions 
and therefore an epitome, so to speak, of the whole ant fauna of Europe, 
and because it has become the classical locality for such studies through 
the remarkable work of Pierre Huber during the early years of the 
nineteenth century and of Auguste Forel during the past half century. 
Professor Forel, the most eminent of living myrmecologists, who until 
recently has been residing at Chigny near Lausanne on the shore of 
Lake Leman, showed the greatest interest in Dr. Wheeler’s studies 
and yave him invaluable assistance, both by directing him to the most 
profitable localities in which to observe and collect ants and by accom- 
panying him on excursions in the vicinity of Geneva and in Canton 
Vaud. Subsequently Dr. Wheeler made expeditions to Yvorne, Fully, 
Sion and Sierre in the upper valley of the Rhone (Canton Valais), 
to the Jura, to Locarno, Lugano, Bellinzona, Mendrisio, Monte Ceneri 
and Monte Generoso in Canton Ticino and to the Albula Pass, Samaden, 
Pontresina, St. Moritz and Silva Plana in the Upper Engadine (Canton 
