280 



THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



zoological reconnaissanee imdertaken in the 

 fall of 1912 by Mr. Miller and Mr. Francis 

 X. Iglseder under the auspices of the Ameri- 

 can Museum of Natural History, The pur- 

 pose of the expedition was to explore the 

 wilds of Rio Cunucunuma and Mount Duida, 

 a region incorrectly mapped, of whose people 

 and animal life little was known, Mr, Miller 

 also has an article, "The Quest of the Cock- 

 of-the-Rock," with an introduction by Colo- 

 nel Roosevelt, in the May issue of Scribner's 

 Magazine. 



The latest addition to the series of guide 

 leaflets on the collections of the American 

 Museum is the sixteen-page SyJlahus Guide 

 to Public Health Exhibits by Mr, Laurence 

 V, Coleman. This publication gives valuable 

 information in concise form regarding the 

 models, charts, and photographs in the hall 

 of public health, illustrating the problems 

 connected with procuring a clean water sup- 

 ply, disposing of municipal wastes, and 

 doing away with insect-borne diseases. 



Mk. John T. Nichols, of the Museum's de- 

 partment of fishes, has returned from a three 

 weeks' cruise among the Florida keys where 

 he went in late March, as the guest of Mr. 

 Herman Armour Nichols of Chicago, to 

 study especially the habits of ground sharks 

 of the genus Carcharhinus. These are every- 

 where the most abundant sharks in inshore 

 waters, where the females resort in numbers 

 at certain seasons to give birth to their 

 young. Two species were met vrith which 

 are doubtless of regular and common occur- 

 rence there in March and April, although 

 one of them (the green shark) had not pre- 

 viously been recorded from Florida; they are 

 the edged shark (C. limbatus) and the green 

 shark (C acronotus), the former between 

 five and five and one half, the latter between 

 three and one half and four feet long. As is 

 the case with the brown shark {C. milberti) 

 of New York waters in summer, females only 

 were present. Probably the big bulls have a 

 more offshore habitat, certainly they are 

 great wanderers, those of C. limbatus occa- 

 sionally straggling as far north as New 

 York in the warmer months. The edged 

 shark was found to be very good eating, its 

 meat resembling swordfish in flavor and not 

 being at all tough. The fact that several 

 species of shark are not regularly in the 

 market is due entirely to prejudice. 



As is often the cas^e, the rarest fish ob- 

 tained on the cruise was a very small one, 

 captured entirely by accident. On one occa- 

 sion the fifty-foot cruising ketch "Yuma" lay 

 three nights at one anchorage, held up by 

 high -winds. "When the big storm anchor 

 was lifted, a clingfish (Gobiesox) about an 

 inch long came aboard attached to it and 

 was promptly placed in a vial of preserva- 

 tive. It has so far been impossible to iden- 

 tify this fish as any species known to science. 

 The clingfishes have a peculiar sucking disk 

 on the lower surface of the body by means 

 of which they can hold firmly to any sub- 

 merged object. 



The department of anthropology of the 

 American Museum was visited recently by 

 Professor Robert G. Aitken, of the Lick Ob- 

 servatory of the University of California, 

 and also by Dr. L. J. Frachtenberg, linguist 

 of the Bureau of Ethnology in Washington. 

 Dr. Frachtenberg gave particular study to 

 the anthropological collections from the 

 Northwest Coast and the states of Washing- 

 ton and Oregon. 



The hermit thrush is so rare and nests in 

 such impenetrable and dark places in the 

 forest that few photographs of any kind 

 have been secured of it. The frontispiece of 

 this number of the Journal, Mr. Norman 

 McClintock's photograph of the hermit 

 thrush in its home life, is therefore unusually 

 valuable. It is interesting along three lines : 

 first, zoologically — especially since it shows 

 the spotted plumage of the young, so strong 

 a mark of the family to which the thrushes 

 belong ; second, humanly, for this is the bird 

 immortalized by naturalist, philosopher, and 

 poet for its song; and third, technically, as 

 a triumph of bird photography. It chances, 

 however, that the photograph was not taken 

 with a telephoto, nor under any unusual cir- 

 cumstances, but was a study at close range 

 made from a blind with an ordinary 8" lens. 

 It would seem that the hermit thrush and its 

 spiritual song are far removed from war and 

 the tragedy of Europe today, but this is the 

 bird whose serene notes will always be known 

 as a "carol of death," for at the close of the 

 Civil War, our American poet, Walt Whit- 

 man, linked the song unforgetably with war 

 and heroic death — "the song of the bleeding 

 throat. Death's outlet song of life" — in his 

 Memories of President Lincoln. 



