170 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
its sleek, glossy coat even brown above while zebra-like on the legs 
and posterior part of the body. Its foot has two hoofs but no vestige 
of the two small false hoofs characteristic of the deer. In fact, the 
okapi proves itself closely allied to a fossil animal, Helladotherium, of 
Greece and Asia Minor, its nearest living relative being the giraffe. 
The hunting trips for large game will facilitate the work along 
anthropological lines since pygmies will be a part of the company. 
Besides, villages will be visited, having two or three hundred pygmies 
attached to them. Some successful casts have already been made of 
the faces of three pygmies, but dwarfs are so shy that they are re- 
luctant to submit to the procedure. They were won over by having 
their hands cast first. After they had seen how simple a matter it is, 
they were induced to allow the plaster to be put on their faces. 
A letter sent to friends in early January tells of the personal welfare 
and good cheer of the explorers: 
On Christmas we dined especially well and on New Year’s day opened a canned 
plum pudding (!) that had been given to us in Stanleyville. Good food is not at all 
scarce here. Yesterday we looked over our stock and found we had seven live 
chickens, ten pineapples, three large bunches of bananas and various fresh vege- 
tables and fruits. Sweet potatoes, whiter and not so tasty as those at home, grow 
like weeds on all sides. In fact, we scarcely need to draw upon our European pro- 
visions at all except for butter and sugar. 
From the first of December till two days after Christmas we stayed at N’Gayu, 
three days to the north of Avakubi, collecting mammals and other specimens which 
have been sent back to Ayakubi. Our Christmas present was an old male chim- 
panzee captured on Christmas Eve. 
A final word just received from the expedition, started June 30 from 
the Congo camp at Medje, north of Avakubi. With the introductory 
words, “There is only good news to be reported, all is well,” there fol- 
lows a triumphant record: 1200 mammals and 1500 birds are in the 
collections; a unique ethnological collection of 700 numbers has been 
gained from the Mangbetu; best of all, the okapi group is assured, not 
only in the possession of male and female specimens and young, but 
also, in that materials from the animal’s haunt have been preserved 
and crated ready to ship, so that there promises to be reproduced in the 
near future in the American Museum of Natural History, New York, a 
small part of the mighty Congo forest with its strange life. 
Mary Cyntuia DicKERSON 
