ARCTIC EXPEDITION 259 
ous applications for assistance. Director Bumpus felt that here was an 
opportunity to carry out the idea of the Founders and prepared ten small 
cases of birds. These were sent to the schools. From that beginning has 
grown the work of to-day, but instead of ten cases there are more than four 
hundred cases and we are supplying monthly nearly four hundred schools 
of the city. You are better able than I to judge of the practical use of 
these collections. We have felt encouraged by a letter that came from 
a little girl in one of the East side schools. The teacher had evidently 
used a collection of our birds for a lesson in language which had taken 
the form of a letter to the Director of the Museum: “My dear Director 
Bumpus, I am very glad that you sent the birds to us. We have enjoyed 
them very much. I think they are all beautiful, but of all the birds I 
have studied the one I like the best is the English sparrow because it is the 
only one I have ever seen.”’ 
NEWS FROM THE ARCTIC EXPEDITION 
INCE the last issue of the JouRNAL, letters have been received from 
the Stefansson-Anderson Expedition. That from Mr. Stefansson 
was written April 25 at a place fifty miles on the way to the Copper- 
mine and holds out bright prospects for the journey, in part because he had 
fortunately been able to purchase fifty pounds of pemmican from a sailor 
at Cape Parry. The expedition was about to start on the remaining 
three hundred miles but with only three Eskimo assistants, great difficulty 
having been experienced in getting any Eskimos to go because of fear of 
violence from the Coronation Gulf people. Of these three he writes that 
Natkutjiak is the sort who will go anywhere, Tannaumirk will follow any- 
where and Pannigabluk, the woman, is used to starving, having been near 
death from hunger half a dozen times. The country through which they 
will pass has many lakes and rivers unknown to geographers. Mr. Stefans- 
son is supplied with charts of the region made by Dr. Richardson in 1846 and 
he considers them authoritative, saying, “They omit many things, but do 
not put down things not here. For the huge non-existent R. la Ronciére, 
Dr. Richardson is not to blame. His charts are innocent of it, though all 
our newer maps have it.” 
The letter from Dr. Anderson was written August 13. It announces 
that at last he has in hand the supplies sent by the Museum in 1908 and 1909. 
He had not yet heard from Mr. Stefansson, who, however, had told him not 
to worry if he did not hear until Christmas, 
