DANIEL GIRAUD ELLIOT — BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
after a sojourn abroad of nearly ten 
years, he brought with him a large col- 
lection of humming birds, made during 
his stay in Europe. At that time it was 
probably the most complete in the world. 
He had had the great good fortune to be 
present when large collections of hum- 
ing birds, like the Boucier, Mulsant and 
others, had been broken up and sold, 
and had therefore fortunately been able 
to make selections from them all, gain- 
ing many rare species and a number of 
types. 
In 1887 when moving from New 
Brighton, Staten Island, where he had 
made his home since his return from 
Europe, he gave this collection to the 
Museum in the case that he had had 
made forit. At about the same time the 
Museum gained Dr. Elliot’s books, a 
very full working library for ornitholo- 
gists, practically complete for the time 
with the exception of the serial publica- 
tions. 
Dr. Elliot has traveled in connection 
with his work more than have most 
naturalists. He visited the West In- 
dian Islands when scarcely out of boy- 
hood and also the southern portion of 
the United States, his curiosity and his 
desire to study and collect specimens 
greatly excited by the strange birds and 
mammals that he saw. In 1857 more 
than ten years before the founding of 
the American Museum, he went to Rio 
de Janeiro and did some study and 
collecting in Brazil. Immediately after, 
he went to Europe, of course with his 
interests as ornithologist and sportsman 
uppermost, passed from Malta to Sicily 
and on to Egypt, giving a few months 
to a trip up the Nile, shooting and 
preparing specimens. He returned to 
Cairo, formed a party and with camels 
crossed the long desert to Palestine. On 
reaching the eastern side of the Sinaitic 
PeninsuJa, he journeyed to the land 
139 
of Moab visiting the ancient city of 
Petra (capital of Esau’s kingdom), also 
going to Bethlehem and Jerusalem and 
on into Palestine as far as Damascus, 
crossing the Lebanon Mountains at an 
altitude of ten thousand feet, and re- 
turning to Europe from Beirut. 
Later in life he made two zoological 
trips to Alaska, once as a member of the 
Harriman Expedition, the researches of 
which in many volumes are still in the 
course of publication. 
In 1896 he was commissioned by the 
Field Museum of Natural History in 
Chicago [he had gone there in 1894 as 
head of the department of zodlogy] to 
lead an expedition into Africa to get 
specimens for the institution. He spent 
a year in passing through Somaliland 
and Ogaden and was on his way to the 
Boran country when he was prevented 
by illness from carrying on the work. 
This expedition was highly successful in 
obtaining specimens of the African spe- 
cies of quadrupeds many of which are on 
exhibition in the Field Museum to-day. 
Also somewhat later he led an expedition 
for the Field Museum into the Olympic 
Mountains. 
He has spent eighteen months in an 
alound-the-world journey since 1906 
when he began the preparation of his re- 
cently published Review of the Primates. 
He had not progressed very far in the 
preparation for this work when he 
realized how impossible it was to do 
much on the subject in the United States 
since representatives of the Primates 
from either the Eastern or Western 
Hemispheres are very few in American 
museums. He therefore sailed for Eu- 
rope in April 1907 and did not return 
until 1909. During this time he visited 
place after place, studying the types of 
lemurs and monkeys both in museums 
and zoological gardens. After working 
in one after another of the large Euro- 
