36 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1917. 



Doctor Abbott personally spent some time in Haiti, where he obtained 

 many birds, including species whose occurrence on that island was 

 unexpected, reptiles, and moUusks, and also a large quantity of bones 

 of mammels from prehistoric kitchenmiddens. The study of simi- 

 lar deposits on this and other islands of the Antilles was an inter- 

 esting feature of the year's activities, a large collection of bones 

 gathered by Mr. Theodoor de Booy in Cuba, Santo Domingo, and 

 the Virgin Islands, and presented by Mr. George G. Heye, having 

 yielded ncAv genera of rodents, birds, and reptiles, which have ap- 

 parently become extinct within comparatively recent times. 



As the proceeds of an expedition to Cuba and Haiti by Mr. John 

 B. Henderson, accompanied by Dr. Paul Bartsch, the Museum re- 

 ceived from Mr. Henderson numerous birds, reptiles, and fishes, and 

 over 15,000 land and marine invertebrates, mostly mollusks. Mr. F. 

 J. Dyer, American consul at Ceiba, Honduras, contributed a large 

 number of insects and mollusks from that country ; and Mr. Arthur 

 de C. Sowerby transmitted mammals, birds, crustaceans, and mol- 

 lusks from northern China and Manchuria. 



The Bureau of Fisheries deposited, as usual, valuable collections 

 of fishes and marine invertebrates, besides many interesting speci- 

 mens of mammals, birds, and reptiles. Among the fishes were 72 

 types, cotypes, and paratypes, 40 of which were of species obtained 

 on the Philippine cruise of the steamer Albatross in 1907-1911. The 

 marine invertebrates, numbering several thousand specimens, in- 

 cluded recently described type collections of annelids and parasitic 

 copepods. Transfers, chiefly of mollusks and crustaceans, aggregat- 

 ing over 400 specimens, were made by the Biological Survey and 

 Bureaus of Entomology and Plant Industry of the Department of 

 Agriculture. 



Exceptionally noteworthy was a bequest to the Museimi by the 

 late Julius Hurter, sr., of St. Louis. An enthusiastic collector, he 

 had gathered one of the largest and finest private collections of 

 reptiles and batrachians in existence. Its principal scientific value 

 lies in its splendid series of Missouri forms which served as the basis 

 for Mr. Hurter's " Herpetology of Missouri," published in 1911. Not 

 solely confined to that region, however, it contains valuable material 

 from various parts of the world, and most of the important sub- 

 divisions of the group are represented. 



From the Santa Marta Mountains in Colombia were received 149 

 specimens of birds, which added 6 species new to the Museum, and 

 from Panama, 213 specimens of reptiles and batrachians, the latter 

 collected by the Smithsonian biological survey of the Canal Zone. 

 Mr. James Zetek transmitted 769 specimens of mollusks' and other 

 marine invertebrates from Panama, and Prof. G. S. Dodds, of the 

 University of Missouri, presented a large number of Entomostraca, 



