NO. 3 SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, IQI5 ei 
fauna, exceedingly like that which marks the horizon of the Onon- 
daga limestone throughout the extent of this well known and widely 
distributed Middle Devonian formation, had already invaded the 
continental basins as far as southwest Virginia during the closing 
stages of the preceding Lower Devonian. This instance of recurring 
fossil faunas is regarded as one of the most important of the many 
similar instances that have been established through the field studies 
of Dr. Ulrich during the past 25 years. All have served in correcting 
erroneous correlations of formations that had arisen through the 
confusion of earlier or later appearances of faunas with the one 
recognized in the standardized sequence of stratigraphic units. 
Mr. R. D. Mesler, under the supervision of Dr. Ulrich, spent the 
summer of 1915 in making collections of Ordovician and Silurian 
fossils from formations and localities in the Appalachian and Miss- 
issipp1 Valleys which had hitherto been little represented in the 
Museum collections. A large number of fossils resulted from his 
trip, particularly from the Middle Ordovician rocks of east Ten- 
nessee, which will form the basis of a future monograph on the 
paleontology of that region. 
EXPLORATIONS IN SIBERIA 
Through the liberality of a friend the Museum was enabled to 
send Mr. B. Alexander with the Koren Expedition to the Kolyma 
River region of northern Siberia. The expedition left Seattle, Wash- 
ington, about June 1, 1914, and returned a year from the following 
September. The immediate purpose of the trip was to obtain remains 
of large extinct animals, particularly of the mammoth for which the 
region is noted. The results were not all that were hoped for, but 
a considerable quantity of material was obtained, though no com- 
plete skeleton. 
The following report, with photographs taken by his party, was 
submitted by Mr. Alexander at the conclusion of his field-work : 
In May, 1914, the Smithsonian Institution appointed me as a collector, with 
instructions “to obtain geological, mineralogical, and paleontological speci- 
mens” for the Institution, and particularly “to secure remains of the Siberian 
mammoth” in the Kolyma Valley, northeastern Siberia. For this purpose I 
was attached to a trading company which left Seattle in a small power 
schooner June 24, 1914, arriving at Nizhni Kolymsk on August 26. 
Nizhni Kolymsk is the oldest and outermost permanent Russian settlement 
in the Yakutsk government, northeastern Siberia. The village now consists of 
about 26 inhabited log houses and one Russian orthodox church, and is located 
near the 69th degree of northern latitude, a short distance above the mouth 
of the Kolyma and just inside the Arctic tree limit. 
