SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, I927 61 



It is the product of a lifetime of collecting by a veteran naturalist 

 assisted by a corps of associates, students, and loving friends. The 

 month spent in reviewing the land shells of this family in his collec- 

 tion resulted not only in the material expansion of our systematic 

 knowledge of the group, but also in the discovery of almost 200 

 unnamed forms. It likewise revealed that there still remained a 

 number of regions in that large island which have been untouched 

 and which will yield a rich harvest to the collector. The granting of 

 the Walter Rathbone Bacon Travelling Scholarship by the Smith- 

 sonian Institution to the writer will make it possible to explore these 

 regions before the manuscript on this family is sent to press. During 

 our study at Havana the collections of the Academy of Sciences, 

 Colegio de la Salle, and Colegio de los Escolapios were also ex- 

 amined, and interesting information gleaned therefrom. 



The study of the West Indian land mollusks soon revealed that 

 while Jamaica already possesses some 600 named forms of land 

 shells, largely described by Professor C. B. Adams of Amherst Col- 

 lege, most of these specimens were without definite locality data, and 

 for that reason it was deemed desirable to have some one finetooth 

 comb this island in order that we might be able, by comparing Adams' 

 material with these new collections, to fix type localities for these 

 older species. This would likewise enalile us to determine the range 

 of distribution of Jamaican forms. With this end in view, Mr. C. R. 

 Orcutt was prevailed upon to visit the Island, and he has now spent 

 a little more than a year in the ]nirsuit of mollusks and has sent 

 thousands of specimens to the National Museum which will help to 

 clear up the problems mentioned above. 



For the same reason Mr. Walter J. Eyerdam spent several months 

 in collecting land shells in imexplored portions of Haiti, which will 

 also assist in elucidating prol)lems in zoogeographic distribution in 

 that Island. 



Here, too, should be mentioned the contribution made in this direc- 

 tion by Dr. Alexander W^etmore's expedition to the same island, 

 which added a number of novelties. 



These studies of West Indian land shells are exceedingly fascinat- 

 ing and interesting, for they throw considerable light upon the deriva- 

 tion and distribution of the West Indian faunas. 



BIRD STUDIES ON THE FLORIDA KEYS 



In 1927, as during the past 15 years, I kept records of the birds 

 seen during my visit to the Florida Keys. This has resulted in the 

 accumulation of a large amount of information upon the migration of 



