REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1918. 33 



Haven's in Celebes, Mr. Arthur de C. Sowerby's in China, and the 

 Collins- Garner expedition to the French Congo, as well as the 

 Peruvian Expedition of 1914-15 under the auspices of Yale Uni- 

 versity and the National Geographic Society. The Museum has been, 

 and is even now, extremely deficient in material from South America, 

 and the collections presented by the authorities responsible for this 

 expedition are therefore of the utmost value to the Museum as form- 

 ing the basis of future work by American zoologists in that long 

 neglected field. 



Mammals. — The most important accession in the division of mam- 

 mals was the single skull and cervical vertebrae, with photographs 

 of the entire animal, of a new genus and species or river dolphin 

 from the Tung Ting Lake in China, obtained from Mr. Charles M. 

 Hoy, and described by the curator, Mr. Gerrit S. Miller, jr., as 

 Lvpotes vexUlifer. This remarkable novelty belongs to a group of 

 porpoises which includes numerous extinct forms found fossil in 

 Europe and the eastern United States. Its only known living rela- 

 tive occurs in the large rivers of South America. In scientific in- 

 terest this one specimen exceeds all the other mammals received dur- 

 ing the year. 



The next important mammalian accession to the national collec- 

 tion during the year is the result of the Peruvian expedition of 

 1914-15 under the auspices of Yale University and the National 

 Geographic Society. This collection of 884 specimens, made by Mr. 

 Edmund Heller, is the first fully representative collection of mam- 

 mals received by the Museum from any large area of South America. 

 Until recently the vertebrate zoology of that continent was neglected 

 by American scientists, while the most important collections with 

 their innumerable types and authentic specimens were in the British 

 Museum. In order to provide a solid basis for future work in the 

 United States it was therefore deemed desirable that this material 

 should be compared with the standards in the British Museum, and. 

 as mentioned in the last report, Mr. Oldfield Thomas, the recognized 

 authority on the subject, was persuaded to identify the specimens and 

 make the technical report, thus greatly enhancing the scientific value 

 of the material. The collection includes the types of 10 new forms, 

 among them one new genus of the peculiar and little known mar- 

 supial family Caenolestidae. 



The 381 mammals collected in the Fernan Vaz region by Mr. 

 C. P. W. Aschemeier of the Collins-Garner Congo Expedition, while 

 not yet critically studied, consist of characteristic West African 

 forms of which the Museum has been greatly in need for compari- 

 son with its remarkable East African series. In continuation of 

 previous collecting, as mentioned in last year's report, the collec- 



91933° — NAT MCS 1918 3 



