rEBEUAEY 19, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



303 



The Museum News of tlie Brooklyn Insti- 

 tute for February notes various advances 

 •during the year 1908 and a great gain in at- 

 tendance, the number of visitors at the Cen- 

 tral Museum having been 203,940 and at the 

 Children's Museum 117,182, a total increase of 

 64,000 over 1907. There is an article on 

 "The Games of the Clifi-Dwellers " and 

 another on the almost lost art of " Scrim- 

 shawing." A number of "Additions to the 

 Insect Collection at the Children's Museum" 

 are noted and a list is given of zoological 

 charts for loaning to schools. 



Some of the English Museums from time 

 to time issue extremely good handbooks at 

 astonishingly low prices. A recent publica- 

 tion of this kind' is the Handbook to the 

 Weapons of War and the Chase in the Homi- 

 man Museum, London, written by H. S. Har- 

 rison, curator of the museum, and edited by 

 A. C. Haddon. This book of 73 pages de- 

 scribes a great variety of weapons and in- 

 cludes a list of some of the books and papers 

 on the subject in the Museum Library and 

 sells for twopence, or by post, threepence. 



In the Report on the Illinois State Mu- 

 seum of Natural History, Dr. A. E. Crook, the 

 curator, makes a strong plea for the estab- 

 lishment of a museum worthy of the state of 

 Illinois, showing by statistics and illustra- 

 tions how much has been done by other states 

 and how much may be done in Illinois. 



THE EIAB0U80HIW8KT EXPEDITION UNDER 

 THE AUSPICES OF THE IMPERIAL RUS- 

 SIAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY^ 



I AM grateful to the society for the oppor- 

 tunity extended to me to give a brief outline 

 of the organization and aims of the Kiabous- 

 chinsky expedition. In fact, I believe that 

 you are just as much interested in the results 

 to be attained by this expedition as we are in 

 Eussia, because a good part of my investiga- 

 tions are to be made on American soil 



The patron of this expedition is Mr. Theo- 

 dor Eiabousehinsky, a well-known capitalist in 

 Moscow. He is a very young man, and dur- 



* Paper read at the meeting of the American 

 Ethnological Society, November 9. 



ing his studies in the Moscow university he 

 paid particular attention to anthropology. 

 He conceived the idea of undertaking a thor- 

 ough investigation of the Kamchatka Penin- 

 sula. The importance of this investigation 

 will be realized when I will tell you that 

 Kamchatka has been under Eussian control 

 for about three hundred years and has been 

 visited by many noted travelers, yet very little 

 is known about the country. Up to about 

 fifty years ago Kamchatka was the only open 

 door Eussia had to the Pacific Ocean, and at 

 that time the government took some interest 

 in that country; but since the Amour Eiver 

 has been acquired by Eussia, the government 

 has neglected that peninsula completely. For 

 this reason the great service rendered to sci- 

 ence by a private undertaking will be appre- 

 ciated. 



Mr. Eiabousehinsky requested the Imperial 

 Eussian Geographical Society to organize at 

 his expense a scientific expedition to Kam- 

 chatka. This society organized an expedition 

 consisting of five divisions: Zoological, 

 botanical, geological, meteorological and 

 ethnological. The zoological division is 

 headed by Peter Schmidt, professor at the 

 University of St. Petersburg. He and his 

 four assistants, representing the different 

 branches of zoological science, are to investi- 

 gate the fauna of Kamchatka. Komaroff, the 

 chief botanist of the Imperial Botanical 

 Garden in St. Petersburg, is the leader of the 

 botanical division. He has four assistants 

 and has to study the "flora of Kamchatka and 

 its distribution. The geological division con- 

 sists of two independent sections — one headed 

 by Krug, a mining engineer, is to study the 

 general geology and topography of Kam- 

 chatka ; the second section, headed by Konradi 

 of the Eussian Geological Survey, is to direct 

 a special investigation of the volcanoes in 

 Kamchatka. The meteorological division, 

 consisting of five members, under the direc- 

 tion of Vlassoff, of the observatory of St. 

 Petersburg, will study the climate of that 

 country. AU these four divisions are already 

 on that peninsula, busily engaged in their 

 respective investigations, which, it is pre- 

 sumed, wiU last about two years. 



