December 22, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



879 



Peru and the northern extension of Australia. 

 Some of its most important islands and groups 

 represent very large extents of land surface. 

 Indeed, the whole region, taken together, is 

 considerably more than a fourth of the entire 

 area of the United States. Sumatra is larger 

 than Kansas and Nebraska together by some 

 20,000 square miles. Borneo is about as large 

 as California and the New England states to- 

 gether. Celebes is. twice the size of Illinois. 

 Ceram is larger than the entire Hawaiian 

 group taken together. The magnificent Island 

 of New Guinea is larger than Texas and 

 Louisiana together, and vastly more varied in 

 topography and conditions than either of these 

 states. The great Philippine group of above 

 a thousand islands, comprises a land area of 

 more than 127,000 square miles, scattered 

 through 15 degrees of latitude. 



A large part of this entire area is covered 

 with dense tropical forests, but there are also 

 considerable areas of mangrove swamps, up- 

 land meadows, and partially arid districts, the 

 whole threaded with numerous streams and 

 with occasional lakes. As a general thing, 

 these countries are very mountainous, many 

 of the mountains reaching into high altitudes, 

 and carrying faunae and floras of extraordinary 

 interest. In New Guinea some of the moun- 

 tains are snow-capped. Extensive evidences 

 of volcanic action, both ancient and recent, 

 are commonly visible, though extensive out- 

 crops of metamorphic rocks occur in most of 

 the groups. 



Many of the most interesting of the islands 

 of this region are, biologically speaking, prac- 

 tically terras incognitas, having been touched, 

 if at all, only at isolated points, by travelers or 

 expeditions. It is a common experience in the 

 Philippines — even after fifteen years of Amer- 

 ican occupation — to find important groups of 

 living organisms richly represented, which 

 have never been previously recorded as exist- 

 ing here at all. It is not difficult to enter the 

 more extensive forests at almost any point 

 and stumble upon magnificent forest trees 

 that are wholly unknown to science. The 

 more inconspicuous groups among plants, as 

 for instance the fungi, have been scarcely 



touched, though, so far as they have been ex- 

 amined, they show a remarkable proportion of 

 new and unique forms. In many groups of 

 insects of the greatest biological and economic 

 importance, we find here a vast fauna, most of 

 the species of which are yet unknown to sci- 

 ence. For instance, so far as known to me, 

 only two species of Aphididas have ever been 

 recorded from the Philippines, and only two 

 species of Thysanoptera, whereas we possess 

 an astonishing display in these two groups. 

 During my first year at Los Banos, I brought 

 together at this one point a far greater num- 

 ber of species of the important family Ichneu- 

 monidas than had previously been described 

 from the entire Malayan region, including 

 Java, Sumatra, the Peninsula, and New 

 Guinea. In three years, at this one point, I 

 have also far exceeded in many universally 

 distributed groups, the number of species re- 

 ported for entire British India. In certain 

 groups with which I am specially familiar, it 

 is very evident that a knowledge of the 

 Malayan fauna will completely modify our 

 ideas of the comparative anatomy and taxon- 

 omy of these groups for the world. 



To illustrate what might be very rapidly 

 accomplished here, I may say that during 

 three years, with but scant time myself for 

 field work, but by the use of a Cuban boy 

 whom I have trained for this work through 

 eleven years, and a few Eilipino students, I 

 have been enabled to get together very exten- 

 sive collections of fungi in this locality, which 

 have been occupying a large amount of at- 

 tention from half a dozen of the world's best 

 mycologists, producing a succession of papers 

 of the highest importance, and making known 

 to science a very large number of remarkable 

 fungus types, including the causative organ- 

 isms of a very considerable number of impor- 

 tant plant diseases. Similarly, these activ- 

 ities — mostly in this immediate locality — in 

 connection with the insects, have produced a 

 mass of valuable materials that is now occupy- 

 ing a large part of the time of above thirty 

 well-known entomological specialists through- 

 out the world. This has been done wholly 

 extra-officially, and at my own personal ex- 



