610 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLVI. No. 1199 



tailed to assist the "War Department in road 

 building at the 16 cantonments. 



The Forest Service has given assistance to 

 the War and Navy Departments and to other 

 national agencies in locating new sources of 

 wood and in seasoning the product, has as- 

 sisted in the organization of a regiment of 

 engineers for forestry work abroad, and is now 

 cooperating with the "War Department in the 

 organization of a second regiment. The 

 "Weather Bureau, in addition to furnishing 

 weather information to the army and navy, 

 has assisted the "War Department in the or- 

 ganization of its aerological observation work 

 and of a regiment for gas and flame service. 



SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 



AMAZON EXHIBITS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF 

 PENNSYLVANIA MUSEUMi 



There is now on public exhibition at the 

 University of Pennsylvania Museum a large 

 share of the collections which Dr. "Wm. C. 

 Farabee made during his three years' explora- 

 tions of the Amazon, from which he returned 

 last year. It has taken him a year to go over 

 and catalogue his collections carefully, to label 

 them and to install them in the galleries on 

 the first floor of the museum. 



During his three years in South America 

 Dr. Farabee made his headquarters at Para, at 

 the mouth of the Amazon, from which all of 

 his various trips into the interior were made. 

 The first journey was a thousand miles up the 

 Amazon to Manaos, thence almost directly 

 north into the highlands which divide Brazil 

 from the Guianas, thence several hundred miles 

 westward until it was no longer possible to 

 travel by water, from which point he started 

 eastward overland through the southern por- 

 tion of British Guiana, spending many months 

 among the Carib and Arowak, most of whom 

 had never before seen a white man. 



It was here that Dr. Farabee did some of his 

 most important scientific work, since here 

 were grouped a number of entirely distinct 

 tribes of Indians, all of whom are rapidly di- 

 minishing in population and some of which 

 are on the verge of extingnishment. From 



1 rrom Old Penn. 



this point, having sent his collection down the 

 Amazon, he made the terrible journey across 

 the divide and down the Corentyne, during 

 which he lost most of his equipment, all of his 

 food and medicine, was obliged to live on 

 monkeys and alligator meat, when even those 

 were available, suffered terribly from fevers 

 and finally reached the coast more dead than 

 alive. Thence he went to the island of Barba- 

 dos, where he met Colonel Roosevelt just re- 

 turning from his trip through Brazil. 



Dr. Farabee's second tour was up to the head 

 waters of the Amazon Eiver into the lower 

 hills of the Andes in eastern Peru. Unfortu- 

 nately, about the time he reached this section 

 news of the great European war had come up 

 the river and utterly dislocated all of his ar- 

 rangements, making it impossible to get money 

 or bring up supplies, so that he was obliged to 

 return to Para, but not until after he had made 

 some highly interesting and important re- 

 searches and had secured a great number of 

 the finest specimens of Conebo pottery in ex- 

 istence, which he managed to bring down with 

 him and which are now on exhibition. 



Subsequent trips were up some of the south- 

 ern affluents of the Amazon, marching across 

 from one great river to another, and investi- 

 gating country never before trodden by a white 

 man. Another series of explorations were to 

 the north of the Amazon, not many hundred 

 miles from the coast, where he also found 

 hitherto unknown tribes and where he made 

 collections, esptecially of large pottery animals 

 used for burial urns. These were deep in the 

 Amazon wood. 



The results of all these journeyings are now 

 on exhibition on the first floor of the museum. 

 The room to the left is occupied with ancient 

 and modern pottery and those whoever they 

 were that made this pottery had a very much 

 higher culture than any existing Indians in 

 South America. It is doubtful if the Incas 

 themselves at any time reached as fine a de- 

 velopment in the making of pottery, but there 

 is not the slightest clue as to who these people 

 were, whence they came, when nor how they 

 disappeared. None of the Indians who now 

 occupy that portion of the country have even 



