REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 31 



The Bureau of Science at Manila contributed a large lot of plants 

 from Amboina, Borneo, and the Philippines. From the Philippines 

 came also an important collection of named chaetognaths transferred 

 by the Bureau of Fisheries, and land shells donated by Mr. Walter F. 

 Webb; and butterflies from the Philippines and Yucatan were con- 

 tributed by Mr. B. Preston Clark. Hawaii sent a large lot of plants 

 collected by Mr. A. S. Hitchcock, besides algae and mollusks. 



South America was represented by the important collections of 

 mammals, amphibians, and reptiles collected by the Peruvian expe- 

 dition of 1914—15, under the auspices of Yale University and the 

 National Geographic Society, adding the first fully representative 

 series in these groups received by the Museum from any large area 

 of South America. The Museum has been and is even now extremely 

 deficient in material from that continent, and the collections pre- 

 sented by the authorities responsible for this expedition are therefore 

 of the utmost value as forming the basis of future work by American 

 zoologists in that long-neglected field. A collection of fishes from 

 western Colombia, received by exchange from the Carnegie Museum, 

 Pittsburgh, supplements material obtained a few years ago in connec- 

 tion with the Smithsonian biological survey of the Isthmus of Pan- 

 ama, as did also a series of plants from Panama contributed by Mr. 

 Ellsworth P. Killip. From Argentina, Venezuela, Curacao, and the 

 Galapagos Islands came large lots of plants. 



South and Central America, as well as western United States, were 

 represented in the donation by Dr. Harrison G. Dyar, custodian of 

 Lepidoptera, of personal collections aggregating some 35,000 insects 

 and including some 15,000 named Lepidoptera, 1,000 named sawflies, 

 and large series of mosquitoes and miscellaneous Diptera. 



A new genus and species of river dolphin from Tung Ting Lake, 

 China, afforded a remarkable novelty in the increment to the mammal 

 collection, belonging to a group of porpoises which includes nu- 

 merous extinct forms found fossil in Europe and the eastern United 

 States, its only known living relative occurring in the large rivers 

 of South America. 



In northern China interesting series of birds, mammals, fishes, rep- 

 tiles, and insects were collected for the Museum by Mr. Arthur de C. 

 Sowerby, who has lately returned to England for war duty. These 

 supplement collections made by him in that country for the Museum 

 during the past 10 years. From China came also some 1,200 plants 

 from the Canton Christian College, and Chinese and Japanese plants- 

 were obtained from the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. 



The Collins-Garner Congo expedition, on which the Museum is rep- 

 resented by Mr. C. R. W. Aschemeier, sent large lots of well-prepared 

 mammals and birds and smaller numbers of insects, plants, and shells 

 from the French Congo, greatly needed for comparison with the 



