EEPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1924 59 



RESEARCHES FOE THE BENEFIT OF THE MUSEUM 



Numerous students of special groups of animals and plants of 

 which no specialists are attached to the scientific staff continue to 

 carry on research based on Museum material either at the Museum 

 itself or — as is mostly the case — at their home institution, the 

 specimens having been sent to them for study. Very often such 

 shipments have been to supplement material upon which they were 

 engaged, but in perhaps a majority of cases, and always of course 

 when imassorted, unclassified, and unidentified material has been 

 thus submitted to them, the Museum has been greatly benefited by 

 their researches. In such cases reports of progress is hardly ever 

 insisted on, and the results of such work, which often extends over 

 many years, can only be gathered from the bibliography which 

 accompanies this report. In the divisions the research work may, 

 for the carrying on of which time has to be snatched from the 

 routine curatorial work, be briefly summarized as follows: 



The curator of mammals, Gerrit S. Miller, jr., saw two manu- 

 scripts through the press, one on the telescoping of the cetacean 

 skull, the other being Bulletin No. 128*bf the National Museum, a 

 List of North American Recent Mammals completed to the end of 

 the calendar year 1923. 



Dr. Robert Ridgwaj 7 , curator of birds, reports that he is making 

 considerable progress on volumes 9 and 10 of Bulletin No. 50 of the 

 National Museum, the Birds of North and Middle America. Dr. 

 Charles W. Richmond, associate curator, and Bradshaw H. Swales, 

 honorary assistant curator of birds, continued work on the proposed 

 bulletin on the birds of Haiti and Santo Domingo, and published 

 descriptions of three new species from the island of Gonave, Haiti. 

 Considerable progress was also made on the proposed bulletin on the 

 type specimens of birds in the National Museum. During the year 

 two " lost " types have been rescued after considerable research, 

 namely, those of Pelionetta trowhridgei Baird, and Ardea patruelis 

 Peale, from Tahiti. Doctor Richmond also continued his biblio- 

 graphical, historical, and nomenclatorial researches. J. H. Riley, 

 aid, spent some time in the study of the birds brought home by the 

 Collins-Garner Congo expedition and began a report on them, and 

 also continued his work on the Chinese .material which has been 

 accumulating. 



The curator of reptiles and batrachians finished and submitted for 

 publication an extensive and critical paper on all the Chinese 

 herpetological material in the Museum, but particularly on the 

 collections recently made by Rev. D. C. Graham and A. de C. 

 Sowerby, with descriptions of many new species. The paper forms 

 practically an extension of his Herpetology of Japan, published in 



