84 Report of the President 



Work by Assistant Curator G. K. Noble on the amphibians 



of the Museum's Congo collections is completed. It includes 



a survey of species of the Congo and a check list 



Research and w ith keys of all African amphibians. Among 

 Publication ,,'•■, 1 1 , . • , 



morphological problems having taxonomic bear- 

 ing discussed are the development of the vertebral column of 

 Xenopus mulleri, and the relations of the shoulder girdles and 

 anterior limb bones of the species of 4 genera, illustrated with 

 15 microphotographs. It will form a volume of the American 

 Museum's Congo reports in the Bulletin. 



The staff was increased in October when Mr. C. L. Camp, 

 formerly of the University of California, returned from 

 France. His thesis on the "Comparative Myology and Oste- 

 ology of the Lizards" for Ph.D. at Columbia University, will 

 be prepared as a part of the work of the department, and pub- 

 lished in the American Museum Bulletin. The work includes 

 much dissection and permanent record in a form adapted for 

 exhibition purposes, of comparative studies of musculature and 

 skeletons. It covers also detailed study of new fossil material 

 from the Eocene and Oligocene of North America, attempts 

 to correlate the muscles of existing lizards with those of other 

 vertebrates, especially the Dinosauria, and to point out the rela- 

 tions of muscles and skeletons to the classification of lizards 

 and to their adaptive radiation. 



Work on the snakes of the Congo, by K. P. Schmidt, to 

 accompany his volume on Congo crocodiles, lizards and turtles, 

 is nearly ready for publication. It contains a resume of the 

 distribution of African reptiles. 



In the work on the lizard fauna of Lower California and 

 the Southwest by the Associate Curator, a paper was issued 

 in the Bulletin giving synopses of 23 new species and a new 

 genus, preliminary to the larger paper on the reviews of genera 

 with illustrations, maps and keys. In the comparative study of 

 shoulder girdles of iguanid genera, especial interest attaches to 

 the new genus in its position between Uta and Sceloporus and 

 its relation to more ancient arboreal forms. 



Other papers published in 1919 are, in the Bulletin, "De- 

 scriptions of New Amphibians and Reptiles from Santo Do- 



