26 K + * ' ' Report of the President 



Continued Exploration in Asia 



Asia, by tradition believed to be the "Cradle of the Human 



Race," is known to be the cradle of the great mammalian races 



which spread westward into Europe and Africa, 



Third an( j eastward into the Americas. Our knowledge 



yv clitic 



„ ..„. of this wonderful chapter in mammalian and also 



Expedition .,.-„. . , , - ,- , , , 



reptilian history is absolutely confined to the rela- 

 tively few Geologic Horizons of India, Burma and China. To 

 break into this unknown chapter of the life history of the earth 

 and perhaps to throw further light on the prehistory of man 

 were the two main objects of the Third Asiatic Expedition, ad- 

 mirably organized and financed under the leadership of Associate 

 Curator Roy Chapman Andrews, by the American Museum of 

 Natural History in cooperation with the American Asiatic Asso- 

 ciation and its magazine Asia. A representative collection of the 

 mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fishes of the entire East 

 Asiatic Provinces is already assured, as a tangible result of the 

 first year of this expedition and of the two previous trips under 

 the same leader. 



Plans are being made for the publication of the results of these 

 collections in a series of volumes of Asiatic Contributions in 

 Zoology and Geology, similar in extent to the series of volumes 

 entitled The Zoology of the Belgian Congo. It is expected that 

 in this work the Museum will secure the cooperation of leading 

 American scholars and specialists, as is being done in the prepara- 

 tion of the unique and valuable Congo series. Besides collecting 

 through Shansi and Shensi and in Wan-hsien, the first year has 

 been chiefly exploratory — in zoology under Mr. Andrews and 

 Mr. Clifford H. Pope, and in palaeontology under Associate 

 Curator Walter Granger. Many of the rarest living animals of 

 the world have been collected and are on the way to the Museum. 

 Field work in Mongolia opens in the spring of 1922. Mr. 

 Andrews's reports and narrative will appear in Asia, the journal 

 of the American Asiatic Association with which the Museum 

 is in cordial cooperation, and a series of articles will also appear 

 in Natural History, the Museum Journal. 



The generous sum of $161,881.50 has been promised for this 

 expedition. This provides an average of $32,376.30 as an annual 

 expenditure for the period of five years. The list of those who 



