60 Report of the President 



thorough study of the larger problems of evolution and distri- 

 bution in the case of invertebrate organisms, especially those 

 in the region lying between North and South America. To 

 this end the department as a whole has profited greatly 

 through its participation in the Porto Rican survey of the 

 New York Academy of Sciences. During the year Curator 

 Crampton revisited the island to complete its general recon- 

 naissance and to make special collections; Mr. Roy W. Miner 

 investigated the marine fauna of the shores about Guanica 

 Harbor in effective cooperation with Professor Raymond C. 

 Osburn who was engaged in deep-water collecting in the same 

 region, and Dr. Lutz with Mr. Mutchler prosecuted entomo- 

 logical studies in characteristic localities. Through the 

 generosity of Mr. B. Preston Clark, and with the cooperation 

 of the officers of the Ferro-carril de Samana y Santiago, Mr. 

 Frank E. Watson was enabled to begin field-work in Santo 

 Domingo, which is the essential link between Porto Rico and 

 Cuba, where Dr. Lutz has made collections in previous years. 

 Mr. Miner also spent a month in Vermont and Massachusetts 

 to amplify the North American series of Myriapoda. Mean- 

 while, Dr. Lutz and others of the staff have continued the 

 intensive investigation of the local insect fauna in cooperation 

 with the New York Entomological Society; the fruits of the 

 above field-work are scores of thousands of specimens that are 

 peculiarly valuable for the prosecution of the tasks undertaken 

 by the department. 



Several papers by members of the department have 

 appeared and many others have been advanced. Dr. Lutz 

 . has published "A List of Spiders with Notes on 

 their Distribution," and also the results of his 

 experiments with Drosophila ampelophila concerning natural 

 selection. He has also nearly completed for press an extended 

 review of the biometric work on the Laws of Variation, and is 

 engaged in a study of certain scale insects, as well as the 

 Hymenoptera of the West Indies and southern United States. 

 Messrs. Leng and Mutchler published in 1914 a list of the 

 Antillean Coleoptera, and Mr. Leng published in 1915 a list 

 of the Carabidse of Florida; these investigators are continuing 

 their interesting studies on Caribbean Coleoptera. Mr. 



