44 Report of the President 



The mammals collected by Mr. Carriker in Venezuela and 

 part of those collected in Colombia have been identified by 

 the Curator, and Mr. Andrews has prepared two papers on 

 cetacean material gathered by him in Japan. Mr. Miller has 

 continued work at available intervals from routine work on a 

 comprehensive paper on the birds of Nicaragua, and has also 

 prepared a monographic revision of a genus of kingfishers. 

 Mr. Chapman has made provisional identification of the birds 

 received from Colombia preparatory to describing the many 

 new forms that the collection contains. Six papers have been 

 published during the year representing this department; these 

 include two by Assistant Curator Andrews on cetaceans and 

 two by the Curator — one on the mammals of Venezuela, and 

 the other on the mammals collected by Mr. Andrews in the 

 Dutch East Indies. There is also a short paper by Dr. D. G. 

 Elliot on " The Generic Name Cercopithecus" and a long paper 

 on the very important subject of " Revealing and Concealing 

 Coloration in Birds and Mammals," by the Honorable Theo- 

 dore Roosevelt. 



The current catalogue of mammals is complete to date, 

 and much advance has been made in the preparation of the 

 index, although much still remains to be done to complete the 

 index catalogue, the osteological material not yet having been 

 reached. The birds are nearly all catalogued to date, including 

 those received the present year from Colombia. 



EXTINCT VERTEBRATES 

 Henry Fairfield Osborn, Curator Emeritus; W. D. Matthew, Curator 



Department of Vertebrate Paleontology. — The prin- 

 cipal accessions for the year have been through Museum 

 expeditions in charge of Messrs. Barnum Brown, Walter 

 Granger and Albert Thomson. 



In the early part of the year Mr. Brown investigated a 

 number of reported discoveries of fossil mammals in the 

 southern United States, Mexico and Cuba. Two important 

 specimens were obtained in Mexico, a complete carapace of 

 Glyptodon and the lower jaw of a peculiar type of Mastodon; 

 and several promising fields for future exploration were dis- 



