38 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



highways. Starting from Mexico City, we leave almost immediately 

 the desert plateau and climb into crisp, sweet-smelling pine forests 

 near the snow-capped volcanoes. A little over an hour brings us to 

 another desert region, which becomes increasingly drier as we ap- 

 proach Tehuacan. A half hour from Tehuacan the highway makes a 

 sudden drop of 2,000 feet. Warm air rising from the valley condenses 

 at these mountain tops and every afternoon a heavy fog covers the 

 hills for a very short distance. Here we very suddenly leave desert 

 hills and find before leaving the mountains a few g - reen hills, grassy 

 and scattered with trees which are filled with many bromelias. After 

 the steep drop in the highway the countryside gradually becomes more 

 verdant for about 20 miles to the town of Orizaba. Again a drop in 

 altitude, this time gradual, takes us into a region of dense tropical 

 vegetation. Here are sugar plantations, bananas, and coffee. Below 

 Potrero the coastal plain is reached, which at Veracruz is dry grass- 

 land with scattered low trees and, along rivers, very heavy brush. 



We arrived on New Year's Eve by train in Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. 

 We had hardly established ourselves there in the boarding house of 

 Doha Carmen when we were serenaded by a group of little boys sing- 

 ing a plaintive little tune, "Charity, charity for this poor old one — " 

 The old year, a dummy made of old clothing and straw, happily smil- 

 ing a silly painted grin under an old sombrero, was enthroned upon 

 an old chair which they carried. Later they spent the alms received for 

 sodas. The next day we found the old year in a back yard, his smile a 

 little hollow, for the pigs had eaten one of his arms. 



An interesting side trip from Tehuantepec was to Salina Cruz. 

 Here we hoped especially to collect a sea snake. The people there knew 

 them well, "Yes," they would say, "black above and yellow below. 

 Now just the other day a fisherman came in with one. . . . ." What- 

 ever joy we might have had in our specimens from Salina Cruz was 

 dulled by the fact that among them was no sea snake. Later one 

 of the boys brought one in. At the present time it doesn't matter so 

 much that we did not collect it ourselves, but at that time it did. 



After Tehuantepec, two of the most profitable months of the trip 

 were spent in southern Chiapas at La Esperanza, the home of 

 E. Matuda. During July and August, through the assistance of 

 Dr. Alfonse Dampf, the Duges collection from the Alfredo Duges 

 Museum of the state college in Guanajuato was brought to the Poly- 

 technic Institute in Mexico City, where it was possible to study the 

 collection. 



Our field work ended in August 1940, and we found that our 

 collections totaled a little over 20,000 reptiles and amphibians belong- 

 ing to about 500 species, many of them new to science. 



