Page Seventeen 



to get a fow nuuiHiials to letricvc the poor start I had made butat tliat I 

 am away behind my schedule now for I hoped to get at least 150 to 200 

 specimens and count myself lucky that I got 100 under the circumstances. 

 We found out just where Richardson collected, etc., and that informa- 

 tion should be of value for a move of half a day up or down the river 

 means a big change in the fauna. 



"C'herrie got better than 400 specimens all told, })ringing his total 

 up to about 1700 while mine is 740. I had been holding my numbers up 

 to 50% of his, but I fear he has too great a lead on me, now. 



"I did not deem it advisable to make any more moves out of Loja 

 as we were about out of supplies, cotton, arsenic, etc., (although some 

 shells had been fonvarded on to us at Loja per instructions I left at 

 Portovelo), and our time is drawing .short. I saw a great deal of country 

 and shall have a lot to tell you about it. 



"What I want to do now is to make the trip to Shingata, near Nation, 

 which will give us a representation of the fauna of the Central-eastern 

 Andean forests, which strip we have not as yet sampled. The company 

 has a dredging proposition in that region, have explored there and have 

 men there now so I am well posted in advance and it sounds good for 

 large mammals. Our Loja trip showed me what appears to be the south- 

 ern limit of the central Andean fore.sts and there is a body of heavy 

 virgin forest a short day from here, the southernmost forest between the 

 western Andes and the eastern range. This looked so good to us and I 

 heard such good reports of it that we are going to run over there for a 

 week beginning this Thursday before we go to Shingata. 



''Enough ammunition has arrived — all except the express shipmant 

 and it is in Guayaquil and should arrive here shortly — to make us rest 

 easy on that score, but now it is a question of time. Cherrie is impatient 

 to get a steamer north not later than the first week in February. We 

 finish up by the end of January and that gives very little tims for all I 

 had hoped to see accomplished. If possible I shall come north with 

 Cherrie, but it may be that I may have to take a later stsamar to finish 

 out m}' several errands to Quito and several palaeontological sites — Dr. 

 Matthew has staked me to a small reconnaisasnce fund. 



''I fully appreciate what remains to be done in Ecuador and hope 

 with you that this is only the start of a clean-up job. Sorry that we 

 can't do more of the cleaning up now! I have so manv localities in mind 

 here, well worth all of the time that a collector could give them. 



