e & 
October 16th may seem like a long ways away but in the scheme of 
things it really isn't. It seems as though I have been away from you all 
a long, long time, and yet I know that [ haven't. Time seems to go 
much faster these past few years than it did in the days when I first 
came to the Zoo, 
Serry to hear that the fishing was poor down at Mombasa, There 
is quite a feeling here in the United States, at least in Washington, 
that sport fishing is good off Mombasa, I wouldn't be surprised if you 
are seeing more and more of our wealthy men showing up for the 
fishing rather than for the hunting. I'll take you up on that offer of 
going down to the coast and doing a little sailing. I am anxious to see 
both Mombasa and the Northwest Frontier. WhenI do come back I 
think that we should arrange to go up to the Northern Frontier and 
chase down these silly naked mole rats. Our pathologist is quite hep 
on them because he thinks they might be extremely useful for testing 
various cosmetics, so he wants to get a lot of studies done on their 
thermal regulation and actual skin condition. I hadn't realized this but 
most of the cosmetics before they are tested out on young girls are 
tested out on shaved rabbits, and this is not as good as "human skin". 
They have been looking for test animals for years. 
As you may recall, I thought when I left you folks that I would 
return to the United States and devote every Friday morning to going 
to the Library of Congress lboking up things on bongo and really put 
considerable time and effort into this. That was just another idea that 
hasn't worked out. Putting a new pathologist on board, getting a new 
snake man in, in charge of the reptile department, various and sundry 
personnel problems, as well as the TB scare, have occupied a lot of 
my time. You will be happy to know that the X-rays that were just 
recently taken of the gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees proved |. 
to be negative. At least we could not find any evidence of tuberculosis. 
The skin tests are much weaker this time, in fact there were only | 
two animals who showed any evidence of a skin reaction. It will take 
several weeks to get the cultures that we did on stomach content. It 
looks as though we are going to come up with a beautiful negative, and 
believe me, I am surely glad that is looking that way, although we 
are still continuing treatment on the animals. So, as Shakespeare 
said, 'Much ado about nothing." 
The list of animals you have sounds great, Have you heard anything 
from Philadelphia regarding the pygmy geese’? I had a long talk with 
Gus Griswold and he wanted to know the price of pygmy geese. He | 
thought that he would go in with us on this and give you a real nice 
bunch of animals to get. Iam also sure that Bill Conway and the St. . 
Louis Zoo (Bill Hoff) would want to get involved in this particular thing 
if the price were what they consider "right'’. The colobus monkey « . 
that we want is to be a female. One of cur females has just hada baby . | 
that is a very lovely, very nice animal. She is taking good care of a 
the baby. Strangely enough the chameleons that we have are doing 
better than they have ever done before in the Zoo. That little rascal 
that I took off your hibiscus bush is fat and sassy and doing exception-~ 
ally well. I don't know exactly why these should do better than others 
have in the past. Our new reptile man is trying to evaluate what bee 
