Abstract
AMONG the recent acquisitions of the Department of Zoology is a collection of 300 birds obtained by Mr. A. W. Vincent in the south-eastern district of the Belgian Congo. This is an area which has been very little investigated from the ornithological point of view. A valuable recent addition to the collection of Hemiptera (bugs) in the Department of Entomo logy consists of a collection of 17 specimens of Termitaphidse presented by Dr. J. G. Myers of the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, Trinidad. These rare and little-known insects are found only in the nests of white ants in America and in the Old World, but the nature of this association is not known. A purchase of particular interest is a collec tion of 500 beetles from Tibet, Central Asia, western China and the Altai Mountains; the majority of the specimens were described by Continental authors and are paratypes of species hitherto unrepresented in the Department. The Public Schools Exploration Society has presented the whole of the entomological collections made during its recent expedition in Newfoundland. The Department of Geology has acquired a collection of primitive fish-like Ostraco-derms comprising a hundred specimens obtained by Mr. Wickham King, chiefly from the Old Red Sand stone of Worcestershire; and a fine series collected by Dr. E. I. White and Mr. H. A. Toombs from Herefordshire, comprising many forms new to science, of which the most interesting are specimens of Pteraspis, which show for the first time the unusual form of the tail. A valuable collection of gemstones has been bequeathed to the Department of Minerals by the late Mr. T. B. Clarke-Thornhill, including ninety cut stones, many of them of large size, of various mineralsa fine series of sixteen coloured diamonds, parti-coloured corundum, tourmaline, opal, alexandrite, phenakite, etc.; also uncut specimens of opal, moonstone, and large masses of Kaurigum from New Zealand. The first meteorite to be recorded from Rhodesia, a stone weighing 48 lb. 11 oz. which fell on March 7, 1934, in the Mangwendi native reserve, 40 miles east of Salisbury, has been presented by the Government of Southern Rhodesia.
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Recent Acquisitions at the Natural History Museum. Nature 134, 695 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/134695b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/134695b0