Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1897-10-29
Scientific Expeditions That Were Sent
Out This Year.
ADDING TO TIE sum OF KNOWLEDGE
important Work Carried On by the
Leading Institutions.
OBSTACLES AND HARDSHIPS

| opening of the foot ball season in October,
! the activities of our great universities ana
colleges are wholly suspended. In realty
| some of the most important scientlhc anu
| experimental work carried on by the ois
| educational institutions is done during the
| long vacation. OF recent years 1t has be-
| come more and more the custom for parties
| Of college professors and students to scour
| the land and skim the seas In search OF
| animal vegetable ard mineral life to add
| to their Laboratories and to the sum total
| of human knowledge.
| During the past summer an unusual num-
| Der of these expeditions have been In the
field, and they have been scattered from
| the arctic circle to far below the equator.
While their mates have been busy at tennis
| and golf, these enthusiastic young scien-
lists under the direction of older special
| lists, have been dredging along the Pacific
coast turning over the sands of the south
| western desert or searching among the
| rocks and cragS of the great mountain
ranges. They have been shipwrecked,
| rsked the peris Of fever and malaria, and
| endured all the danger and hardships that
| fall to the lot of explorers. Most of these
parties have returned within the past few
weeks, bringing specimens of more or less
| value to add to the museums OF their vari-
| GUS institutions.
| Although Columbia has been busy all
summer moving into her new quarters,
| she has been represented in the field by
more parties than any other single institu-
ton. The most important of these was the
| geological expedition, under the direction
| of Prof. L. b. Wilson. This party consisted
! of fifteen persons and left New York in
! June to study the marine life of Puget
| sound and the Alaska coast. At Port
| Townsend they found many interesting
| specimens, and after three weeks work
| in this region they stored their specimens
| and fnr 1,CIyn
| a month they explored the waters of the
coast and inlets and obtained many speci-
| mems of the little known marine life of
| this northern coast. 1t was hard work for
all the members of the party dredging
! along the shores in open boats and sorting
| the iishy specimens but the men brought
| as much enthusiasm TO the work as the
| crowd of argonautS rushing past them to
| klondike did to their search for gold At
| the conclusion of their labors, the whole
| party, with their precious specimens, took
passage for home on the Inflated steamer
| City of Mexico.
| A Serious Setback.
AS the newspaper public knows. the
| steamer was wrecked and the Columbia
students lost not only their collections, but
| their baggage and instruments as well, and
| they were lucky to get off with their lives
| They reached Seattle stripped of most of
| the results Of their summers work Moth
| ing daunted by their ill-luck, the collegians
| borrowed some instruments from the Uni
| versity OF Washington and renewed their
| explorations In Puget sound. This time, as
| though ir. reparation for their previous
| miSfortunes, they were rewarded by finding
! some rare specimens which scientists
among them Prof Wilson. have been seek
| ing for years. They included several spcci-
| mems of the parasite molluSks known as
! sea cucumbers, which exceedingly i'm
| portant in establishing the origin of the
snail family, certain jelly fish never before
| found ard some new coral-like animals.
| II consider that We're amply recon-
pensed for our hardships and losses by our
| finds about Port Townsend" said Prof
| Wilson in discussing the matter. we
| have found that Puget sound is a most
valuable field for research for certain
| forms of marine life. The particular speci-
mems which we obtained highly in
| teresting from the scientists point of view
1 believe that this field work is about the
! most useful that a university can under
| take, and l am glad to see that with every
year more and more parties are going OUT
Searching for Fossils.
While these Columbia men were roughng
| 1t on the northwest coast party of their
| fellow students, under the direction of Prof.
! Osborn, were searching in Colorado and
| Wyoming for specimens of extinct animal
| life. They We're amply rewarded, finding
| among other specimens, the skeleton of a
| huge dnosaur and proving that these great
| animals once occupied this region as well
| as the equatorial districts in which their
bones have formerly been found. Still a
| third party of Columbia men were busy at
| Woods Hole. on the Massachusetts coast,
| gathering botanical and biological Speci-
| mems.
| The Pacific coast was the scene of
| great deal of scientific activity during the
summer months. One of the most preten-
| tiouS of these efforts that of President
| Jordan and his party of Leland Stanford
students. This particular expedition visited
! the Pribyloff Islands for the particular
purpose of studying the seal and also to
| brand the young seals, in accordance with
| the provisions of the United States govern
| ment. The trip was successful and several
| hundred young seals were branded in a
| manner that is expected to protect them
| from the pelagic hunters for the coming
| three seasons.
| In British Columbia DIR. Franz Boas of
| the American Museum of Natural History
and DR.. Livingston Farrand of Columbia
| were packing across the country, gathering
and ornaments of the Indians in that
| region, and studying their language GUS
toms and physical characteristics.
| On the Northwest Coast.
| They were absent from civilization for
| several weeks, camping in the open, and
| having no society except that of their In
/ dian guides and workmen. One of the prin-
| cipal difficulties that they encountered was
| in getting the consent Of the Indians to
make excavations among their ancient
| burial mounds and on the sites of aban-
| doned towns They secured full outfit of
an Indian village, and took casts of the
| forms and features of the inhabitants
| from which models will be constructed for
| group in the American Museum They
also obtained some of the tokens. charms
| and religious emblems of the Indians. DIR.
| Boas returned to New York a few days
| ago, and expressed himself as fully salts
| fled with the results of his anthropological
| expedition.
| On the California coast the Smithsonian
| Institute and Leland Stanford, Jr, Univer-
| sity have been at work together gathering
| specimens of marine life. Further south,
| on the Santa Catalina Islands, Harvard
| and the University of California have been
| collecting antiquities.
The search for antiquities on the site Of
| the ancient civilization of the continent
| was carried on by the representatives of
| several universities. DR.. Frederick Starr
| of the University of Chicago has been col
/ lecting in Mexico, and DIR. Adoiph Bande-
! lier has beer delving among the ruins of
ancient Peru and Bolivia. Prof. Uler has
| hca h;no he Of