and on possibilities of improving man and his domesticated plants and animals.

NEPTUNE'S SEA-BIT

TEN STEPSONS

All of this past was ours, as we planned the Cleveland Museum's South Atlantic Expedition. We were eager for the sight of the strange birds and animals needed in our collections, and we openly admitted that we longed for adventure on the decks of our little windjammer headed for foreign lands.

Of our original party of sixteen, only four were to return at the end of two years and a half; for we changed crews twice, sending men home ill with African fevers or worn with exposure and the dull monotony between islands, while we were spending 250 days under sail, logging 20,000 miles.

It has been well

running the alphabet from a for army to y

for yacht, that a cook is more important than a captain. Now, I always stood on the good side of William Hall, for he was the cook, and by force of circumstance I was only the captain. W. Kenneth Cuyler, big, red-headed biologist in charge of field collecting, and "Long John" da Lomba, who knew ships and the sea, also stood well with William; so they, too, completed the cruise.

William cooked, fished for specimens, and at times skinned birds. Cuyler ranged and clambered, studied and collected, and helped Long John with the ship and the boats; and Long John himself-well, John looks more like a pirate than even "a

pirate right out of a book." However, in spite of the silver earrings which he sometimes wears, John is anything but a pirate; perhaps once a "buckaroo," when he strode the decks as chief mate of the famous whalers Daisy and Chas. W. Morgan. Now he is gentle and kindly; but even with the passage of years he will never forget how to handle a whaleboat through bad surf or in front of wavebeaten rocks in mid-ocean.

A CHALLENGE TO MARITIME SUPERSTITION

We took the albatross, the golden dolphin, Mother Carey's chicken and Mother Carey's goose, Pharaoh's chicken, griffons

and sea serpents, and many other animals of fable and antiquity. The violent death of some of these is considered by mariners to be a sure way of bringing trouble on one's head. And when one starts out avowedly to hunt for trouble he usually finds it.

Thus did our men explain why ill luck dogged our schooner's wake. We met storms, head winds, and disheartening calms; men were sick from fevers and exposure, usually when they were most needed; our small boats were battered on hidden reefs and iron-bound shores, and one whaleboat was wrecked in making a difficult landing. In distant ports, of Africa and South America, there were wearisome delays while the schooner underwent the repairs always needed after many months at sea.

Fortunately, the tragic drama at times became melodrama and even light operaa background of native huts with too much covering and native maidens with too little; guitars softly strumming the

plaintive minors of a primitive people; the hypnotic beat of a Senegambian tomtom, summoning ebony damsels to quiver in the throes of a voodoo dance; shabby beach-combers and thirsty mariners; soldiers-of-fortune and the multihued warriors of colorful nations; and girls to lure the sailors from their duty-girls ranging in complexion from the sun at high noon, through the café-au-lait of Brazil and the Cape Verdes, to the blackest blue-black of Africa.

VICARIOUS ADVENTURERS

The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is a comparative infant in the circle of scientific institutions, for it was not organized until 1920, by Harold T. Clark, Lewis B. Williams, Alwin C. Ernst, and Dr. George W. Crile. Infused with the enthusiasm of a loyal group of sponsors and patrons, at the tender age of two and a half years it looked about for fields of endeavor beyond those of Ohio. At the suggestion of a friendly "elder brother"

among museums, it decided to investigate almost inaccessible islands and shores of the South Atlantic, of which but little was known.

In addition to specimens secured on the islands visited, the Cleveland Museum was to receive, for undertaking this difficult work and bringing study material to America, many rare birds from North and South America and the South Pacific islands from the collections of Dr. Leonard Sanford and the American Museum of Natural History.

Mrs. Dudley S. Blossom, trustee of the Cleveland Museum, made the voyage

financially possible, and Captain George Comer, retired from the sea after half a century on sea-elephant ships, who had collected birds in the Antarctic and seen service with MacMillan in the Arctic, was sent along the New England coast to search for sailing ships.

There was but small choice, and from the few available the Lucy R., a Nova Scotia three-masted schooner built in 1920, was purchased for the voyage by the museum's director, Paul M. Rea, and placed for overhauling and refitting on the ways of a New London, Connecticut, shipyard. Warehouses in the old whaling port