Entomological Research
p. 31 · Read in the full issue
In the Marquesas
THE Marquesan project of the Pacific Entomological Survey, of which Mr.
E. P. Mumford (one of this year’s Lever hulme Research Fellows) was appointed Director in 1928, is now nearing its most interesting stage. Over a hundred taxo nomic papers have been issued in connec tion with the work as a whole, and Mr.
Mumford is now in the Hope Department at Oxford, working on an extensive sum mary and review of the work as a whole.
Patterned to some extent on the classic researches of Dr. R. C. L. Perkins in Hawaii, the Marquesan investigations consist essentially of a primary ecological survey, or study of the insects in relation to their environment —physical and biotic.
The Marquesas Islands are among the most isolated in the world, and were described by Perkins as “the choicest part of the oceanic islands of the Pacific after Ha waii.”
The final work may be of interest, not only to entomologists, but to geographers, botanists, meteorologists, and ethnolo gists. The interior of many of the islands was mapped for the first time, series of host plants collected, meteorological ob servations initiated (Univ. Calif. Public, in Geography, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 147-172, Ber keley, Calif., 1933) and native names of animals and plants, as well as place names, collected.
A preliminary report was received in Nature (Vol. 130, pp. 797-798). A brief account of the terrestrial and fresh-water fauna appeared in Ecology in January, but Mr. Mumford’s final report is still to come.— Discovery, February, 1936.