A PARTY OF REPTILE HUNTERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LI, Issue 4408, 30 January 1930, Page 1

A PARTY OF REPTILE HUNTERS.

Among the through passengers for San Francisco by the Makura, which arrived in Wellington the other morning, was a party of scientists from Santa Barbara, California, who have been collecting in the East, in the islands of Flores, Bali, Java and Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula specimens of reptiles, mainly for the Field Museum, Chicago. The party comprises Messrs P. M. Chancellor, Norton Stuart, F. E. Guntrip, and B. Shantez. They have been in Malay and Sumatra some seven months in all, and have explored the whole of the islands and the peninsula very extensively. They have obtained specimens of tiie reticulated python from both Malay and .Sumatra, and specimens of the giant dragon-li-zard (varanus komodoensis), of Flores, besides numerous other reptiles. These specimens, not live reptiles, but their dried skins, and specimens canned and preserved in alcohol, they brought with them on the steamer, and they are picking up in Wellington several specimens of the tuatara lizard, which they obtained in New Zealand on their way to the East, when they spent a month or two in the Dominion, touring the North and South Islands and Chatham Island. The specimens of the tuatara lizard being taken from New Zealand are stuffed, and were obtained by permission of the Internal Affairs Department, to whom the scientists express thanks for courtesies extended in this respect.