AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 111, 11 May 1923, Page 10

AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY

POLAR EXPLORER'S NEW ROLE

CAPTAIN G. H. WILKINS ON HIS

MISSION,

(FlOlt OUR OWM COIRESPOKDINT.)

LONDON, 20th February. Captain G. H. Wilkins, who was naturalist with the late Sir Ernest Shackleton on the Quest, sails to-day for Australia where ho is to conduct an expedition on behalf of the Natural History Section ,of the British Museum. An American scientific expedition has recently been through Australia, and the British Museum trustees have felt that something would have to be done, otherwiße in fifty years' time people would have to go to New York for a really good collection.

It was the work he was doing on the natural history specimens collected during the Quest voyage that first brought" Captain Wilkins to the notice of Sir Sidney Harmer, Director of the Natural History Museum. The museum collection of small Australian mammals has some serious gaps, and it is to fill these gaps that Captain Wilkins is to be sent on the expedition. He has been given carte blanche, by 'the museum authorities, who have received a special grant from the Treasury for the purposes of the expedition. The staff will be entirely Australian, and will be chosen by Captain Wilkins personally. He has cabled to Australia for applications, and ex pects to have a first batch for selection awaiting him as soon as he reaches Perth. He will himself be the ornithologist, and will take, in addition, a mammalogist, a zoologist, an entomologist, a taxidermist, and. probably, a geologist. '

"We are making the Roma railhead our first collecting station," he said, "because in the tropics we must work in the dry season. Cape Grenville, Torres Straits, will be our second collecting station, and we shall then work southward, along the coast. Dried specimens will be- forwarded from various points to England. We shall probably use Fomd cars for our field work, and a schooner for our work in the North Queensland islands. Our journey will not be a continuous one, but will depend.on suitable weather conditions. The most interestingfand novel specimens should be fresh, water fish in tile rivers and small lakes and the small rodents on the islands bordering the coast of Queensland, because thera the isolated topographical conditions and the restricted food supply .is likely to have evolved' some distinct and novel; types,. ; especially:.^anipng' 1: the rodents. Wo ■ shafl make-.our; collection'a. thoroughly representative one,.- though specialising in small rodents and the smaller marsupials. The British Museum has very few mammals of this kind."

There is no question of competition with the Australian museums, which, especially in Sydney, have representative collections. Duplicate specimens will be presented wherever possible to the Australian museums. A LIFE OF ADVENTURE. Captain Wilkins is a South Australian, and has had an adventurous career. He was far four years with the' Stefansson Expedition, going originally as photographer, and , later, on the loss of his camera, taking up natural history work. Returning to England in 1917 to find the war on, ha enlisted with the A.1.F., joining the Australian Flying Corps. He was in every battle after August, 1917. He assisted in collecting material for Captain Bean's book, "The History of the A.1.F.," going along a new front within an hour of r its capture after every battle and taking photographs. In the preface, written by Sir John Monash, special reference is made to the difficult and dangerous work done by Captain Wilkins.

When the Co.nmonwea.lth Government offered'a prize of £10,000 for a flight from England to Australia, My. Wilkins was one of a party of four who set out to compete for it. He left. ten days after Ross and Keith Smith, getting as far as Crete, where the machine crashed. Polar work in Grahamaland followed, and then came the voyage of the Quest. Since then, and in between intervals of the work of collating and classifying the Quest specimens in the "British Museum. Captain Wilkins, at the request of the Belief Committee of the Society of Friends, visited Austria, Poland, and Russia, and filmed the work of Quaker relief among the famine areas of stricken Europe He is also widely known for his work on meteorology, not only among the officials of the British Meteorological Society, but also in Africa and America. After he has completed his work in Australia, which will probably occupy two years, he intends to return once more to Polar exploration.