Having completed a 43,000 mile trip to the Far East and Australia under the combined auspices of the University Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Carnegie Institute of Washington, and the Australian National Research Council. H. L. Clark, associate professor of Zoology, has recently returned to Cambridge with numerous specimens for the Museum.
Leaving Cambridge last March, Professor Clark, accompanied by his wife, who has served as artist and general assistant, journeyed to Japan, China, and finally Australia, where they spent most of their time.
Professor Clark, as delegate from the University, attended the Pan-Pacific Scientific Congress at Batavia, Java, in May. After three weeks in Java as guests of the Dutch government, he and Mrs. Clark went to Darwin, Australia, where they spent six weeks.
At Darwin the collecting was poor owing to the large amount of sediment in the water, and only 65 species of echinoderms were found, according to Professor Clark.
On July 29, the party journeyed to Broome, where two months were spent, the water being very clear and the marine life abundant there.
"Broome is the marine zoologist's paradise," declared Professor Clark. "170 specimens were gathered there, some of them apparently as yet undescribed."
From Broome, the party went to Perth, where it stayed for about three weeks gathering more specimens. Then after brief stops at Adelaide, Melbourne, Hobart, Sydney, and Brisbane. Professor Clark sailed for home.
When interviewed yesterday by a CRIMSON representative. Professor Clark was surrounded with boxes of rare specimens of marine zoology, which he was busy sorting and labelling for the Museum. One table was heaped with mail that had collected during his year's absence. The others were covered with various kinds of star-fishes, sea-urchins, a stuffed turtle. Australian boomerangs, and a litter of packing boxes.
"I could not have been given more cooperation, or treated with more kindness than I have been while making this trip. In Tokyo I attended a Harvard dinner given for me by the Japanese alumni of the University. I was surprised to see the great interest they had for anything that I could tell them about new developments at the University. I also had the pleasure of meeting again Dr. Goto, professor emeritus of Zoology at the University of Tokyo, who had obtained his Ph.D. degree at Harvard, and whom I had known here.
"I liked Australia best of any place I visited. Perth is one of the most beautiful cities, I have ever seen, and is as modern as any American city today. And," he added as an after thought, "I learned not to call the blacks of Australia natives. The English consider themselves the natives of Australia and so when referring to the original natives, one is supposed to call them either blacks or Abos, an abbreviation of aborigines."
Professor Clark intends to spend the next year or so writing a report of his recent trip for the University Museum and the Carnegie institution.
Read more in News
THE STUDENT VAGABOND