WCP690

[1]]

[in ARW’s hand] Answered

ZOOLOGICAL MUSEUM,

TRING,

HERTS, ENGLAND.

July 30, 1903

Dear Sir,

Mr. Herbert and Mr. Rothschild¹ are in Switzerland, and I have to thank you on their behalf as well as my own for the kind letter just received.

Mr. Rothschild does not send out collectors, i.e. he does not pay their expenses and give a salary. Our collectors travel [2] for their own account. They have an agreement with us according to which they have to send all the specimens (birds and Lepidoptera) to this museum and we have to take a certain number of specimens of each species at a previously fixed average price.

If the young man² of whom you speak will go out to Haiti or Cuba, I am sure Mr. R. would gladly take a set of all the birds and Lepidoptera he may procure, since we have very [3] little [1 paragraph illeg.] travellers in Haiti, however, must speak French.

We have had large collections of Lepidoptera from British Guiana; the country is, however, by no means exhausted, since we receive now and again even large species which we had not previously got from there. I do not think [4] that Mr. R. could promise to take a set of all the species of birds from British Guiana.

If the gentleman will communicate with us, we should gladly give him best advice.

Prof. Poulton³ has entrusted me with the [illeg.] of the Oxford Museum. There is a (complete!) set of your captures in the collection. I am quite amazed at the number of species you got as compared with the [illeg.] of later explorers of the Malay Archipelago.

Yours faithfully | Karl Jordan⁴ [signature]