Mr. Walter Goodfellow (Leader),

Mr. Wilfred Stalker and Mr. Guy C. Shortridge (Collectors of Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, etc.),

Mr. A. F. R. Wollaston (Medical Officer to the Expedition, Entomologist, and Botanist),

Capt. C. G. Rawling, C.I.E. (Surveyor),

Dr. Eric Marshall (Assistant-Surveyor and Surgeon).

To meet the cost of keeping such an expedition in the field for at least a year it was necessary to raise a large sum of money, and this I was eventually able to do, thanks chiefly to a liberal grant from His Majesty’s Government, and to the generosity of a number of private subscribers, many of whom were members of the B.O.U. The total sum raised amounted to over £9000, and though it is impossible to give here the names of all those who contributed, I would especially mention the following:—

S. G. Asher,Mrs. H. A. Powell,
E. J. Brook,H. C. Robinson,
J. Stewart Clark,Lord Rothschild,
Col. Stephenson Clarke, Hon. L. Walter Rothschild,
Sir Jeremiah Colman,Hon. N. Charles Rothschild,
H. J. Elwes,Baron and Baroness James A. de Rothschild,
F. du Cane Godman,P. L. Sclater,
Sir Edward Grey,P. K. Stothert,
J. H. Gurney,Oldfield Thomas,
Sir William Ingram,E. G. B. Meade-Waldo,
Lord Iveagh,Rowland Ward,
Mrs. Charles Jenkinson,The Proprietors of Country Life,
E. J. Johnstone,The Royal Society,
Campbell D. Mackellar,The Royal Geographical Society,
G. A. Macmillan,The Zoological Society of London.

The organization and equipment of this large expedition caused considerable delay and it was not until September, 1909, that the members sailed from England for the East. Meanwhile the necessary steps were taken to obtain the consent of the Netherlands Government to allow the proposed expedition to travel in Dutch New Guinea and to carry out the scheme of exploration. Not only was this permission granted, thanks to the kindly help of Sir Edward Grey and the British Minister at the Hague, but the Government of Holland showed itself animated with such readiness to assist the expedition that it supplied not only an armed guard at its own expense, but placed a gunboat at the disposal of the Committee to convey the party from Batavia to New Guinea.

On behalf of the Committee I would again take this opportunity of publicly expressing their most grateful thanks to the Netherlands Government for these and many other substantial acts of kindness, which were shown to the members of the expedition. The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company did all in their power to further the interests of the expedition, and to them the Committee is very specially indebted. To the proprietors of Country Life the thanks of the Committee are also due for the interest and sympathy they have displayed towards the expedition and for the assistance they have given in helping to raise funds to carry on the work in the field.

In various numbers of Country Life, issued between the 16th of April, 1910, and the 20th of May, 1911, a series of ten articles will be found in which I contributed a general account of New Guinea, and mentioned some of the more important discoveries made by the members of the expedition during their attempts to penetrate to the Snow Mountains.

In Appendix A to the present volume will be found a general account of the ornithological results. A detailed report will appear elsewhere, as also, it is hoped, a complete account of the zoological work done by the expedition.

As the reader will learn from Mr. Wollaston’s book, the great physical difficulties of this unexplored part of New Guinea and other unforeseen circumstances rendered the work of the B.O.U. Expedition quite exceptionally arduous; and if the results of their exploration are not all that had been hoped, it must be remembered that they did all that was humanly possible to carry out the dangerous task with which they had been entrusted. Their work has added vastly to our knowledge of this part of New Guinea, and though little collecting was done above 4000 feet, quite a number of new, and, in many cases, remarkably interesting forms were obtained.