Finally after seven weeks my steamer arrived in Marseilles and I first went home to see my mother in Dresden and then immediately went off to Berlin to start working on my collections that I had made in the Mandated Territory. And I worked there quite hard but I realised I had to see the material of other museums and I visited the Tring... Lord [Walter] Rothschild's museum in Tring in England. I visited the museums in Paris, in London and in Leiden in Holland. I also on... during this summer, I might give the date when I arrived back in Marseilles, it was around the 1^st of May [1930], and in June or July was a great international ornithological congress in Amsterdam. And there I met Doctor [Frank M] Chapman who was the Chairman of the Bird Department of the American Museum [of Natural History], and this was very important to have met him because it is in connection with an offer that came from the Museum later that year. Well, by the time of... of October I had about two thirds finished my report on my collections when a letter arrived from Doctor Chapman asking me whether I would be interested to come to the American Museum in New York for one year to work on the unworked collections of the Whitney South Sea expedition. It was a rather nominal salary and no tenure, of course, it was going to be for one year, not renewable. Well, this was of course, very exciting. I knew what wonderful collections they were, and I said, 'Well, if you can wait until January, by that time I'll have finished my report on the Mandated Territory, and then I'll be glad to come'. Well, Chapman accepted that and on the 19^th of January [1931] I arrived in New York where I settled down at the International House, near Columbia University, and then on the 20^th of January I appeared at the Museum. Chapman was away in Panama to do studies on tropical birds, but there rest of the staff received me with open arms, particularly [Robert C] Murphy, [James P] Chapin, and [John T] Zimmer, the three other members of the staff.