of the financial burden was borne by the Swedish State, although considerable contributions were also made by Mr VINCENT BENDIX, Deutsche Lufthansa, Mr ALBERT APPLETON of Chicago and myself. Most of the members were Swedes, though the staff temporarily included also two Danes, a few Germans and Chinese.
The subject-matter in part III is the motor-car expedition that was made from the autumn of 1933 to the spring of 1935. The expenses of this enterprise were met by the Chinese state. The aim was here to investigate and then submit to the Government in Nanking proposals concerning the laying of two motor-car roads between China proper and the province of Sinkiang. By the side of this main task we also carried on archaeological, zoological, botanical and geographical researches; maps were drawn and a meteorological journal was kept. The staff was Swedish and Chinese.
It will thus be seen that each of the parts is complete in itself. Of the members of the staff, ERIK NORIN, FOLKE BERGMAN, and DAVID HUMMEL were the only ones besides myself who had followed the expedition from the beginning practically to the end. We four thus formed the Old Guard, so to speak, combining the three parts into one whole. The contents of part II of the History of the Expedition doubtless gives the impression of being leaner and less significant than the contents of parts I and III. And yet the greater part, and that the most important, of all the scientific work carried out, or in other words the bulk of the material treated in the planned fifty-five volumes of the series, falls just within the period dealt with in part II. This part figures rather as a unifying frame around all the various researches that were carried out during this period. In the History of the Expedition I have, naturally, only been able to describe the journeys and events in which I myself took part. And while in the case of the events described in parts I and III I was always present myself, it was of course impossible for me to visit all the different groups that in widely separated tracts of Central Asia were working independently and often enough without direct contact with one another. During the years covered by part II, the latter half of 1928, 1929, 193o, 1931, 1932 and up to the autumn of 1933, I functioned as the connecting link and perambulating headquarters as it were, watching over the interests of the expedition and the many part-expeditions with the Swedish and the Chinese authorities. I had therefore often to lead a very mobile existence; and the »headquarters » sometimes found himself in Europe, and sometimes in Asia or America. Stockholm, Urumchi, Peking, Nanking and Chicago were during this period my most frequented resorts. On two occasions I was afloat on the Atlantic and on two others on the Pacific. But even then I was in telegraphic connection with the different parties of the expedition.
The defect from which part II may seem to suffer, in that the scientific work belonging there is missing, will shortly be made good in parts IV and V, which will follow immediately after the History of the Expedition, with which they are in-
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