the specimens were destined for the new U.S. National Museum building, then under construction on the Mall and today known as the National Museum of Natural History.
Roosevelt was accompanied on the trip by his son, Kermit (age 19), who served as official photographer, and three representatives from the Smithsonian: Major Edgar A. Mearns (1856-1916), a retired Army surgeon and field naturalist, J. Alden Loring (1871-1947) and Edmund Heller (1898-1918), both zoologists.