[Friedrich Herrmann Otto]. German traveler and scientist, born at Warmbrunn, Silesia, on the 8th of August 1839. After holding a position at Rustchuk, under the Austrian consul, where he had an opportunity of gratifying his taste for the study of natural history, he was assistant in the museum at Leyden, Holland, from 1861 to 1864, after which he was made director of the Bremen Museum of Natural History and Ethnology. He accompanied Dr. Alfred Edmund Brehm in his expedition of 1878 through western Siberia, to explore the mossy plains lying between the River Obi and the Gulf of Kara to ascertain the practicability of connecting the tributaries of the rivers Obi and Kara by a canal, the expedition being under the auspices of the Bremen North Polar Exploration Society. Dr. Finsch spent the next four years in Australia, New Guinea and the islands of the Pacific, making valuable collections for the Humboldt Society of Berlin. It was while on his journey to Australia, via New York City, that he delivered, in sound condition, a consignment of live German carp to the United States Fish Commission. After an interval of two years, Dr. Finsch again visited New Guinea, exploring and making a survey of Vulcan Island to Humboldt Bay, which was followed by the establishment of the German protectorate known as Kaiser Wilhelmsland. His works include Monographie der Papageien (1870); Die Vögel Ostafrikas, with Dr. Carl Johann Gustav Hartlaub (1870); Die Zweite Deutsche Nordpolarfahrt (1873); Anthropologische Ergebnisse Einer Reise in der Südsee (1884); Verzeichniss Einer Sammlung von Maori Antiquitäten auf Neuseeland (1884); Über Bekleidung, Schmuck und Tätowierung der Papua auf der Südostküste von Neuguinea, with illustrations (1885); Ethnologische Erfahrungen, etc., aus der Südsee, three parts (1888, 1891, 1893); Ethnologischer Atlas, Typen aus der Steinzeit Neuguineas (1888).
