2 INTRODUCTION. 
was achieved, and the boat was finally sold. Some years afterwards, at Duefias, in 
Guatemala, when we required specimens of the duck and waterfowl which frequented 
the neighbouring lake, Salvin again turned his hand to boat building. ‘This time the 
ribs and frame were made of sticks of green wood cut and fastened together ; over 
this, the hair having previously been removed, a raw ox-hide was drawn. and as the 
hide shrank, it bound the whole tightly together and made an excellent boat, easily 
accommodating two people. In this craft we had many sails upon the lake and 
obtained examples of the birds resorting there. 
During our College days, Salvin and I made frequent expeditions together to the 
fens and other places in the neighbourhood of Cambridge, in order to collect birds’ 
eggs and lepidoptera. On one occasion we heard of a bustard which had been seen 
in Wicken Fen, and we spent a couple of days searching for it, but with no intention 
of shooting so rare a visitor. We found both its foot-tracks and some shed feathers, 
but, as we learned afterwards, the bird had been shot at and probably wounded by 
one of the fenmen, as it was never seen again. We also spent our leisure hours in 
Baker’s shop, the well known bird stuffer in the Trumpington Road, skinning and 
setting up birds—an experience which we found of great service to us afterwards when 
in Central America and on other expeditions, 
A good deal of fenland being then undrained, Swallow-tailed butterflies were always 
to be found, and we collected the larvee and bred them in Baker's shop. ‘The 
‘Large Copper’ had so recently become extinct, that we searched in vain for it, though 
Brown, the tailor in Cambridge, who was an ardent British lepidopterist, had a long 
series in his cabinet, mostly specimens bred from the larve he had collected a few 
years previously. 
While still at Cambridge there were several other University men keenly interested 
in Ornithology, notably the two brothers Newton, Simpson, and my brother Percy, and 
after our spring rambles we used to meet in each other's rooms and discuss the result 
of our various expeditions. It was at one of these meetings in 1807 that it was first 
suggested that some record should be kept of these proceedings, and the idea of 
estabiishing a Magazine solely devoted to Ornithology was mooted, but nothing 
further was done till November 17th in the following year, when a meeting took 
place in Alfred Newton’s rooms in Magdalene College, at which Salvin and myself, 
Simpson, Wolley, Sclater, Newton, and other ornithologists were present. Before 
the party broke up it was resolved: ‘That an Ornithological Union of twenty 
members should be formed, with the object of establishing a new Journal devoted to 
Birds: that Lieut.-Colonel H. M. Drummond should be President, Professor Newton 
the Secretary of the Union, and P. L. Sclater should edit the Journal: that the title 
of the Journal should be ‘'The Ibis.’ ” 
The first volume of ‘'The Ibis’ appeared in 1859, and the Magazine has now reached 
its 56th volume, and the Union has over four hundred and forty members. 
