Vol. xxvi] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 245 



living at "Fundador de Canimar" a few years before, keeping 

 odd specimens. 



In 1846, at a farm named "El Refugio," near the city of 

 Cardenas, he established his Museum, open to all who cared to 

 see it, and strange to say there were many who journeyed 

 there, more than 3,000 different persons in four years, a very 

 good record for that time, when one considers the population 

 of the Island, and the inadequate means of transportation. I 

 am sure that today there are not one-third this number of 

 persons in Cuba who have any interest, or even curiosity, to 

 see a collection of Natural History specimens. 



In 1849 Gundlach made his first visit to the "Cienaga de Za- 

 pata," that large fever-infested swamp, as impenetrable as it 

 is interesting, nearly one-third the size of Matanzas Province, 

 in whose southern border it is located. He went with a letter 

 of recommendation from the Padre Ramon de la Paz y 

 Morejon, a priest-naturalist, stationed at Guamitas, to his rela- 

 tives at "Hato Zarabanda," on the edge of the "Cienaga," 

 where Gundlach made several visits, stopping with don Pedro 

 Morejon. It was then that he obtained his first specimens of 

 Ara tricolor (Bechstein), the Cuban Macaw, then common but 

 now quite extinct, as also his Agelaius assimilis (Gundl.) still 

 a very rare bird in collections. While there, he was informed 

 that the Cuban Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Campephilus bairdii 

 (Cassin), could be found in the eastern portion of the 

 "Cienaga," so at the beginning of 1850 he went with don Car- 

 men Morejon, to "Hato Cabeza de Toro" on the "Ensenada 

 de Cochinos" on its eastern side, where he had been told there 

 was a specimen of this bird that always carried a long straw 

 in its bill. This bird was shot, and what appeared to observers 

 to be a straw was really an abnormally excessive growth of 

 the upper mandible, which was 12 inches long, curving down- 

 ward in a semicircle. This specimen may be seen today in 

 the Gundlach collection at Havana, or a picture of it in his 

 work on Cuban Ornithology. One early morning, after he 

 had been up to his waist in the mud of the "Cienaga" since 

 long before daybreak, waiting for a flight of the wary Ameri- 

 can White-fronted Goose, Anser albifrons yainbcUi (Hart), 



