74 Boston Society of Natural History 



the writers of antiquity concerning the animals known in a past 

 century, for it dates from 1555; while a second work of the same 

 date and of equal importance is the volume on birds by the French 

 savant, Belonius, almost the first treatise on this group of animals. 

 There are numerous works on insects that are equally valuable 

 through their rarity and historic association. Examples are the little 

 book by Bilberg on the insects of Scandinavia, and one by the Ger- 

 man, Hi'ibner, on butterflies, while another almost unique copy in 

 this part of the world is Koch's series of hand-colored plates and 

 text issued on separate sheets of small size, monographing the mites 

 and allied types, nearly a century ago. Several of the rare works 

 of Peter Pallas, an illustrious pupil of the great Linnaeus, are here 

 also, and include the results of his early investigations in the Nat- 

 ural History of Siberia and northern Asia. 



For a good many years the Society has made a special effort to 

 secure all publications relating to the Natural History of New Eng- 

 land, for some of these date back to early times. Thus, John Jos- 

 selyn's New England's Rarities Discovered is with its comments 

 one of the most fruitful of our slender sources of knowledge con- 

 cerning the natural conditions here in the years immediately after 

 the settlement. We have a modern reprint of this. The older geo- 

 logical reports of the New England states are full of interesting 

 notes, while some of the publications of the earlier scientific soci- 

 eties such as that of the Hartford Natural History Society, are ex- 

 ceedingly rare. Nearly a century ago there was a society at Con- 

 cord, New Hampshire, whose only publication seems to have been 

 a small pamphlet on the cocoanut. The only copy in existence ap- 

 pears to be that in the State Library at Concord, but we have had 

 a photostat copy made in order that it may be represented in our 

 collection. Our "local lists" of birds are unusually numerous. 



