Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 381 



of a new museum, and that the Beit Trustees have given 

 £2,500 towards the erection of the buildings. There is, we 

 believe, a good local collection of birds already in existence, 

 and we are sure that Mr. E. C. Chubb, the Assistant-Curator, 

 will lose no opportunity of adding to it. He has already sent 

 us an article on the birds of the surrounding district (see 

 'Ibis,' 1903, p. 140), and will, no doubt, favour us with 

 further communications, when convenient. 



A Present to the B. 0. U. — At the Ninth Annual Session 

 of the Australasian Ornithologists' Union, held at Adelaide 

 on September 30th, 1909, it was proposed by Mr. A. J. 

 Campbell, seconded by Mr. Charles Barrett, and resolved, 

 that copies of the cinematograph-films depicting the bird- 

 life of the expedition of the A. O. U. to the islands of 

 Bass' Straits in 1908 be sent to England as a present to the 

 British Ornithologists' Union. It is hoped that they may 

 arrive in time to be exhibited at the joint meetiug of the 

 B. O. U. and B. O. C. on May 25th. 



The Destruction of Birds in the Riviera. — In the last 

 number of the f Avicultural Magazine ' (ser. 3, vol. i. p. 125), 

 Lt.-Col. Momber writes as follows on the treatment of birds 

 in the Riviera : — 



" The excessively ornithophagous proclivities of the South- 

 erners are a heavy set-back to the advantages lavished by 

 nature on the Riviera. Every one shoots, nothing is spared, 

 and the corpses of the daintiest songsters — Goldfinches, 

 Siskins, Robins, Warblers — hang in bunches in the town 

 markets. 



" In Italy, the protective laws are still embryonic and 

 seldom enforced; offenders are leniently dealt with, and 

 illegal practices prevail. In general, wholesale methods of 

 bird-catching are prohibited in Liguria; it is mainly in the 

 provinces of Como and Piedmont that the gardens of death 

 flourish, the terrible roccolo and passata. But the popular 

 amusement of besetting with bird-limed grapes the streams 

 in dry weather is indulged in despite the law, and is singularly 



