Letters, Extracts, and Notices. 139 



Sirs, — In the last volume of the ' The Ibis ' I find (p. 480) 

 a notice of Dr. Finsch's departure from the Leyden Museum. 



In that article you say that Prof. Schlegel, up to his 

 death in 1882, had catalogued some 18,000 specimens of 

 birds, representing 2300 species, in his ' Museum d'Histoire 

 naturelle des Pays-Bas/ but that after that date little was 

 done among the birds until 1898, when Dr. Finsch took up 

 the matter and began a new catalogue, which contains entries 

 of some 13,000 specimens, referable to 3000 species. 



It is not my intention to enter upon the question how far 

 a mere manuscript list of genera and species of birds, such as 

 that made by Dr. Finsch, should be placed on the same level 

 as the highly esteemed work done by Prof. Schlegel in his well- 

 known eight volumes of the ' Museum d'Histoire naturelle 

 des Pays-Bas ' ; but I cannot help saying that your remark 

 upon the period between 1882 and 1898 is far from courteous 

 to me, who occupied the position of Conservator of the 

 Ornithological Department at the Leyden Museum from 

 1884 to 1897. 



It is true that I have not, like Dr. Finsch, left behind " a 

 Catalogue" with entries of so and so many species and 

 specimens of birds, but nevertheless I should say that the 

 determination, labelling, and arranging of thousands of 

 birds, comprising whole families, which were still in the same 

 state as that in which I left them there in 1897, may have 

 facilitated to some extent the work of Dr. Finsch above 

 alluded to. 



I am well aware that you could not be precisely informed 

 about this kind of unpublished work of mine in the Leyden 

 Museum — a work which, it seems to me, is just as valuable 

 as that attributed to Dr. Finsch ; but from all that I 

 published in the 'Notes from the Leyden Museum ' during 

 that period (interrupted as it was by my second journey to 

 Liberia and a year's stay in the Dutch East Indies), you 

 might have concluded that it was not so very little that I did 

 in the Leyden Museum between 1884 and 1897. 



Had it not been for the sake of my good name amongst 



