300 Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 



tour to Chili, California, and Nicaragua. He subsequently- 

 spent many years in Southern Mexico, where he remained 

 from 1854 to 1867. The first ornithological results of this 

 expedition were given to the world in Sclater's memoir on 

 the birds collected by Boucard during his sojourn in the 

 province of Oaxaca, which was published in the 'Proceedings' 

 of the Zoological Society of London for 1859. This was 

 followed by other papers in the same journal relating to 

 Boucard's collections, some of which were from his own pen. 

 Another expedition was made by Boucard in 1876, when he 

 went to Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and California. 

 It was during this voyage that he discovered at Punta Arenas, 

 in Costa Rica, the fine and rare Humming-bird {Arinia 

 boucardi) which appropriately commemorates his name. 

 Boucard was an indefatigable collector, and made excellent 

 bird-skins, which it was always a pleasure to examine. 



After his return from America, Boucard settled in Paris 

 for some years and published many memoirs on birds and 

 on coleoptera, of which he was a devoted student. In 1878 

 he read a very good account of his Costa-Rican collection of 

 birds before the Zoological Society of London, and described, 

 amongst other novelties, a remarkable Finch (Zonotrichia 

 vulcani) obtained on the volcano of Irazu, at a height of 

 10,000 feet. Amongst other works, he published in 1876 

 a ' Catalogus Avium hucusque descriptorum/ with references 

 to the names of 11,051 species, a work on the 'Genera of 

 Humming-birds' (1893-95), and a volume of travels (1891). 

 A new periodical called 'The Humming-bird' was fouuded 

 by him in 1891 and carried on for five volumes. 



The latter part of his life (since 1893) Boucard passed 

 principally at his villa near Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, 

 whence he sent liberal donations from his large collections 

 to various institutions. To the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle 

 at Paris he is stated to have given the greater part of his 

 large series of books and birds, while he distributed the 

 duplicates to the U.S. National Museum and the Royal 

 Museums of Madrid and Lisbon. 



