Vol. xix.-j BAKR-EJr, A ddidons lo lite Library. yg 



the air is cliari^cd witli inoislurr birds on migration arr inclined 

 to fly low. In such conditions Captain inj^rani has observed 

 migrants off the China coast almost skimming the surface of the 

 sea. The greatest height recorded is 15,000 feet, the birds con- 

 cerned being probably Cranes. 

 "Frederick Du Cane Godman (Obit.)" /his, vol. i., part 2. 



Mr. Du Cane Godman, late President of the British Orni- 

 thologists' Union, died on 19th February, 1919, after a short illness, 

 at his house in London. He was, excepting his younger brother, 

 Percy, the last survivor of the original 20 members who formed 

 the Union in 1858. He was honorary secretary and treasurer 

 from 1870 to 1882 and from 1889 to 1897, when he was elected 

 president in succession to Lord Lilford ; he held offtce until 1913, 

 when he resigned, owing to ill-health. Mr. Godman was born 

 in January, 1834 ; he was educated at Eton, and afterwards by 

 private tutors ; entered Trinity College in 1853, where he met 

 Osbert Salvin and the brothers Alfred and Edward Newton, both 

 of Magdalene College. After leaving the University young 

 Godman started his bird-collecting travels, his first expedition 

 being to Norway. He travelled in Lapland, Sweden, Russia, 

 Egypt, Jamaica, and other countries. He and Salvin presented 

 their great neo-tropical collections to the British Museum in 

 1885 ; it had been amassed, with a fine library, in connection with 

 the wonderful " Biologia Centrali-Americana." 



" Notes from a Traveller in the Tropics," by Frank M. Chapman. 

 Bird Lore, vol. xxi., part i, p. 11 ; part 2, p. 87. 



Those who have read Dr. Chapman's " Camps and Cruises of 

 an Ornithologist " know that he is a " traveller " of the rare 

 class whose written impressions are never dull ; he is a keen and 

 skilled observer, and records observations that are most inter- 

 esting. His notes from the tropics (Panama to Peru) are on the 

 same level as his previous writings, and are illustrated with some 

 remarkable photographs. 



" On the Popular Names of Birds," by Ernest Thompson Seton. 

 Auk, vol. xxxvi., part 2, p. 229. 



An article of special interest to Australian ornithologists in view 

 of the fact that a new R.A.O.U. " Check-list " is to be published. 

 Mr. Thompson Seton, who is famed as an author of animal 

 stories and also as a naturalist and traveller, expresses, in this 

 contribution to a difticult subject, opinions that are shared, 

 doubtless, by many other ornithologists. " The scientific names 

 must, of course, be left to the scientific experts, who, we must 

 admit, take them very seriously ; but the popular names have 

 been treated in a most casual or contemptuous way — in many 

 cases ignored altogether. . . If it is the aim of ornithology 

 to spread a nation-wide knowledge of birds, then the popular 

 names are at least as important as the Latin names." The 

 scientist, as such, he declares, has no more to do with the popular 

 names of the birds than he has with the conjugation of the verb 



