430 NATURAL SCIENCE [June 



Anna, Countess Battler. This League has published a much-needed " Appeal to 

 Ladies." A similar League has spread widely in Germany. In 1895 there were 

 in Finland 11,000 ladies pledged to wear neither the feathers nor the bodies of 

 birds in their hats and bonnets. An International Congress on the Protection of 

 Wild Animals and Birds is to be held at Gratz from August 5th to 9th. The May 

 number of Nature Notes contains a sonnet by Canon H. D. Rawnsley on Watts' 

 picture, " The Altar of Fashion." The Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria is 

 attempting to induce the Tasmanian Government to have the albatrosses on 

 Albatross Island protected by law. 



The International Ornithological Exhibition, which was to have been held this 

 year at St Petersburg, has assumed dimensions so far beyond the scoj^e originally 

 intended that the Russian authorities have decided to postpone it until April 1899. 

 We learn from Nature that the establishment of the National Zoological Park, 

 Washington, has led to the formation of many other zoological preserves in the 

 United States. In the western part of New Hampshire is an area of 26,000 acres, 

 established by tlie late Austin Corbin, and containing 74 bison, 200 moose, 1500 

 elk, 1700 deer of different species, and 150 wild boar, all of which are rapidly 

 multiplying. In the Adirondacks, a preserve of 9000 acres has been stocked with 

 elk, Virginia deer, mule deer, rabbits and j)heasants. The same animals are j^re- 

 served by W. C. Whitney on an estate of 1000 acres in the Berkshire Hills, near 

 Lenox, Mass., where also he keej^s bison and antelojie. Other preserves are Nehasane 

 Park, in the Adirondacks, 8000 acres ; Tranquillity Park, near Allamuchj', N.J., 

 4000 acres ; the Ailing preserve, near Tacoma, Washington, 5000 acres ; North 

 Lodge, near St Paul, Minn., 400 acres ; and Furlough Lodge, in the Catskills, 

 N.Y., 600 acres. 



The executors of the late Baron Sir Ferdinand von Mueller, Government 

 Botanist of Victoria, are collecting donations for the erection upon his grave in 

 the St Kilda cemetery, Melbourne, of a monument of grey granite, 23 feet in 

 height. It will stand in the centre of a grave-plot 12 feet square, planted with 

 choice specimens of the Australian flora. The supplemental volume of the ' Flora 

 Australiensis,' upon which Baron von Mueller had worked for years, was nearly 

 ready for press at the time of his death, and is to l^e published together with two 

 volumes giving a biograjihy, an account of his administration to the Botanical 

 Gardens, and a complete bibliography of his writings. The executors will feel 

 favoured by the loan of any of his letters, or the communication of incidents in 

 the Baron's life which friends may deem worthy of notice in the biograj^hy. 

 Donations and letters should be addressed, " Rev. W. Potter, ' Vonmueller,' 

 Arnold Street, South Yarra, Melbourne, Australia." 



The London County Council has decided to lay out plots of ground at 

 Battersea Park, Ravenscourt Park and Finsbury Park, for the cultivation of 

 certain typical j^lants suitable for the instruction in practical botany of scholars 

 at elementary and secondary schools. Each specimen is to be labelled with its 

 common name and its systematic name, and is to be visible from the foot-path. 

 Spare specimens will be supplied for botanical study in the schools. 



Russian schools, we learn from Nature, are beginning to send out their pupils 

 in summer for small natural history and ethnographic excursions, during which 

 the systematic exj^loratiou of some region is attempted. The Caucasus school 

 administration is especially active in that direction. One such excursion will be 

 made to the foot of Elbrus this summer by fifty pupils of the Ekaterinodar Gym- 

 nasium. The party intends to visit the Great Karachai region, to ascend Elbrus 

 up to the snow-line, and to cross the main ridge. The excursion will last fifty 

 days, during which the pupils will collect natural history specimens and ethno- 

 gTaphical data, take photographs, sketch landscapes, and live amidst the beautiful 

 })ine-forests of the Caucasus, 



