76 NATURAL SCIENCE, July. 



The Rothschild Museum, Tring, has just received from Madagascar some limb- 

 bones of the extinct struthious bird, .^Epyornis. In size they exceed the largest 

 known bones of D/;;oj'«/s from New Zealand. They seem to indicate that the tibia 

 of the Madagascar bird was relatively shorter than that in the New Zealand 

 genera. 



We regret to learn that the fund collected by the Owen Memorial Committee 

 is still insufficient to carry out adequately the resolutions adopted at the meeting of 

 subscribers held early in the year. It is to be hoped that the proposal to place a 

 marble statue of the late Sir Richard Owen in the great hall of the Natural History 

 Museum at South Kensington will not lapse from want of pecuniary means ; and we 

 would urge all who have not yet subscribed but who desire to honour the memory of 

 the deceased Naturalist, to forward their donations without delay to Sir William 

 Flower, Treasurer of the Committee. 



According to a recently-issued circular, the total amount of the contributions 

 received is only ;^935, and in the list of subscribers many well-known names are con- 

 spicuous by their absence. We are surprised to notice how small a proportion of 

 Sir Richard Owen's former colleagues in the British Museum and other scientific 

 departments of the Government have responded to the appeal. The name even of 

 the present Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons does not appear 

 in the list. 



Mr. R. W. Atkinson, for six years Honorary Secretary of the Cardiff 

 Naturalists' Society, has resigned office, and Mr. Walter Cook succeeds him. 



At the anniversary meeting of the Linnean Society on May 24, the gold 

 medal was conferred on Professor Daniel Oliver, F.R.S. On presenting the medal, 

 the President, Professor Stewart, referred to the wide character of Professor 

 Oliver's work, including besides his extensive contributions to systematic and 

 geographical botany, papers on the morphology and anatomy of plants. The 

 " Lessons in Botany " was mentioned as the most useful elementary book we have, 

 and the President also referred to the thirty years' tenure of the chair of botany at 

 University College. 



From the Annual Report of the E=isex Field Club for 1892 {Essex Naturalist, 

 April-May, 1893), we learn the final arrangements for the amalgamation of the 

 Essex and Chelmsford Museum with the Essex Field Club. The collections of the 

 two societies are now in process of arrangement in the old Museum at Chelmsford 

 pending the erection of new buildings. The subscribers to the old Essex and 

 Chelmsford Museum have been admitted as Members of the Essex Field Club, 

 which now increases its ranks by nearly a hundred persons. The headquarters of 

 the Club will shortly be removed to Chelmsford. 



At the Annual Meeting of the Haslemere Natural History Society, held on May 

 29, Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson, F.R.S. , was elected President for the ensuing 

 year. The Society proposes in future to publish " Records of Lectures and 

 Addresses " delivered at its meetings. A Museum is also in course of formation, but 

 the Society cannot hope for much success in this direction until it is able to decline 

 the offers of those well-meaning but mistaken donors, who are likely to convert it 

 into a " curiosity shop." 



