THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



NEW BIRD GROUPS. 



H ROUGH the generosity of a friend of the Museum, 

 who desires to have his name withheld from the 

 pubhc, six groups have recently been added to 

 the very attractive and instructive series repre- 

 senting birds amid their natural surroundings 

 which are to be seen in the halls of the Ornithological De- 

 partment. The new groups represent the American dipper, 

 or water-ousel, the osprey, the yellow-headed blackbird, the coot, 

 Wilson's phalarope and the wild pigeon. The material for the 

 first-named was gathered by Mr. Frank M. Chapman last sum- 

 mer on the banks of a rushing icy stream issuing from a glacier 

 in the Selkirk mountains of British Columbia. The rocky bank 

 of the stream, the nest in the cleft of the rock and the birds in 

 and about the nest have been reproduced with lifelike fidelity 

 in the Museum exhibition case. Mr. Chapman collected the 

 specimens and accessories for the osprey group on Gardiner's 

 Island, off the eastern end of Long Island, and those for the 

 blackbird, coot and phalarope groups at Shoal Lake, Manitoba. 

 The twelve specimens included in the wild-pigeon group were 

 secured with much difficulty from collectors and dealers through- 

 out the country, the surprising fact being incidentally developed 

 that a species which, within the last fifty years, was one of the 

 most abundant native birds of this country, is now so rare, not 

 only in nature, but also in collections, that specimens of it are 

 practically unobtainable. Each of these new groups is designed 

 to illustrate not only the haunts and habits of a species of birds, 

 but also some fact of general biological interest. This feature 

 will be fully set forth in the labels accompanying the cases. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



Department of Entomology. — Mr. William Beutenmliller, 

 the Curator of this Department of the Museum, again visited 

 the Black mountains of western North Carolina during Septem- 

 ber and October last for the purpose of securing specimens of 

 the insects occurring in this interesting region and of obtaining 



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