TWENTIETH ANNUAL REPORT 715 
The new Animal Hospital which has been under construc- 
tion during the summer should be completed and ready for use 
during the early part of February. This hospital will afford the 
best facilities for the observation and care of injured or sick 
animals, and, at the same time, by the prompt removal of all 
suspicious cases of illness from exhibition, will protect the 
healthy specimens from the danger of contracting infectious 
diseases. 
The isolation of the hospital will permit of the successful 
treatment of distemper among the carnivores, and of other con- 
tagious diseases without fear of an epidemic occurring among 
our collection. 
Of the deaths occurring among the mammals, they were 
divided as follows: 
Premates! osc ee. Seen ee ane oe 15 
CATNIV OES. We foes es! ai eee 44 
UG CCA a ex er rier ee ee suf 
OD OSCIOIANS 2s et he ee ee 
TUOGSTU Star eee ied ets OMe 45 
VEST NA IS 2 Seis wate ads ees! Soe 10 
WGemtaAtes: 2 ee 9 
MRO Gall: fe ee 222, 
DEPARTMENT OF BIRDS. 
C. William Beebe, Curator; Lee S. Crandall, Assistant Curator; 
Samuel Stacey, Head Keeper. 
In spite of the continued demoralized condition of the Euro- 
pean animal market, the bird collections have been able to hold 
their own during the past year. The first few months of the 
war so completely checked the sources of supply on which we 
were dependent that the effect on the collection was at once no- 
ticeable. Since then, however, we have developed other means 
of obtaining specimens, particularly from South America, and 
we expect to be able to maintain our present position until nor- 
mal conditions again prevail. 
Early in the summer, the Curator, accompanied by Mr. G. 
Inness Hartley and Keeper Herbert Atkin, visited the Zoological 
Gardens of Para, Brazil, and there secured a large collection of 
Brazilian mammals, birds and reptiles. Sixty-two birds of forty- 
three species, of which fifteen were new to us, were included. 
