MUSEUMS. ' 



Mass. The Director is grateful to the officers of these institutions for 

 their great courtesy, and highly appreciates the opportunity the occasion 

 gave him of becoming personally acquainted with many of the American 

 men of Science, whose works he has long been familiar with, or whom 

 he has known only by correspondence. Arrangements for an interchange 

 of duplicates with several of the above named institutions were 

 entered into. 



During the year has been published the first number of a serial, 

 The Bulletin of the Liverpool Museums, intended to make known the 

 contents of the Museums, so many of which are not only new, but 

 of great historical interest ; and to publish the results of the investigations 

 carried on in the Laboratories attached to them, and the observations 

 made on the animals living in the Aquarium. The first number was 

 issued on August 4th, and opened with an Introductory note descriptive 

 of the origin of the Collections, with portraits of the Thirteenth Earl of 

 Derby, of Mr. Joseph Mayer and of Sir William Brown, and with a View 

 of the Buildings as they existed in 1897, and contains a Catalogue of the 

 Parrots (Psittaci) in the Derby Museum, illustrated by hand-coloured 

 plates of Nestor norfolcensis (of which the Museum possesses the 

 only known example), of Coriphilus taitianus and of the type specimen 

 of Nasiterna nanina. Tristram. Two species are therein described 

 as new, i.e., Pyocephalus rubricapillus, Forbes and Robinson, and 

 Cyanorhamphus niagnirostris, Forbes and Robinson. Under the heading 

 of Museum and Aquarium Notes there will be found an illustrated 

 description of a Crustacean parasitic on a Flying-fish ; Habitat of 

 Gasterosteus pungitius ; The first feeding of Young Trout ; Malapterurus 

 electricus ; Recent acquisitions by the Mayer Museum, and an interesting 

 Folk-lore Note Medicine at the Museums. 



The Bulletin will be published at irregular intervals ; but it is hoped 

 that one small bVo. volume, of four parts, will be issued every year. 



Another matter for congratulation, in connection with the Museums, 

 is the fact that the excavations for the foundations for the much-needed 

 New Technical Schools and Museum Extension have been for several 

 weeks under weigh, and, owing to the specially favourable weather that 

 has been experienced, great progress has been made. The buildings 

 will, it is reckoned, be completed by the end of the year 1900. 



