MUSEUMS. 



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owing to the magnitude of the subject — to collecting and studying the 

 birds of one, or even part of one, region, or the species of a single 

 family or of a few families at most. One of the earliest and most 

 important of such general collections was brought together at Kuowsley 

 by the 14th Lord Derby who, by bequeathing it to the City of Liverpool, 

 laid the foundation of our Museum. 



Our new acquisition was formed by Henry Baker Tristram, D.D.. 

 LL.D., F.R.S., Canon of Durham Cathedral, its foundation dating 

 from the year 1844, when, an undergraduate, he began to collect 

 British and European Birds. Having soon after that year accepted 

 an official post in Bermuda, he devoted his leisure to collecting 

 the birds of the "West Indian Islands, whose number, in future years, 

 he succeeded in perfecting to a remarkable degree. Visits to North 

 America followed, which resulted in large additions of the avi-fauna 

 of that region being amassed. As is widely known, Canon Tristram has, 

 at various periods of his life, paid extended visits to Palestine and Syria, 

 as well as to the countries of Northern Africa on the Mediterranean 

 Littoral, to the Sahara Desert, the Canary Islands and to Madeira, 

 for the purpose of increasing his collection. Accordingly the birds 

 of all these regions are well represented in it. In every case the birds 

 he described and figured in his various works, in the Ibis (the chief 

 Ornithological journal in England) or in the Proceedings of the Zoological 

 Society of London, were retained in his own cabinet, and these types thus 

 add to the intrinsic as well as the historical interest of his collection. 



During a visit paid at a later period to Japan, Dr. Tristram obtained 

 a large series of rare and interesting species of Eastern Palsearctic 

 Birds, and on his way through America he lost no opportunity of 

 acquiring species from that region still desiderata in his cabinets. 

 Besides his personal contributions to his collection. Dr. Tristram 

 has maintained, throughout his life, an extensive correspondence 

 with naturalists, travellers, missionaries, consuls and officers of her 

 Majesty's Army and Navy, in most quarters of the globe, many of 

 whom he was the means of inspiring with some of his own love 

 of Ornithology, inducing them to collect and investigate the bird 

 life of many little -visited regions, and send home the fruits 

 of their investigations. Through these agents, by exchange, 

 purchase, or gift, the Tristram Museum obtained annually large 



