° 'i9i8 J Notes and News. 263 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



Walter Reaves Zappey, an Associate of the American Ornithologists' 

 Union, was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, May 6, 1878, the son of 

 Christian and Augusta Reaves Zappey. He early showed a keen interest 

 in animal life, particularly in birds, and as a boy spent much time in the 

 woods, hunting, trapping, and observing. When about nine years old 

 he moved with his parents to Roslindale, Massachusetts, then a rather 

 thinly settled part of the community, where he had easy access to the 

 woods and fields, and brought home various live creatures as pets. During 

 this time he attended the public schools of Boston, and eventually took up 

 work in taxidermy with the Frank Blake Webster Co., of Hyde Park. 

 In February, 1902, he was sent by Mr. Webster to the Isle of Pines, Cuba, 

 to make zoological collections for the Hon. Walter Rothschild of London. 

 This was the first of his collecting trips, from which he returned in the 

 early summer of the same year. In the following spring he made a second 

 expedition to the Isle of Pines for Mr. Outram Bangs of Boston, and was 

 successful in securing an exceptionally fine and well prepared collection of 

 birds, on which a report was published by Mr. Bangs and himself (Ameri- 

 can Naturalist, 1905, vol. 39, p. 179-215). It was on this trip that he also 

 secured the specimens of the Isle of Pines representative of the Cuban 

 Capromys pilorides, one of which was made the type of the subspecies C. 

 reliclus. 



In December 1906, his services were obtained as a collector in the inter- 

 ests of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, to accompany Mr. E. H. 

 Wilson, the botanist, on an expedition into the interior of China. He 

 reached Shanghai in February, 1907, and spent most of his first year in 

 the region of Ichang, whence he sent home a fine collection of vertebrates. 

 The second year he travelled with Mr. Wilson in their house-boat up the 

 Yang-tze to Elating, thence overland, through the Province of Szechuan 

 to the Tibetan border. He collected in many localities where no white 

 man had been seen before, and made a particularly valuable collection of 

 birds, mammals, and reptiles on the isolated Wa Shan range. A general 

 report on his Chinese collections, with accounts of sundry new species 

 appeared in the Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Vol. 40, 

 1912. In returning home from China, he came via the Indian Ocean and 

 Red Sea, to England, arriving in Boston in May, 1909, thus completing a 

 journey around the globe. 



In October of the same year, he again set forth, this time with Mr. 

 Childs Frick of Pittsburgh, to British East Africa, to be gone eight months. 

 Although the main object of the expedition was large game, he made an 

 excellent collection of small. birds and mammals, which were given by Mr. 

 Frick to the Museum of Comparative Zoology, while most of the larger 

 specimens were presented to the Carnegie Museum at Pittsburgh. 



