51b Notes and News. [juJy 



birds and a ranger appointed to guard the reservation. The congress 

 decided to proceed at once with the preparation of a second edition of 

 the 'Check-list of Australian Birds' and elected a committee of 12 members 

 to undertake the work. The officers for the ensuing year include A. F. 

 Basset Hull as president, Dr. J. A. Leach and C. A. Barnard as vice presi- 

 dents, Z. Gray as hon. treasurer, and W. H. D. Le Souef as hon. general 

 secretary. Dr. Leach was reelected editor of 'The Emu.' The next 

 congress will be held about the first week in October in Western Aus- 

 tralia.— T. S. P. 



The Swiss Society for the Study and Protection of Birds held its spring 

 meeting on May 8 and 9 in Basel. The program included an afternoon 

 in the Zoological Gardens, an address on migration at Basel and a social 

 gathering in the evening. An excursion was arranged for the following 

 day to take the members through the St. Jacob Reservation to Birsfelden 

 on the banks of the Rhine and a tour of inspection of the Berlepsch thicket 

 planted for a bird refuge by the Basel Ornithological Society. 



The Swiss Society announces an excursion of a week in July or August 

 to the National Park on the lower Engadine. This park established ten 

 or twelve years ago is in the extreme eastern part of Switzerland, in the 

 Canton of Grisons, and includes several mountain valleys and the inter- 

 vening ridges where wild life of all kinds is carefully protected. 



The year 1920 may be considered the semi-centennial of the discovery 

 of fossil birds in North America since it was in the spring of 1870 that 

 the late Prof. O. C. Marsh published his first descriptions of extinct birds. 

 It is true that some of the specimens had actually been collected prior 

 to 1870, but descriptions of them had not been published except in the 

 case of Palceonornis struthionoides Emmons, the avian relationship of which 

 is now considered very doubtful. During the past 50 years about 125 

 species have been described and most of the type specimens have been 

 figured. The types themselves are preserved in widely separated mu- 

 seums from New England to California and many of the specimens are 

 small and very fragmentary. A suggestion has been made by the Union 

 to the authoritiesof several museums that each institution which possesses 

 type specimens of fossil birds should make ten sets of casts or plastotypes 

 of such types for exchange with other museums so that each may have 

 a complete series of type material of the fossil birds of the continent. 

 This suggestion has received the approval of several institutions and at 

 least one museum has already had casts made of the types in its collec- 

 tion. It is hoped that similar action will be taken by the others at an 

 early date so that the project may be carried to a successful conclusion. — 

 T. S. P. 



A collection which is a combination of autographs and other samples 

 of the handwriting of ornithologists, now representing about 450 indivi- 

 duals has been brought together by W. L. McAtee with very material aid 



