REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1908. 63 
reptilian collection; and division of paleobotany, with Mr. David 
White as associate curator. The other members of the staff con- 
nected with these divisions are given in the lst beginning on page 65. 
Furloughs without pay were granted to Dr. W. H. Ashmead, whose 
continued illness still incapacitates him for work, and to Mr. Laurence 
La Forge, aid in the division of physical and chemical geology. 
Mr. J. C. Crawford was appointed assistant curator, division of in- 
sects, to fill the vacancy caused by the transfer to the Bureau of 
Entomology of the Department of Agriculture of Dr. Harrison G. 
Dyar, who had been temporarily occupying this position. The 
latter, however, still retains the custodianship of the collection of 
Lepidoptera. Mr. A. C. Weed was made an aid in the division of 
fishes, and Mr. IK. N. Bales, a preparator in the division of physical 
anthropology. 
I regret having to record the death, on July 8,1907,o0f Dr. William 
La Grange Ralph, curator of the section of birds’ eggs,to whom the 
Museum is indebted for especially important gifts and whose services 
were mainly rendered without compensation. Doctor Ralph was 
born June 19, 1851, at Holland Patent, New York, where his early 
years were passed. In his boyhood rambles he imbibed a taste for 
natural history which had an important bearing on his after life. 
In 1863 his parents moved to Utica, where he received his preliminary 
education. He attended Whitestone Seminary, and later the College 
of Physicians and Surgeons, New York City, where he obtained the 
degree of doctor of medicine in 1879. Upon his return to Utica he 
engaged in the practice of his profession, but delicate health soon 
forced him to abandon his intention of following a medical career, 
and urged him to less exacting pursuits. He again turned his atten- 
tion to the fascinations of bird study and the wild life of the woods, 
and, having independent means, began in earnest the formation of a 
collection of birds, nests, and eggs of Oneida County. In the study 
of the local avifauna he became associated with Mr. Egbert Bage, of 
Utica, and the researches of the two naturalists resulted in the publi- 
cation of an Annotated List of the Birds of Oneida County, New 
York. (Trans. Oneida Hist. Soc., IIT, 1886, pp. 101-147). This 
was followed some years later by a supplement, entitled “Additional 
Notes on the Birds of Oneida County, New York.” (Auk, VII, 
1890, pp. 229-232). 
It was to the subject of oology that Doctor Ralph’s energies were 
chiefly directed, and his cabinet of nests and eggs, at first of not 
more than local interest, became in later years one of the most impor- 
tant private collections in the United States. His personal work in 
the field was restricted chiefly to the Adirondacks and Florida, but 
he obtained by purchase and through the employment of collectors 
many important desiderata from other parts of the country. When 
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