3iS 



Notes and News. 



TAuk 

 Ljuly 



DUKING the present session of the Connecticut legishiture, a hill was 

 introduced providing for the payment, hy the State, of a bounty for 

 killing Hawks and Owls. Active opposition to the bill was made by an 

 official of the A. O. U., and several others. Facts were presented to 

 the Committee on Agriculture, to whom the bill was referred, showing 

 that Hawks and Owls, as a class, are beneficial to the farmer. An 

 adverse report was made by the Committee and the obnoxious bill 

 defeated when it came up for action in the House. 



Mk. Gecokge K. Cherrie of the Field Columbian Museum, whose 

 departure for San Domingo to make ornithological collections was 

 noticed in the January 'Auk,' has returned after an absence of five 

 months. In spite of the hardships occasioned by an unusually wet 

 season and the inhospitality of the degraded negroes of the interior, 

 Mr. Cherrie was eminently successful and his collection of 2,000 birds 

 and extended field notes will form the basis of valuable papers by Mr. 

 Chas. B. Cory and himself on the avi-fauna of this comparatively little 

 known island. 



'The Nidiologist' for May announces that Dr. R. W. Sinifeldt has 

 joined forces with Mr. H. R. Taylor in the editorial management of this 

 enterprising journal, an arrangement which will undoubtedly add to its 

 increasing popularity. 



Something quite new in the line of birtl exhibits has recently been 

 placed before the public in the Agassiz Museum of Comparative Zoology 

 at Cambridge, Mass., in the W. E. D. Scott Collection of mounted birds, 

 first opened for inspection June iS of the present year. The exhibit con- 

 sists at present of fifty-six cases, containing about 250 specimens, the 

 beginning of a collection which it is hoped will some day surpass in 

 interest, instructiveness, and artistic effect anything the world has yet 

 seen in the way of a museum exhibition of birds. Each case is devoted 

 to a single species, the cases varying in size with the species it is de- 

 signed to illustrate. The purpose of the work is not only to show birds 

 in life-like and natural attitudes and surroundings, but to illustrate special 

 facts in ornithology, as variations due to sex, age and reason, dichroma- 

 tism, geographical variation, protective coloration, etc. This is a plan 

 Mr. Scott has long had in mind, and with his well-known skill and taste 

 as a taxidermist, his intelligence ami training as a naturalist, and his 

 wide-field experience we may well anticipate the production of a collec- 

 tion of mounted birds far in advance of any hitherto attempted. The 

 expense of the undertaking, which will of course be large, we understand 

 is defrayed by friends of the museum, and we trust that there will be no 

 lack of funds for such a meritorious work. 



