'^°'-^^'"' JVotcs and News. 



,S95 J ^\orcs ana JMezvs. ^97 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The Thirteenth Annual Congress of the American Ornithologists' 

 Union will be held in Washington, beginning on the evening of Monday, 

 November ii, 1895, which session will be devoted to the election of 

 officers and members and the transaction of the usual routine business. 

 Tuesday and the following days will be given to public sessions for 

 the reading and discussion of scientific papers. Members intending to 

 present papers are requested to forward the titles of their papers to the 

 Secretary, Mr. John H. Sage, Portland, Conn., prior to November 6, in 

 order to facilitate the preparation of the program of papers to be read 

 before the Congress. 



Prof. L. L. Dyche, who accompanied the ill-fated 'Miranda' expedition 

 of 1894 as naturalist, has passed the entii-e summer of 1S95 on the Green- 

 land coast. Professor Dyche sailed from Gloucester, Mass., in May on 

 a fishing schooner which landed him at Holsteinburg, West Greenland. 

 He was picked up here July 15 by the members of the Peary Relief 

 Expedition, on board the S. S. ' Kite,' and with them proceeded to Peary's 

 headquarters in Whale Sound. News has just been received of the 

 safe return of the expedition to St. John's, Newfoundland, Professor 

 Dyche having, it is reported, been very successful in gathering large 

 collections of mammals and birds. 



Mr. R. a. Bray, writing in 'Nature,' records a remarkable flight of 

 birds observed by him through a telescope directed toward the sun, at 

 3 P.M., on September 30, 1894, at Shere, Guilford, England. Every few 

 seconds a bird would pass slowly across the sun, and there was no decrease 

 in their numbers during the ten minutes of observation. The bii-ds were 

 flying in a southerly direction and were invisible to the naked eye, but 

 must have been at least two or three miles away, as both birds and 

 sun were in focus. This is a phase of migration which seems to have 

 previously escaped attention and suggests the probability of a more 

 extended diurnal movement than we at present know of. 



It is encouraging to note not alone the increase in quantity but the 

 improvement in quality of the ornithological literature which appears 

 in our magazines. 'Our Animal Friends,' the monthly journal of the 

 New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, is espe- 

 cially advanced in this respect, each ^number containing one or more 

 original articles on birds generally accompanied by illustrations. 



At a recent sale in London an egg of the Great Auk from the collec- 

 tion of the Comte de Barace, said to have been taken in Iceland about 

 1830, brought 165 guineas. 



