^°''897^^] ^"^''^ '""^ Ne-.vs. I 1 5 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



Mr. Howard Gardner Nichols, an Associate Member of the A. O. U., 

 and for a number of years a Resident Member of the Nuttall Ornithological 

 Club, died June 2;^, 1896, at the early age of 25 years, at Atlanta, Georgia, 

 from injuries received several weeks before by the fall of a piece of 

 machinery in a cotton mill at Alabama City, Alabama. He was a gradu- 

 ate of Harvard in the class of 1893. After graduation he went into the 

 business of cotton manufacturing, and at the time of his death was the 

 manager of a large plant for the weaving of cotton at Alabama City. He 

 was very successful in this undertaking, and had every prospect of a 

 brilliant future. What leisure time he had was largely devoted to 

 the study of birds, and the same zeal and earnestness which he carried 

 into all his work promised much of value as the result of his investi- 

 gations of the little-known fauna of the region in which he was 

 situated. At the time of his death he was mayor of Alabama City, where 

 his death was mourned as an irreparable public loss, and where he was 

 honored and respected for " his sterling wortli, strict integrity, and noble 

 charity." 



The Action on the Amendments to the By-Laws of the A. O. U. pro- 

 posed at the Thirteenth Congress, and referred to the Fourteenth Con- 

 gress, resulted as follows : The first and third proposed changes 

 wei'e not adopted, but the proposed addition of the words " together with 

 the Ex-Presidents" to the second amendment was adopted. The first 

 paragraph of Article II, Section I, as amended, reads as follows : — 



" Article II, Section I. The OflScers of the Union shall be a President, 

 two Vice-Presidents, a Secretary, a Treasurer, and seven Councillors 

 These Officers, together with the Ex-Presidents, shall constitute the 

 Board of Management or Council of the Union, for the transaction of 

 such business as may be assigned to it by the Bv-Laws or by the Union." 



The ornithological collection formed by the late Dr. William Wood, of 

 East Windsor Hill, Conn., has been presented by his widow and children 

 to the Hartford (Conn.) Scientific Society, and will soon be placed on 

 exhibition in the rooms of the Society. The collection is mostly 

 mounted, and contains many excellent specimens of the rapacious birds 

 found in Connecticut. 



David Douglas, Edinburgh, has issued a prospectus of ' A History of 

 Fowling, being an account of the many curious devices by which Wild 

 Birds are or have been captured in different parts of the World,' by the 

 Rev. H. A. Macpherson. It will form a quarto volume of about 450 



