^°'iS^^^] Notes and Nezvs. 43 1 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The Fifteenth Annual Congress of the American Ornithologists' 

 Union will be held at the American Museum of Natural History in New 

 York city, beginning on the evening of Monday, November 8, 1897, when 

 will be held the session for the election of oftlcers and members and the 

 transaction of routine business. The following three da^'s will be given 

 to public sessions for the reading and discussion of scientific papers. 

 Members intending to present papers are requested to send the titles of 

 the same to the Secretai-y, Mr. John H. Sage, Portland, Conn., in time to 

 reach him prior to November 5, in order to facilitate the preparation of 

 the program of papers to be read before the Congress. 



Mr. Louis W. Brokaw, an Associate Member of the American Ornithol- 

 ogist's Union, died at his home at Carmel, Ind., Sept. 3, 1897, after a brief 

 illness. 



Sir Edward Newton, a younger brother of Professor Alfred Newton, 

 died at Lowestoft, England, April 25, 1897, in his 65th year, having been 

 born in November, 1832. He was one of the founders and original 

 members of the British Ornithologists' Union, and " one of the eight who 

 formulated the idea of the Union and of ' The Ibis,' " and was one of the 

 original twenty members to which the British Ornithologists' Union was 

 for a time strictly limited. In 1859 he published in ' The Ibis,' in con- 

 junction with his brother Alfred, an important paper on the birds of St. 

 Croix, West Indies. Later (1862-69) ^^^ published various papers and 

 reports on the birds of Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands, including 

 descriptions of many new species, discovered during his official residence 

 at Mauritius as Colonial Secretarj'. Although harassed and overburdened 

 with oflScial duties while Lieut.-Governor and Colonial Secretary of 

 Jamaica (1877-1883), he found time to form a nearly complete collection 

 of the birds of the island, his observations and collection forming the 

 basis of his well-known 'List of the Birds of Jamaica,' published in the 

 ' Handbook of Jamaica,' issued in 1881. His researches concerning the 

 extinct bird fauna of the Mascarenes will ever give his name a prominent 

 place in the history of that subject. 



A UNiquE and exceedingly appropriate memorial to the late Henry 

 Davis Minot consists of a park of some fifty acres in extent, recently 

 transferred by his four brothers, William, Charles S., Robert, and 

 Lawrence Minot, in accordance with the wishes of their father, the late 

 William Minot, to the trustees of public reservations in Massachusetts, to 

 be maintained as a wild park, " for the use of the public forever." This 

 park, to be known as Mount Anne Park, consists of a tract of about fifty 

 acres of beautiful woodland near the village of West Gloucester, Mass. It 



