C)6 ^'otes and lYezv^. ^^^^ 



tina, is supposed to have struck him on the back of the head with a 

 ' penca,' or loaded knot at the end of a rein, and then to have driven a 

 spike through his forehead. His body was found and buried near where 

 the tragedy occuned. The murderer, whose motive was robbery, is now 

 in prison at Mendoza." 



Mr. Simons collected birds as well as mammals, sending large collections 

 of the former to the British Museum, but upon which no formal report 

 appears to have yet been published. 



Mr. Thomas has described many new species, as well as several new 

 genera of mammals collected hy Mr. Simons during his three years' work 

 in western South America, where he collected at numerous points, both 

 on the coast and at high altitudes in the Andes, from southern Ecuador 

 to northern Argentina. This notice of Mr. Simons may be fittingly 

 closed by the following brief but emphatic tribute from Mr. Thomas pub- 

 lished in the ' Annals and Magazine of Natural History ' for April, 1902 

 (p. 237 footnote) : " While this paper is in press news has been received 

 that Mr. Simons, the most successful mammal collector that I have ever 

 had to deal with, has fallen a victim to his intrepidity, and has been mur- 

 dered by a guide when crossing the Andes alone with him. Brave to a 

 fault, cheerv and enthusiastic, fond of a wild life, successful as a trapper, 

 painstaking, systematic, and extraordinarily rapid in his work, Mr. 

 Simons was the perfection of a collector, and we shall not easily find his 

 like again. I shall hope to publish later a summary of his Andean 

 journeys and their scientific results." 



During the absence of Mr. Otto Widmann, of Old Orchard, Mo., on a 

 visit to Germanv during the past summer, his house was burned and with 

 it the greater part of his library and his manuscripts, including his 

 twenty-five years' observations on birds, and the manuscripts of his 

 nearly completed work on the birds of Missouri. Under this terrible dis- 

 couragement he can feel sure of the deep sympathy of his fellow orni- 

 thologists; whose respect and esteem he has gained by his many contribu- 

 tions to American ornithology, and through personal acquaintance. It is 

 to be hoped that Mr. Widmann's great loss will not prevent his placing 

 before the ornithological world the results of his long experience in a 

 comparatively little known field. 



A NEW work on the 'Birds of Ohio,' by William Leon Dawson, with 

 introduction and analytical keys by Lynds Jones, is announced by the 

 Wheaton Publishing Company of Columbus, Ohio, for publication in 

 September, 1903. The work will be a royal octavo of about 500 pages, 

 with 80 coloritype and about 200 half-tone plates, the latter illustrating 

 the "hat tats or favorite haunts of each bird resident of Ohio," as well 

 as many photographic representations of live birds. It will be sold only 

 by subscription, at from $5.00 to $7-50, according to the style of binding 



