488 Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 



The Museum of Par a. — In the April number of the 'Zoo- 

 1 ogische Garten/ Herr Meerwarth^ assistant in the Museu 

 Paraense (of which our excellent correspondent. Dr. Emil 

 Goeldi, is Director), gives an account of the new Zoological 

 Garden attached to the Museum, and adds a description of the 

 principal buildings and a li^t of the species of vertebrates of 

 \ihich examples are exhibited. The birds consist of 224 indi- 

 viduals, belonging to 70 species, mostly Amazonian forms. 

 Among these are specimens of Harpyia destructor and Eury- 

 pyyia helias, and of three species of Psuphia. 



The Tristram Collection of Birds*. — By far the most 

 important event in the history of the Liverpool Collections 

 during the past year has been the acquisition of the Tristram 

 Collection of Birds. This is an historical collection, long 

 recognized among ornithologists as one of the first importance. 

 It was, if not the last, almost the last, of the great undis- 

 persed private collections which were amassed by wealthy 

 cultivators of this science in England during the past half- 

 century or more, nearly every one of which has now become 

 incorporated in the National Museum of Natural History at 

 South Kensington, either by gift or by purchase. No such 

 general collections are now being made. Ornithologists, as 

 a rule, now restrict themselves — owing to the magnitude of 

 the subject — to collecting and studying the birds of one, or 

 even part of one, region, or the species of a single family, or 

 of a few families at most. One of the earliest and most 

 important of such general collections was brought together 

 at Knowsley by the 14th Lord Derby, who, by bequeathing 

 it to the City of Liverpool, laid the foundation of the 

 present Museum. 



This new acquisition was formed by Henry Baker Tristram, 

 D.D., LL.D., F.R.S., Canon of Durham Cathedral, its 

 foundation dating from the year 1844, when, an under- 

 graduate, he began to collect British and European birds. 

 Having, soon after that year, accepted an ofl&cial post in 



* Extracted from the Forty-fourtli Annual Eeport of tlie Committee 

 of the Public Libraries, Museums, and Art Gallery of the City of Liver- 

 pool for the year ending 31st December, 1896. 



