Letters, Extracts, Notices, S^c. 489 



Bermuda, he devoted his leisure to collecting the birds of the 

 West Indian Islands. 



Visits to North America followed, which resulted in large 

 additions of the avifauna of that region being amassed. As 

 is widely known, Canon Tristram has, at various periods of 

 his life, paid extended visits to Palestine and Syria, as well 

 as to the countries of Northern Africa on the Mediterranean 

 Littoral, to the Sahara Desert, the Canary Islands, and to 

 Madeira, for the purpose of increasing his collection. Ac- 

 cordingly the birds of all these regions are well represented 

 in it. In every case the birds described and figured in 

 his various works, in 'The Ibis,' and in the 'Proceedings' 

 of the Zoological Society of London, were retained in his 

 own cabinet, and these types add much to the intrinsic as well 

 as to the historical interest of his collection. 



During a visit paid at a later period to Japan, Dr. Tristram 

 obtained a large series of rare and interesting species of 

 Eastern Pala?arctic birds, and on his way through America 

 he lost no opportunity of acquiring species from that region 

 still desiderata in his cabinets. Besides his personal con- 

 tributions to his collection. Dr. Tristram has maintained, 

 throughout his life, an extensive correspondence with 

 naturalists, travellers, missionaries, consuls, and officers of 

 Her Majesty's Army and Navy in most quarters of the 

 globe, many of whom he was the means of inspiring with 

 some of his own love of ornithology, inducing them to collect 

 and investigate the bird-life of many little-visited regions 

 and send hom3 the fruits of their investigations. Through 

 these agents, by exchange, purchase, or gift, the Tristram 

 Museum obtained annually large accessions. Special atten- 

 tion was given by the Canon to the birds of the Oceanic 

 Islands, chiefly of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and the 

 collection, which is specially rich in this department, has 

 been, as he himself has remarked, "most valuable in the 

 study of types under changed conditions, and especially in 

 isolation." There are, in the collection, specimens of a 

 number of species now extinct, and so rare that but very few 

 museums anywhere possess examples. Of these may be 

 mentioned the Labrador Duck {Camptolcemus labradoricus), 



SER. VII. — VOL. III. 2l 



