I OO /Votes and NetUS. [January 



vote of the Union to provide facilities for the exhibition of stereopticon 

 views of birds and bird life from such slides as may be furnished by mem- 

 bers; also to solicit, by a circular letter, from ornithologists and photo- 

 graphers, the loan of photographs of living birds and other animals for 

 exhibition at the next meeting, and also the submission of communica- 

 tions detailing their personal experience in making photographs of living 

 animals, and in their reproduction for purposes of illustration. Much 

 interest was manifested by several members who spoke to the resolution, 

 in the subject of the photography of birds from life, and its utility as an 

 aid to the correct representation of birds when in action or at rest in a 

 state of nature. 



Dr. Edgar A. Mearns, Capt. Med. Dept. U. S. A., now stationed at 

 Fort Snelling, Minn., is spending several months at the American Mu- 

 seum of Natural History, working up his large natural history collections 

 made during several years ot field work in Arizona, principally in tire 

 vicinity of Fort Verde. These collections include, besides birds and 

 mammals, a large collection of plants, ethnological material, and manv 

 reptiles. The birds alone number about 3500 skins and 1000 eggs, and 

 the mammals about 6co specimens. Nearly all of this material he has 

 very generously presented to the American Museum, besides many birds 

 and eggs from other parts of North America and elsewhere, including 

 about 1000 bird skins and about 1800 eggs from Arctic Europe. A list of 

 his Arizona plants, including many new species, has already been pub- 

 lished by Dr. N. C. Britton of Columbia College. Dr. -Mearns hopes to 

 have his preliminary report on the birds and mammals soon ready for 

 publication. 



Besides Dr. Mearns, and in addition to the Curator of Ornithology 

 and his Assistant, there are now engaged in bird work at the Museum Mr. 



D. G. Elliot, Mr. George B. Sennett, Mr. Jonathan Dwight, Jr., and Mr. 



E. E. Thompson. 



Among the recent important accessions received at the American Mu- 

 seum of Natural History is the valuable oological collection made by the 

 late Mr. Snowdon Howland, of Newport, R. I. This is one of the richest 

 and most carefully selected collections of North American birds' eggs ever 

 brought together by a private collector, numbering nearly 1000 clutches. 

 The Museum is indebted for this valuable gift to Mr. Howland's brother 

 and executor, Clarence King, Esq., of New York, to whom Mr. Howland 

 entrusted the final disposition of his collection. 



We are informed »that the third edition of three thousand copies of 

 Davie's 'Nests and Eggs of North American Birds' which was published in 

 in June, 1S89, and reviewed in the last number of this journal, is entirely 

 exhausted. In order to meet the constant demand for the work a fourth 

 edition or one thousand copies has been issued from the same plates as 

 the third, and when this is disposed of it will be followed by a fifth edition 

 completely revised and augmented. 



