580 Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 



as well as cheap rifles of small calibre, also other fatal con- 

 trivances that will noiselessly throw missiles of a variety of 

 kinds witli great accuracy. Hundreds of those guns are 

 sold annually to boys, who never seem to tire of strolling 

 about orchai'ds and hedgerows and knocking over dozens 

 upon dozens of birds with them. One day last spring 

 Dr. Shufeldt met one such youngster, and upon examining his 

 game-bag found it absolutely crammed with dead birds 

 which he had killed since starting out in the morning. One 

 item alone consisted of seventy-two Ruby and Golden-crowned 

 Kinglets. The same fellow boasted of having slain over one 

 hundred Cat-birds that season. 



Mr. Cory's Collection of Birds. — We learn from the last 

 number of 'The Auk ' that Mr. Charles B. Cory, of Boston, 

 U.S.A., has recently sold his large collection of birds and 

 his ornithological library to the Field-Columbian Museum 

 of Chicago, and has accepted the Curatorship of the Depart- 

 ment of Ornithology, which is to be entirely under his 

 direction, in that Institution. 



Obituary. — Mr. Brian H. Hodgson, Dr. L. Coulon, and 

 Mr. P. L. JouY. 



The name of Brian Houghton Hodgson, formerly of the 

 East India Company^s Civil Service, who has lately passed 

 away at the ripe age of 94, is well known to all ornitho- 

 logists, especially to those who have studied the Avifauna of 

 India. More than half a century has elapsed since he re- 

 tired from a distinguished ])ublic position to devote himself 

 to the unrequited labour of Indian research. Born on 

 February 1, 1800, he entered the Indian Civil Service in 

 1818, and won by his brilliant talents the position of Secre- 

 tary to the Nepal Embassy before he was 21. At the age 

 of 33 he was appointed British Resident in Nepal, a post 

 which he retained until his retirement, after 25 years' service, 

 in 1843. The next fifteen years he devoted, with a brief 

 interval, to completing his researches in India, after which 

 he returned to England. 



