340 Notes and News. [£" t k 



Mr. George K. Cherrie, for the last six years connected with the 

 Museo Nacional at San Jose, Costa Rica, has recently resigned from the 

 service of the Costa Rican government and returned to the United 

 States. Almost immediately upon his arrival in New York he was 

 offered and accepted the position of assistant in the Department of Orni- 

 thology at the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago, of which Mr. C B. 

 Cory has recently been made Curator (see Auk, XI, p. 264). 



Mr. Cherrie has made an enviable record for himself in Costa Rica, 

 displaying an energy and a capacity for work rarely equalled. He 

 entered the employ of the Costa Rica government as its taxidermist. Soon, 

 however, the authorities of the Museum, recognizing his industry and 

 abilities, placed him in sole charge of the department of zoology. His 

 interest in ornithology led him into the field as a collector and explorer, 

 with the result of bringing together a collection of some 12,000 bird skins, 

 besides many nests and eggs and several hundred specimens of mammals. 

 His explorations covered nearly the whole of the Costa Rican Republic, 

 but the region immediately about San Josd, the Volcano of Irazu, and 

 the southwest coast region were the areas receiving special attention. 

 These explorations added between fifty and sixty species to the list of 

 Costa Rican birds, about twenty of which were new to science. He has 

 published some of the results of his ornithological work in various pre- 

 liminary papers (see Auk, Vols. VII-X, and Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., Vols. 

 XIV-XVI), and various new species of mammals have been described 

 from his material. Recent political changes in the country rendered 

 the further prosecution of his work temporarily impracticable, but he has 

 by no means given up hope of again resuming it at some more favorable 

 time, and of publishing in detail the important facts he has gathered 

 regarding the geographical distribution of the birds of Costa Rica, and 

 the several well-marked life-areas into which the Republic is separable. 



Dr. Edgar A. Mearns, U. S. A., was detailed nearly three years 

 since to accompany, as surgeon and naturalist, the International Boundary 

 Commission appointed to relocate and mark the boundary line between 

 Mexico and the United States. The Commission started from El Paso, 

 Texas, in March, 1892, and reached the Pacific Coast early in July, 1S94. 

 Dr. Mearns has thus had somewhat over two years in the field, traversing 

 a line nearly one thousand miles in extent, across portions of country so 

 arid that it was necessary to transport water for long distances for the use 

 of the expedition. Opportunity was thus afforded for collecting at points 

 ordinarily inaccessible to naturalists, and from which specimens will not 

 often be obtainable in the future. With the aid of one regular assistant 

 and more or less casual help from other sources, Dr. Mearns has brought 

 together immense collections in various departments of natural history, 

 but particularly in mammalogy, ornithology, ethnology and botany. It 

 is therefore very gratifying to learn that he has been assigned to duty at 

 Fort Myers, in the immediate vicinity of Washington, and hence within 

 easy access to the libraries and collections of the U. S. National Museum 



