Vol. XXVIj Notes and News. 455 



The writer remembers as well as if it were but yesterday when the entire 

 unmounted bird collection of the National Museum was contained in some 

 three or four dozen tin herbarium cases arranged, book-like, on shelves 

 in the middle room on the second floor of the north tower of the Smith- 

 sonian building, excepting the larger birds, which were packed in several 

 old-fashioned wooden cabinets and cases with open drawers, mostly in 

 the west basement. Sometime during the later "seventies" these were 

 transferred to heavy glass-topped square wooden boxes and removed to 

 the topmost room of the south tower, the Curator's office being the room 

 immediately beneath. Several years later ' (during the earlier or middle 

 "eighties") the collection of smaller birds and the Curator's office were 

 changed to the southwest open gallery in the main exhibition hall of the 

 Smithsonian building, where they remained until the recent transfer. 

 Here were held all the meetings of the A. O. U. Committee on Classification 

 and Nomenclature except the first (and possibly the second), members of 

 which are able to realize more than anyone else except the Curator and 

 his assistants the extreme disadvantages under which all work pertaining 

 to the Division of Birds has hitherto, been done. 



Members of the Union will benefit greatly from the change through in- 

 creased efficiency of the Committee, which will hereafter be able, for the 

 first time, to perform the ornithological part of its duties under circum- 

 stances calculated to yield satisfactory results. — R. R. 



The Bristol County Academy of Sciences has recently been organized 

 and incorporated under the general laws of Massachusetts, for the purpose 

 of promoting and encouraging "public interest in all branches of natural 

 history and in the liberal and useful arts, and in the conservation of our 

 natural resources." A museum will be formed to illustrate the local fauna 

 and flora, with a laboratory for the use of members engaged in special 

 research and experimental work; and a bureau of information is to be 

 established in aid of naturalists, agriculturalists, etc., to give information 

 and practical assistance in the suppression of insect pests, the improvement 

 of shade and forest trees, the reforestation of waste lands, etc. A library 

 and lectures will also be provided, and publications will be issued whenever 

 the results attained or the welfare of the public seem to render it desirable. 

 The officers are: President, Henry F. Bassett; Vice-Presidents, Walter C 

 Baylies and Joshua E. Crane; Secretary, A. Cleveland Bent (Taunton, 

 Mass.); Treasurer, Julius Rockwell; Curator, Frederic C. Carpenter. 



At the annual meeting of the British Ornithologists' Union held in 

 London in May last, a "new rule" was adopted to the effect that any 

 member who "shall have personally assisted in, or connived at, the capture 

 or destruction of any bird, nest, or eggs in the British Isles, by purchase or 

 otherwise, likely, in the opinion of the Committee, to lead to the extermma- 



i The exact dates of these changes cannot at this moment be ascertained. 



