188 Obituary. [Ibis, 



twenty-four plates by F. W. Frohawk. It was reviewed in 

 'The Ibis' (1905, p. 478), and Count Salvador! also con- 

 tributed some critical remarks on the work (Ibis, 1905, 

 pp. 528-535) which were answered by the author himself 

 in tlie following year (Ibis, 1906, pp. 389-394). 



Mr. Alpheraki was elected a Foreign Member of the Union 

 in 1909 and a Corresponding Fellow of the A. O. U. in 1913. 

 He was also a corresponding member of the Imperial 

 Academy of Sciences at Petrograd and a member of the 

 Imperial Russian Geographical Society. 



We are indebted, to the 'Auk' for most of the facts in 

 this notice. 



Valentin Lvovich Bianchi. 



As was stated in the October number of ' The Ibis/ the 

 death of Dr. Bianchi, which occurred at Petrograd on 

 10 January, 1920, was apparently accelerated by the priva- 

 tions he had suffered. He was born in ]857, and was for 

 many years the Curator of the Ornithological Department 

 of the Zoological Museum of the Imperial Academy of 

 Sciences. 



Dr. Bianchi's work was almost entirely devoted to the 

 Palsearctic Avifauna, and he published a large number of 

 papers, mostly in Russian, though a few appeared in German, 

 in the ' Annals of the Zoological Museum of the Imperial 

 Academy.' One of his earliest papers deals with the birds 

 of the western Pamirs, which were explored by the well- 

 known Russian traveller, Grum Grzimailo, in 1884. In 

 1884-7, Bianchi appears to have himself been in Kansu 

 in western China with Berezowski, and the two travellers 

 prepared a memoir on the birds of that district in 1891, 

 and during the following years many papers came from his 

 prolific pen dealing with the birds of various portions of 

 the Russian Empire. His last contributions which reached 

 this country will be found listed in the ' Zoological Record ' 

 for 1916. 



Dr. Bianchi was in England in 1905 in order to attend the 

 meeting of the International Ornithological Congress, and 



