PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. Ixiii. 



Park gardens. An Indian elephant has been born in the 

 Copenhagen gardens, this being only the third instance of 

 the kind in Europe, one of which was in London in 1903. 

 The Field of Nov. 9 last contains a photograph of the nest 

 or sleeping platform of an ourang-outang made by it in a 

 tree near its cage in the London gardens on the evening of 

 Nov. 3. An account has lately been published of the work 

 done in the N. Atlantic during the cruise of the " Michael 

 Sars." Besides investigation of ocean currents, the deposits 

 of stones, some glaciated, on the ocean bed, have been sampled, 

 much new information as to the early stages of eels has been 

 obtained, and the extraordinary abundance of minute plant 

 life in some parts of the sea has been shewn, the plants being 

 so small as to pass through the finest silk net. In his Address 

 to the Zoological Section of the British Association the 

 President gives particulars of a melancholy list of animals 

 recently persecuted to extinction by man, and of others 

 which are on the verge, and recommends strict game laws 

 and the establishment of large sanctuaries which would be 

 in the widest sense developments of the Zoological Gardens, 

 in which in all ages it has been the amusement and interest 

 of princes and others to keep the strange animals of foreign 

 countries. It would seem, through information supplied 

 on schedules which were circulated, that a decrease has been 

 taking place during the last few years in certain British 

 migratory birds, especially the whitethroat, redstart, martin, 

 swallow, and wryneck. The cause of this is suggested to be 

 shooting and netting on the Continent, but considering the 

 great variation which occurs in the number of specimens 

 of such birds in any district in different years, we may still 

 perhaps hope that the decrease is only temporary and due 

 to natural causes. Our Hon. Member, Mr. R. Lydekker, has 

 lately brought out a book on " The Sheep and its Cousins " 

 in connection with the work he has done at the Nat. Hist. 

 Museum of collecting together many rare forms of the different 

 breeds of sheep (as well as other domestic animals) which are 

 now on view there and are described in his book. 



