401 
NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
MUSEUMS CONFERENCE AT LIVERPOOL. 
A conference of curators and members of museums com- 
mittees was held at the Public Museum, Liverpool, on the 18th 
of October. Its chief value was the opportunity it afforded 
of enabling the visitors to see the elaborate way in which the 
specimens of birds are there exhibited. Each case is devoted 
to one species, with its nest, eggs, etc., in its natural surround- 
ings, and it is astonishing to what an extent these are used by 
Art Students and others. There are scores upon scores of 
costly cases arranged in the extension of the museum. Mr. 
J. W. Cutmore, the taxidermist, described the methods of 
preparing these exhibits. Of particular value was the paper 
read by Mr. E. Rimbault Dibdin, of the Liverpool Art Gallery, 
in reference to the Copyright Bill which had already passed the 
House of Commons, the effect of which would be to take away 
the copyright oj any work of art exhibited in any public Museum 
or Art Gallery. The authorities present were appealed to 
to agitate for the rejection of the Bill. The Director of the 
Liverpool Museum, Dr. Clubb, read a paper on ‘ The Educa- 
tional Value of Museums for Schools.’ Mr. W. S. Laverock 
gave some useful hints on ‘ The Exhibition of Botanical Speci- 
mens in Museums,’ and Mr. P. Entwistle read a paper on ‘ The 
Method of Exhibiting an Introductory Series of Pottery and 
Porcelain.’ The Museum’s Committee entertained the visitors 
to tea at the museum, and also conducted them round the 
various and numerous galleries. 
THE HOMING HABITS OF CRABS. 
We learn from the Yorkshire Post that some remarkable 
results of experiments with crabs were reported recently at the 
half-yearly meeting of the Eastern Sea Fisheries Board, held 
at King’s Lynn. Large numbers of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, 
and Norfolk crabs had been captured, labelled, and released 
in the sea at various places, and since then 408 of the labelled 
crabs have been recaptured, and the experiment showed that 
the crabs, particularly those from Yorkshire, had wonderful 
homing instincts. The Board’s Inspector (Mr. H. Donnison) 
gave a detailed report on the experiments. The investigations 
show that crabs keep to their own locality and that if taken a 
distance away their instinct is to return. Numbered crabs 
which were set free on the spot where obtained did not travel 
far, frequently only one or two miles. Crabs taken off Cromer 
and Overstrand and set free towards Suffolk, when recaptured 
were, with one exception, on or in the direction of their old 
feeding ground. In like manner, crabs takem from between 
: 2 C 
1g1t Dec. 1. 
