3 [Yol. xvi. 



discussion, and very appropriate to the occasion. Mr. 

 Dougias has kindly given permission to the Editors of the 

 " Ibis" to reprint his paper. 



" The South African Museum at Cape Town may be said 

 to be the only institution in South Africa connected with 

 zoology which is provided with a scientific staff and which 

 is doing original work, apart from the acquisition and 

 arrangement of specimens. It was founded in 1855, when 

 Sir George Grey was Governor of the Colony, and its first 

 curator was Edgar Leopold Layard — a name well-known 

 in ornithology. Besides being' an excellent field- 

 naturalist, Layard was the author of the first complete 

 handbook of the Birds of South Africa, which was 

 published in 1867. In 1896 the collections of the Museum 

 were removed to a new and commodious building, situated 

 near the Public Gardens and House of Parliament, in the 

 best part of Cape Town, and Mr. W. L. Sclater was 

 appointed as director, a post which he still holds. The 

 mounted series of South African Birds occupies one of the 

 principal rooms on the first floor in this building. It 

 contains about 1090 specimens, labelled and arranged 

 according to the " Birds of South Africa," commenced by 

 the late Dr. Stark and completed after his death by Mr. 

 Sclater^ and of which the fourth and last volume is now 

 nearly ready for issue. The specimens are mostly in good 

 order, and well set up, but some of the older ones require 

 to be replaced by fresh examples, and this is being 

 gradually done. 



" Besides the mounted specimens (for exhibition) there 

 is a larger series of about 5500 skins in cabinets kept for 

 purposes of study in one of the rooms on the ground floor. 

 This has been one of the main bases of the information 

 contained in the '^'^ Birds of South Africa." It is receiving 

 continual additions from correspondents in various parts of 

 the large area of Africa south of the Zambesi, to which Mr. 

 Sclater has devoted his principal attention, but of which 

 large portions are still almost unexplored. There is indeed 

 much work in ornithology still to be done in South Africa. 



