Correspondence 345 



of auy importauce devoted to biology. Especially are the elegant 

 publications of this class coming from Germany missed, including 

 those issuing contributions on systematic ornithology and avian 

 anatomy. This is the more distressing and discouraging for the 

 reason that we have so few publitations of the Ivind in this country. 

 In so far as some of the best German zoological publications are 

 concerned, it would seem that tliey may not appear even in Ger- 

 many until after the war is over. This statement is based upon 

 personal experience, for at the c-onunencement of the trouble in 

 August last, I had an extensive ■monograph on tlie genus Dendro- 

 cygnu and its allies, with many colored and plain plates, all up in 

 t,yi)e for the Zoologische Jahrbiicher ; and I am now told that I 

 will not see my separata of that production for some time. 



In Hungary (Budapest) they have fared a little better; for among 

 other publications, not only wiil .\</iiila (Vol. XXI) soon appear, 

 but Americans liaving contributions in that issue are receiving their 

 separata at tlie rate of cii/Jit at a time — all that the foreign pos- 

 tal authorities and the censors will pass "in one lot." This is 

 remarlvable when we come to know what they have to contend with 

 in the Royal Hungarian Central Bureau for Ornithology. Not only 

 are tlie premises and a part "of the buildings, as the late Director 

 Otto Herman wrote me, used for the accommodation of the wounded 

 soldiers oH the Austrian Army, but some of their scientific staff 

 may have actually been sent to the front to serve as soldiers. Among 

 these I may mention my friend. Dr. Koloman Lambrecht, of the 

 ]Museum of Budapest, who has just received his degree of Doctor 

 of Philosophy, and who was in the midst of his researches upon 

 fossil l)irds, when he was selected for military duty. It is impos- 

 sible to conunand language or words to express one's views upon 

 such sacritices as these, especially in the light of the senselessness 

 of the present stupendous and unnecessary struggle, where kaisers 

 and kings, in their war-game amusements, are allowing such ma- 

 terial to take the chances of being sacrificed. 



In England they are not faring much better in these respects, 

 for not only have upwards of twenty or more zoologists and botan- 

 ists, meml)ers of the regular staff of the British Museum, gone to 

 the front, but doul>tless l)efore this letter is up in type several of 

 them may have been killed in the trenches. And well may we ask : 

 ■ to what end? The same bloody war-game of the crowned heads, — 

 for the true principle of " patriotism " does not enter into it. Doc- 

 tor ^Mitchell, Secretary of the London Zoological Society, writes 

 me that they will have but very little money to spend in these days 

 for plates or for lengthy contributions in Tlie Ibis or in the publica- 

 tions of the Zoological Society ; and Mr. John Henry Gurney, a 



