President's Address. 115 



The numbers of additions to the collection, which for 

 many years had not exceeded 1000 specimens and generally 

 fell short of half that number, now began to increase, and 

 reached 6000 during my first year of office, mainly through 

 the donations of my friends, and some important purchases 

 effected by Dr. Günther. In 1875 Dr. E. B. Hinde presented 

 a series of 156 birds from Kamptee in Central India, and 81 

 birds from New Zealand were received in exchange from the 

 Colonial Museum, Wellington. 



An amusing incident happened to me this year. I received 

 a letter from Bloemfontein from Dr. Exton, introducing a 

 Mr. Fred. Barratt to me as a young traveller from the Transvaal 

 and the Orange Free State. He brought with him an inter- 

 esting collection of birds, which he subsequently described in 

 the ' Ibis,' and after I had shown him all the attention due to a 

 stranger, we discovered on parting and exchanging addresses, 

 that we were old schoolfellows. One hundred and seventy- 

 two specimens were presented by Mr. Barratt. 



In 1876 Capt. Stackhouse Pinwill presented a fine collec- 

 tion of 1247 Indian and Malayan Birds. At this date we had 

 no inkling that the great Hume collection would ever come to 

 the British Museum, and I found the Pinwill collection par- 

 ticularly useful for the purposes of the ' Catalogue of Birds/ 

 Seven hundred and fifty specimens from my collection of 

 African Birds were added this year. The ' Transit of Venus ' 

 expedition to Rodriguez was accompanied by the Rev. H. H. 

 Slater and Mr. G. Gulliver as naturalists, and 110 birds, 

 skeletons, nests, and eggs were collected by these gentlemen, 

 and presented by the Royal Society. Eleven birds and 103 eggs 

 were obtained by the Rev. A. E. Eaton on Kerguelen Island, 

 and were also presented by the Royal Society. 



Three hundred birds were collected by the late Professor 

 Dawson during the North American Boundary Commission, 

 and were presented by the Lords of the Treasury, and the 

 second set of the birds collected by Dr. John Anderson 

 during the Yunnan expedition was presented by the Govern- 

 ment of India. 



For many years past Sir Hugh Low had been engaged in 

 exploiting the Natural History of Labuan and the adjacent 



