Xn REPORT ON MUSEUM WORK 



" Museum talks." Attendances at my " museum talks " had 

 fallen in the preceding year to the low average of 44. Last 

 winter I tried the experiment of making four of the talks into 

 a series, dealing with the bird life of diiferent situations and 

 types of country. The result (as far as numbers were con- 

 cerned) was an average attendance of 76 for the winter, and 

 of 92 for these four talks. This, though gratifying, can hardly 

 be taken as conclusive as to the success of giving the talks in 

 series : birds are always a more popular subject than any- 

 thing else. 



Photographic outfit. We are now very well equipped in 

 this way, and have been glad of it on many occasions during 

 the year. Our outfit consists of a half-plate Sanderson 

 camera with Zeiss lens and accessories, an enlarging and 

 reducing lantern, and a very convenient dark-room. The 

 excellence of the lens and the great range of movements pro- 

 vided in the camera make the outfit extremely useful for the 

 varied applications of photography which arise in museum 

 work. 



Donations. A list of these will be found on a later page, 

 but a few call for special mention. Dr. Eltringham's butter- 

 flies, as already stated, were in reality largely a gift. A 

 number of good fishes for casting were sent us by Mr. 

 W. E. Forster, of Paignton, Devon, who was most kind in 

 exerting himself to obtain fishes which we particularly wanted. 

 From Mr. W. A. C. Henderson we received a large and well 

 preserved collection of reptiles and other natural history 

 specimens collected by him in the neighbourhood of Singa- 

 pore, and from Mr. Max Holzapfel another batch of reptiles, 

 etc., from East Africa. Mr. Harold Cookson has presented 

 to the Museum a considerable collection of British birds and 

 a number of interesting ethnological objects which he had 

 brought home from Africa, New Zealand and the South Seas. 

 The most important acquisition connected with local ornith- 

 ology is a clutch of quail's eggs presented by Mr. Thomas 

 Thompson, of Ryton ; they were taken from a nest at Ryton 



