NOTES AND QUERIES. 213 



has been shown in the Norwich Naturalists' Society's * Trans- 

 actions ' (vol. iv. p. 60), that in respect of its avian migrations it 

 is totally different from our coast of England. 



Mr. Gray thinks the Scotch colony is reinforced from abroad 

 ('Birds of Scotland,' p. 104), for he says the species is much 

 more abundant there in some years than in others. 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



The late Mr. Booth's Collection of Birds.— In your memoir of the 

 late Mr. E. T. Booth," which appeared in the March number of ' The 

 Zoologist,' you say, on p. 96, that the groups of British birds in the British 

 Museum "are being mounted in imitation of Mr. Booth's cases." This 

 statement is incorrect; and as I should not like to see it remain uncon- 

 tradicted in the pages of ' The Zoologist,' I beg to make the following 

 remarks : — The plan of forming an exhibition in the Museum, illustrating 

 the nesting habits of British birds, was entirely, and in its characteristic 

 details, my own idea, and part of a much wider scheme. It was commenced 

 in 1876, long before I knew of the existence of the Dyke Road Museum, 

 or of Mr. Booth himself. When I became acquainted with him, in 1883, 

 our collections bore already a very different character, so that we more than 

 once discussed the merits of our different methods ; he selecting the finest 

 and most perfect specimens obtainable, frequently changing them for better 

 ones; I insisting upon obtaining the pair of individual birds which built 

 the nest and were the parents of the young ; he maintaining that it was neces- 

 sary for the conservation of the groups to make the surroundings entirely 

 of artificial materials ; I preserving the whole of the natural surroundings, 

 and replacing only the perishable parts of plants by artificial facsimiles. 

 Besides, the Booth Museum is a general collection of all the birds resident 

 in, or visitors to, the British Islands ; the series in the British Museum is 

 limited to the species breeding in this country. I must therefore decline 

 to be represented as the imitator of Mr. Booth, although I yield to no one 

 in admiration of his work at the Dyke Road Museum, and only wish 

 I possessed a fraction of his unrivalled experience in British Ornithology. 

 If anything has helped me in conceiving the idea of mounting animals in 

 groups, — and thus forming an exhibition attractive, and at the same time 

 instructive, to the public, — it is a collection of the animals of Wurtemberg 

 that was formed under my own eyes by the then best German taxidermist, 

 the late Hr. Plouquet, of Stuttgart. His famous collection may still be 

 remembered by some of your readers, as it was brought to the International 

 Exhibition in London in 1851, and afterwards sold to the Crystal Palace 



