AVIFAUNA OF THE NETHERLANDS. 



129 



NOTE XVIII. 



CONTRIBUTION TO OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE 

 AVIFAUNA OF THE NETHERLANDS, 



BEING A LIST OF ALL THE SPECIES OF BIRDS HITHERTO 

 OBSERVED, WITH SPECIAL 

 REFERENCES TO SPECIMENS IN THE LEYDEN MUSEUM 



BY 



Dr. E D. VAN OORT. 



(With 2 plates). 



Though the specimens in our general ornithological col- 

 lection, for the greater part collected before and at the 

 time that the late Professor H. Schlegel interested himself 

 much in the knowledge of the birds of the Netherlands — 

 that is before 1865 — , in addition with those of the fine 

 collection of stuffed birds, brought together by the late 

 Mr. J. P. van Wickevoort Crommelin, all captured in the 

 Netherlands and received by the Museum in 1893, form 

 for many of the species a scientific material, I however 

 acquired the experience, when taking the care of the 

 Birds-collection of our Museum in 1904, that many other 

 species, even some of the commonest ones, were repre- 

 sented in an insufficient manner, so that it was impossible 

 to make a somewhat serious study with the aid of this 

 material. Moreover all the specimens of the old collec- 

 tion are stuffed, series of twenty and more examples of 

 the same species. These stuffed birds are very unman a- 



Notes from the Leyden Museum, Vol. XXX* 



9 



