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superintendent in each park such specimens as might be required 
for botanical study in the schools, so far as they could be applied 
without detriment to the specimens. In a report upon the 
matter the Parks and Open Spaces Committee adopt these sug- 
gestions, and, putting them in the form of recommendations, 
will shortly submit them to the County Council for approval. 
They point out that some further suggestions were made, but 
they thought it would be better in the first instance to deal with 
the subject quite in the sense of an experiment, and if, later on, 
it should prove to be resulting advantageously to the schools, 
possibly the arrangements might be extended to the cultivation 
of important types of the lower orders of plants such as fungi, 
mosses, ferns, &c., and facilities might be afforded for the study 
of aquatic plants. The chief officer of the Parks Department 
reported that the proposed arrangements were quite practicable 
at any of the larger parks, but that some expenditure would be 
necessary. Upon that point the chief officer had been instructed 
to submit a report. It is proposed that the experimental beds 
shall be formed at Battersea Park, Ravenscourt Park, and 
Finsbury Park. 
Insanity in Lancashire. — The following appears in the 
Daily Telegraph of March 25 : — 
“ The Farmer’s Pests. 
“ A conference of a unique character has just been held at Kirkhome, in 
Lancashire, at which representatives of numerous townships reported upon the 
destruction of moles and birds during the year. The rate of payment is a penny 
for two old birds, the same sum for four young ones, and a like amount for eight 
eggs, each parish levying a voluntary rate per acre. In Treales parish the birds 
and eggs destroyed numbered nearly 15,000. Several parishes devote their 
entire energies to the capturing of moles, and in Marton an expert catcher has 
been engaged for the next seven years. The conference decided to continue this 
method ol exterminating farm pests.” 
Progress on the Continent. — We have received from 
Trieste the publications of the Austrian League for the Protec- 
tion of Birds, established in 1896, with its head-quarters at 
Gratz, under the presidency of Anna, Countess Buttler (nee 
Countess Stubenberg). Among these is an ‘ Appeal to Ladies,’ 
in which it is stated that in the wholesale slaughter of birds of 
passage that “ has been in progress for the last thirty years, 
England alone consumes twenty-five million bird-corpses yearly, 
and the whole world of fashion quite two hundred millions, so 
that in a few decades more than two thousand millions of birds 
have been sacrificed.” . . . . “ The farmer,” the pamphlet 
continues, “ notices the absence of bird life. The insects are 
getting the upper hand, and it is clear that if this bird-massacre 
continues agriculture will suffer severely, and our national wealth 
receive a serious blow.” A similar league has been widely 
spread in Germany, and in Finland there were 11,000 ladies in 
1895 who were pledged to wear neither the ‘feathers nor the bodies 
