14 
Diving birds (grebes, loons, auks, murres, puffins); long-winged 
swimmers (skuas, jaegers, gulls, terns, skimmers) ; tube-nosed swimmers 
(albatrosses, fulmars, shearwaters, petrels) ; totipalmate swimmers (tropic- 
birds, gannets, cormorants, pelicans); anseres (ducks, geese, swans); 
herodiones (wood ibis, bitterns, herons, egrets) ; paludicolae (cranes, 
rails, gallinules, coots) ; shore birds (phalaropes, avocets, snipes, sandpipers, 
plovers, surf-birds, turnstones); gallinaceous birds (pheasants, turkey, 
quail, partridges, grouse); pigeons and doves, birds of prey (vultures, 
falcons, hawks, buzzards, eagles, harriers, osprey) ; owls (barn owls, horned 
owls); cuckoos, kingfishers, woodpeckers, goatsuckers, and swifts. The 
smaller birds, most of them passerine birds, have not been as well filled 
in, although old single mounts are being remounted more attractively, 
and the vacant spaces filled by new mounts. The birds are mounted in 
positions and with accessories suitable to their habitat, and the plan con- 
templates ultimately filling in or substituting groups for the old single 
mounts, showing families, old and young, or different plumages, with 
nests and eggs where obtainable, in their natural surroundings. 
In the winter and spring more attention was devoted to preparing 
for exhibition as many specimens of small mammals as possible, and a 
considerable number of representative species were installed in the cases. 
Although a fair number of suitable specimens of our larger mammals 
have been brought in by field parties, and by gift from the Canadian 
National Parks branch, and the North West Territories and Yukon branch 
of the Department of the Interior, as well as from the detachments of the 
Royal Canadian Mounted Police stationed in the Far North, any notice- 
able progress in exhibiting such material is definitely precluded on account 
of the limited space the museum building allows for public exhibits. A 
start is being made by preparing single mammals mounted with reference 
to future use in habitat groups, and plans are being made, specimens, 
casts, and accessories gathered and stored away in anticipation of obtaining 
more room for expansion in the future. 
Suitable and attractive groups of such large and distinctive Canadian 
mammals as constitute one of the unique assets of the Dominion, such as 
the moose, elk, caribou, white-tailed deer, mule deer, antelope, bighorn 
sheep, mountain goat, polar bear, grizzly bear, black bear, seals, and sea- 
lions, are planned, and material for some of these groups has already been 
obtained. A creditable exhibit of such distinctive native mammals is 
expected in the National Museum and the lack of such exhibits is in many 
cases a source of surprise and disappointment to visitors from other parts. 
The same reasons apply to the need for better exhibits of fur-bearing 
mammals, which form one of the principal economic resources of large sec- 
tions of Canada. The necessity of obtaining adequate representatives of 
many of these rapidly disappearing forms of animal life is well recognized 
by many of the museums in foreign countries, and it is essential that we 
should make efforts to obtain suitable specimens if posterity is not to con- 
sider us negligent. The attention of friends of the National Museum and 
of public-spirited citizens is called to this deficiency in the Museum, and 
it is hoped that donations of specimens will be made when opportunity 
offers. Where specimens can not be exhibited, or are not of a quality to 
make attractive exhibits, they are useful for reserve or study series, in the 
preparation of monographs on our fauna, and for comparison with speci- 
