Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 
381 
of a new museum, and that the Beit Trustees have given 
£2,500 towards the erection o£ the buildings. There is, we 
believe, a good local collection of birds already in existence, 
and we are sure that Mr. E. C. Chubb, the Assistant-Curator, 
will lose no opportunity of adding to it. He has already sent 
us an article on the birds of the surrounding district (see 
f Ibis,* 1909, p. 140), and will, no doubt, favour us with 
further communications, when convenient. 
A Present to the B. 0. U. —At the Ninth Annual Session 
of the Australasian Ornithologists* Union, held at Adelaide 
on September 30th, 1909, it was proposed by Mr. A. J. 
Campbell, seconded by Mr. Charles Barrett, and resolved, 
that copies of the cinematograph-films depicting the bird- 
life of the expedition of the A. O. U. to the islands of 
Bass* Straits in 1908 be sent to England as a present to the 
British Ornithologists* Union. It is hoped that they may 
arrive in time to be exhibited at the joint meeting of the 
B. O. U. and B. O. C. on May 25th. 
The Destruction of Birds in the Riviera. —In the last 
number of the f Avicultural Magazine * (ser. 3, vol. i. p. 125), 
Lt.-Col. Momber writes as follows on the treatment of birds 
in the Biviera :— 
“ The excessively ornithophagous proclivities of the South¬ 
erners are a heavy set-back to the advantages lavished by 
nature on the Riviera. Every one shoots, nothing is spared, 
and the corpses of the daintiest songsters—Goldfinches, 
Siskins, Robins, Warblers—hang in bunches in the town 
markets. 
“ In Italy, the protective laws are still embryonic and 
seldom enforced; offenders are leniently dealt with, and 
illegal practices prevail. In general, wholesale methods of 
bird-catching are prohibited in Liguria; it is mainly in the 
provinces of Como and Piedmont that the gardens of death 
flourish, the terrible roccolo and passata. But the popular 
amusement of besetting with bird-limed grapes the streams 
in dry weather is indulged in despite the law, and is singularly 
