session 1908-1909. 
xsx IX 
Field Meeting, 26th June, 1909. 
MUNDEN PARK, WATFORD. 
By kind permission of tlie Hon. A. Holland-Hibbert, liis 
residence, Munden House, was visited, most of the members 
cycling through the Park and a few walking from Bricket Wood 
Station under the guidance of Mr. Alfred Sutton. 
The tine collection of birds, valuable pictures, and various 
objects of antiquarian interest which make the house well worth 
a visit, were examined with much interest, and some time was 
then spent in the gardens, by the side of which flows the Fiver 
Colne. They are very picturesque, and well wooded, the trees 
including some of considerable rarity. A fine example of the 
tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica) growing near the river had only a short 
time before been described in a paper read before our Society by 
Mr. Daniel Hill, and since then printed in the present volume 
of our ‘Transactions’ (pp. 129-134). It may be added to 
Mr. Hill’s description that the fibres of its wood are much 
interwoven, making it difficult to split, and that it is of little 
economic value. 
Visit to the Zoological Museum, Tring, 17th July, 1909. 
For the following account of this Museum, founded and 
maintained by the Hon. Walter Rothschild, and of our inspection 
of it, the Editor is indebted to Mr. Charles Oldham, F.Z.S., 
who had made the necessary arrangements with Mr. Rothschild, 
the Museum only being visited on a Saturday by his special 
permission. 
The well-arranged show-cases filled with specimens, many of 
which are unique or of great rarity, give merely a hint of the 
zoological material which is stored in the Museum, the real basis 
of the scientific work which is here carried on consisting of the 
working collections of bird-skins and insects, of which the ordinary 
visitor may know nothing. The Lepidoptera constitute the 
finest private collection in the world, and the bird-skins number 
over twenty thousand. These collections, serving primarily for 
the investigations of Mr. Rothschild, are, by his kindness, 
available for the use of other naturalists, who come from all 
parts of the world to visit Tring for purposes of research. In 
one brief afternoon it was impossible to do more than glance at 
a few of the exhibits in the general collection, but Mr. Rothschild 
and Dr. Hartert (the Curator), both of whom kindly accompanied 
the members, by calling attention to objects of peculiar interest, 
enabled them to use the time to the greatest advantage. 
The collection is rich in specimens of birds and mammals 
which, by reason of their rarity or their isolated position in the 
zoological series, are of peculiar interest to naturalists. As 
examples may be mentioned the Labrador duck (Somateria 
labradoria ), extinct within recent years ; the flightless cormorant 
