He improved every opportunity to collect natural history material and amassed a considerable collection of mounted birds, birds’ skins, and birds’ eggs, which is now in the Florida State Museum at Gainesville. He was a skilled taxidermist and his services were always in demand for such work. He mounted a large number of birds for Mr. John Lewis Childs, of Floral Park, New York, most of which are now in the Brooklyn (N. Y.) Museum.
Unfortunately, Mr. Hoyt found little time or inclination to publish the results of his observations. Following is a list of the only papers by him known to the writer:
| 1905. | Nesting of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Florida (Campephilus principalis). The Warbler (2nd Series), I, No. 2, pp. 52-55, 1 plate. Nesting of Ward’s Heron (Ardea herodias wardi). Ibid., I, No. 4, pp. 114-115. |
| 1906. | Nesting of the Roseate Spoonbill in Florida. Ibid., II, No. 3, pp. 58-59. |
| 1918. | The American Robin in its northern migration, Feb. 15, 1915, in Pinellas County, Fla. The Oölogist, XXXV, pp. 6, 9; 2 plates. |
Mr. Hoyt is survived by his widow, two sons, and two daughters. | |
| A. H. H. | |
The Museum of the California Academy of Sciences has recently acquired by gift the entire ornithological and oölogical collection of Messrs. Joseph and John W. Mailliard, prominent business men of San Francisco, and Fellow and Member respectively of the American Ornithologists’ Union.
The collection contains close to 25,000 specimens, and is primarily a research collection. Of bird skins there are more than 11,000 specimens representing 777 species; of nests and eggs there are upwards of 13,000 specimens representing more than 600 species.
The Mailliard brothers have been interested in birds from their boyhood days, and these collections are the result of more than forty years of careful, painstaking field work. There are perhaps few, if any, collections that have been made with greater care or in which a greater percentage of the specimens have real scientific value. In the ornithological collection are some of the first reliable records of several species of California birds, as well as the only specimens of other species from localities where they are now unknown. There are also many albino specimens of unusual interest, and several remarkable hybrids. Of certain forms the series are the most complete of any collection in America. In the oölogical collection there are large, carefully selected series of species now difficult or impossible to obtain.
The Messrs. Mailliard are members of the Cooper Ornithological Club and are both actively interested in the California Academy, John W. Mailliard being a trustee and Joseph Mailliard honorary curator of birds in the Academy’s Museum.
The Academy is certainly to be congratulated upon securing this valuable collection, which, added to those already in its possession puts this institution in the front rank in the field of ornithology and oölogy in western America.
Now that the war is over and travelling becomes possible again a number of collectors are in the field. Roy Chapman Andrews of the American Museum of Natural History has returned to China to continue his work there, and Mr. Klages, the well-known bird collector, is making a trip through French Guiana to the Amazon. On February 26, Capt. William Beebe left New York with a party, which will establish themselves at the Tropical Research Station of the New York Zoölogical Society in British Guiana, where work of much importance will be carried on.
In view of the constantly increasing interest in ornithology and the increasing difficulty in obtaining specimens, it seems highly desirable that more information should be accessible regarding the extent and character of the larger collections of the United States and Canada. The student would thus have a better idea as to what material is available while museums and individual collectors by making known their desiderata would perhaps be enabled to fill their gaps.