The foreign members, known as Honorary and Corresponding Fellows, number 85 and are widely distributed in all parts of the world. In America they are located in Cuba, Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina; in Europe in all of the principal countries except Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the Balkan States; and in Africa in South Rhodesia and Transvaal. The Union also has representatives in Ceylon, Japan, the Federated Malay States, British Papua, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria.—T. S. P.
The American Game Protective Association, the sportsmen’s national organization, has done excellent work in branding as erroneous an Associated Press Dispatch to the effect that the Supreme Court at Washington has declared the Federal Migratory bird law unconstitutional. From their statement the country has been informed that “the so-called Federal Migratory bird law was repealed on July 3, 1917, when the President signed the Canadian treaty enabling act.” The new measure which superseded the old one is a better and bigger law with exactly the same object in view. It provides what the former law lacked, an efficient machinery for its enforcement, and the governments of this country and Canada are now squarely united in the protection of all the birds of the continent north of the Rio Grande.
“What happened at Washington was that the solicitor-general asked to have dismissed his own motion before the Supreme Court, which was to test the constitutionality of the original migratory bird law. It was no use arguing the case, because there is no longer any Weeks-McLean law.
“The federal regulations, therefore, which absolutely protect in this country the birds which are valuable to agriculture and which make open seasons for the migratory birds which are shot for sport, are still in effect and the Federal Department of Justice will vigorously prosecute any violations of these regulations.”
The Delaware Valley Ornithological Club is endeavoring to collect all existing data bearing upon the birds of Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Information relative to any manuscript lists of early migration records, or published matter in out of the way places, will be gratefully received.
W. L. McAtee wishes to announce that he has undertaken as a hobby the preparation of a dictionary of vernacular names applied to A. O. U. checklist birds. As the project involves the examination of practically the whole ornithological literature of America, the main purpose of this announcement is to elicit information as to whether the field is clear. It would be a great waste of time to have the same ground covered by more than one person.
Mr. McAtee has been collecting data of this nature for many years, and has published two glossaries of unusual bird names. He has also recently had the good fortune to receive for examination, through the courtesy of Mrs. Gurdon Trumbull and Mr. Samuel Scoville, Jr., the manuscript notes prepared by Gurdon Trumbull, for a second edition of his “Names and Portraits of Birds.” Still more recently, Mrs. Trumbull has with the greatest generosity turned over to him this book together with all of Mr. Trumbull’s miscellaneous notes on the habits and names of birds. This material will eventually be deposited in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Mr. McAtee will welcome suggestions relating to the whole project, and contributions, especially of unusual local names of birds.
The Delaware Valley Ornithological Club held its twenty-ninth annual meeting at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia in January, 1919. Officers elected were President, J. Fletcher Street, Vice-President, George H. Stuart 3d, Secretary Julian K. Potter and Treasurer, Samuel C. Palmer. Thirteen meetings were held during the year with an average attendance of twenty-two. Twenty-seven members entered the National Service during the war and one, Archibald Benners, 1st Lieut. Marines, was killed July 3, 1918.
American Ornithologists’ Union