Page:Auk Volume 13-1896.djvu/129

﻿ Now the question that I should like to have jointly considered by ornithologists and meteorologists, is whether there is a correlated variation in the flight of soaring birds and in the activity of local convectional movements, or other vertical movements. Do soaring birds float for a longer time without flapping wings in weather when convectional ascending currents are indicated, or in localities where disorderly ascensional currents, prompted by irregularity in the land surface, may be expected? A pair of observers, one attending to the behavior of birds, the other following out the processes of the winds, might perhaps discover some interesting correlations in this held of study. The work might be commended to semi-invalids, who are sent South in search of mild weather and gentle occupation. Could anything be more genially lazy than lying on one's back in the sun, and counting the turns of a Turkey Buzzard?

Very truly yours,

Cambridge, Mass. November 3, 1895.



 NOTES AND NEWS.

, an Honorary Member of the American Ornithologists' Union, died June 29, 1895. at his home in Eastbourne, England, in the 71st year of his age, having been born at Ealing, Middle- sex, England, May 4, 1S25. His early education was obtained partly at home and in part "at the semi-public school at Ealing, of which his father was one of the masters." In 1842, he entered the medical school of Charing Cross Hospital, and in 1845 passed the first M. B. examination at the University of London. The following year he joined the medical service of the Royal Navy, and was soon after assigned to the post of assistant surgeon to II. M. S. 'Rattlesnake,' which sailed from England late in the year 1846 for a surveying cruise in the Southern Seas, and thence around the world, returning to England in 1S50. In recognition of his scientific work during this voyage, he was elected in June, 1851, a fellow of the Royal Society. He left the naval service in 1853, and in 1854 was appointed naturalist to the Geological Survey, and also made professor of natural history in the Government School of Mines, which latter position he occupied till 1885. From 1863 to 1869 he was Hunterian professor at the Royal College of Surgeons. He was president of the Geological Society of London in 1869 and 1870, president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1870. and of the Royal