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 The Bird Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory 153 give a class, he is well grounded in the study. He can readily recognize a few birds, and knows where to look for them ; he has learned how to identify and name any others without difftculty ; how to make discoveries for himself ; and, above all, he has learned the absorbing charm of the study of the individual bird, and the delight of a close acquaintance with nature. The Bird Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Holl, Mass., during the Summer of 1900 BY THOS. H. MONTGOMERY, Jr.. Ph. D., Director of the Course OR the first time in its history there was started this year at the Marine Biological Laboratory a Nature-Study Course. The objects taken up during the six weeks of the course were cryptogamic and phanerogamic plants, the king crab, insects, and various marine invertebrates, the toad, and birds. It is concerning the bird-study alone that I have been asked to prepare a brief account for Bikd-Lore. The field work consisted of three mornings spent in the woods and fields near the laboratory, and of one day's trip to the breeding grounds of Terns at Penikese. In this field work, as in that of the laboratory, the director was most ably assisted by Mr. Leon J. Cole and Mr. Herbert Coggins ; and in the field the students could be separated into groups, taking slightly different routes. Further, the attempt was made to post the students of each group apart from one another and at favorable places, so that they became, to some extent, independent observers, and could see as many birds as possible with the least possible noise. The noise occasioned by a large party of students walking together through underbrush tends to frighten the birds most effectively, and this difficulty was obviated by the above mentioned method of "posting" the students, while the instructors visited in succession the various "posts." One mistake was made in placing the Bird Course at the beginning of August, when the birds sing but little and are in the low spirits of the moulting period. Another year this course will be placed at the beginning of the season. As to the laboratory work, one day was spent on the gross anat- omy of the Pigeon, and three afternoons on the study of bird-skins. On two of these afternoons the skins were studied for the purpose of identification, on the third for the correspondence of structure with habit. Two entire days were spent on the study of living Pigeons, under the direction of Professor Whitman, the head of the laboratory.