The British Ornithologists' Union

Abstract

THE British Ornithologists' Union celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in the rooms of the Zoological Society onWednesday, December 9. A special meeting was called for the occasion, the president of the union, Dr. F. D. Godman, F.R.S., occupying the chair, and reading an address on the history of the union from its foundation. The idea of forming this society was due, he remarked, to the late Prof. Newton, and was first mooted in his rooms at Cambridge during 1858; but it appears finally to have taken shape when, in the following year, at the meeting of the British Association at Leeds, the opportunity was seized of calling together a number of the ornithologists there assembled. The details of the constitution of the union appear to have been then discussed, and a few months later took their final shape. Limited for the first few years of its existence to twenty members, it was at last found expedient to remove this restriction. To-day more than four hundred members are on the roll. From the first it was decided to start a journal, and the name chosen for this was that of the sacred bird of Egypt, the Ibis. The history of the birth and growth of this now celebrated journal was traced later by Dr. Sclater, its first and present editor. After the addresses by the president and Dr. Sclater, gold medals were presented to the four survivors of the original founders, Dr. Godman, Mr. Percy. Godman, Dr. Sclater, and Mr. W. H. Hudleston. This pleasant ceremony was followed by an appeal to the members from Mr. Ogilvie Grant, of the British Museum (Natural History), wherein he urged that the union should commemorate its jubilee by sending an expedition to explore the Charles Louis Mountains of New Guinea, probably one of the richest unexplored zoological regions of the world, and this was unanimously agreed upon. The union, of course, could not find the whole of the money necessary for such an undertaking, but a considerable sum has been promised by others interested in this work. The meeting was brought to a conclusion by a dinner held at the Trocadero Restaurant, after which Mr. Boyd Alexander gave a lecture on his recent journey across Africa, and this was followed by a kinematograph exhibition of pictures of bird life.