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science, then that of the bird department of the National Museum. So much has the function of the curator of this department become that of a purely administrative head, that his occupation almost entirely consists in the performance of numberless complex routine duties connected with the receipting for, unpacking, catalogueing, labelling, installment, and reporting upon collections, or specimens received, correspondence, exchanges, arrangement of the exhibition series, etc., etc., that practically he is removed from the rank of active ornithologists. By unusual effort, however, the Curator has managed to prepare a review of the Mexican and Central American members of the following families of birds: Thrushes, Mocking Thrushes, Warblers, Titmice, Creepers, and Dippers; determined a collection of birds from the Lower Amazon, containing 13 new species and one new genus and a large collection from islands in the Caribbean Sea and the coast of Honduras, also containing novelties; a monograph of the genus Dendrocincla, and another of the interesting and greatly confused genus of Passerine Parrots ([[underline]]Psittacula[[/underlined]]), in each of which is described several previously unknown species.