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urgently required for the advancement of the science, than 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, instalment, 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