Valuable Gift To University

VALUABLE GIFT TO UNIVERSITY

Dr. McNeal Gives a Rare Bird Collection

A PATHETIC STORY

Is Connected With the Giving of This Latest Beautiful Present

The University has lately been presented with a very valuable collection of South American birds and butterflies for the museum.  Dr. Harry McNeal, who graduated from the literary department in 1883 and from the medical department in 1900, is the donor, however, the collection is to be known as the Dr. Jessie Ruby McNeal collection.

There are over 100 specimens of the most beautiful South American birds representing some 50 species all mounted by Dr. McNeal and his wife while they were in Paraguay, S. A.  The butterflies, which were mounted by Wm. Foster, of Asunción, Paraguay, for Dr. McNeal, number over 200 and are probably the finest collection of winged flies in the country.

There is a sad story connected with the gift.   Mrs. McNeal graduated from the literary department here in 1895 and from the medical school in 1897. In 1900 she and her husband traveled in Europe and South America, often sending collections to the University museum. The two had planned to come to Michigan and present this magnificent addition to the museum themselves, but fate conspired to wreck the magnanimous purposes they were then entertaining. It was on the twenty-fourth of November, 1900, when they were returning in the steamship Belgenland that Mrs. McNeal was lost overboard in a storm off Nantucket Shoals. The two had just been planning a return to their alma mater and a renewal of acquaintances at Ann Arbor.

Curator Sargent will give the collection a prominent place in the museum and will probably have it set up by next fall.