... have ended. Mr. and Mrs. Finch successfully raised three healthy strapping, noisy little Finches, and have departed from their little house on a ledge outside one of the Library's windows. The Finches were assiduous and devoted parents and we hope they will return later to raise another family. After all, there are lots more windows available .... Meantime, we miss the noisy little guys.

Countway has Cooper the Therapy Dog … the Ernst Mayr Library has a flourishing group of Gromphadorhina portentosa. More familiarly known as the Madagascar hissing cockroach, these animals, which can grow up to 4 inches long, are quite unlike their pesky cousins, the ones that invade our homes and, though harmless, usually disgust us. After all, most people don’t enjoy going into their kitchens at night and opening a cabinet only to have multiple roaches skitter into corners, across counters, and even up one’s arm. Note the newly molted roach in the pictures....

In 1861 Louis Agassiz purchased books from the collection of Belgian paleontologist Laurent Guillaume de Koninick and along with Agassiz's personal collection, the MCZ Library was born.  In October 1995, the library was renamed in honor of Ernst Mayr, evolutionary biologist and former director of the MCZ.  Ernst Mayr was 91 when the library was renamed, and still actively publishing and participating in lively arguments with his colleagues until shortly before his death at 100 on February 3, 2005.

For a fuller library history, see the article by Robert Young, Special...