NOTES

ABBREVIATIONS

The following abbreviations have been used for organizations cited frequently in the notes and text.

AMNH	American Museum of Natural History, New York
AOU	American Ornithologists’ Union
B-W	Blacker-Wood Library, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec
ECC	Emergency Conservation Committee
HUA	Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Mass.
MCZ	Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, Mass.
NAAS	National Association of Audubon Societies
NAS	National Audubon Society
NYPL	New York Public Library, New York
NOC	Nuttall Ornithological Club
SIA	Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C.
MVZ	Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley

INTRODUCTION

1. Robert Ridgway to Anne Taylor, 26 June 1887, Division of Birds Records, RU 105, Box 1, vol. 3, pp. 406-407, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as SIA).

2. For a brief biographical sketch of Taylor, see T. S. Palmer, “Henry Reed Taylor,” Auk 35 (1918): 382.

3. On the turn-of-the-century debate about animal thinking, see Ralph H. Lutts, The Nature Fakers: Wildlife, Science and Sentiment (Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum, 1990). On the later dispute about adaptive coloration in animals, see Sharon Kingsland, “Abbott Thayer and the Protective Coloration Debate,” Journal of the History of Biology 11 (1978): 223-244.

4. As Paul Farber has convincingly argued in his book The Emergence of Ornithology as a Scientific Discipline (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1982), discipline formation and professionalization are two distinct processes. The former involves establishing a group of “experts, working on a set of fruitful questions, using an accepted rigorous method, and holding a common goal” (p. 100) without necessarily suggesting success in establishing an occupation niche. On scientific disciplines, see also Gerard Lemaine et al., eds., Perspectives on the Emergence of Scientific Disciplines (The Hague: Mouton; Chicago: Aldine, 1976).

5. On scientists as gentlemanly practitioners, see Martin J. S. Rudwick, The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge among Gentlemanly Specialists (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); and Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

6. Everett Mendelsohn, “The Emergence of Science as a Profession in Nineteenth Century Europe,” in The Management of Scientists, ed. Karl B. Hill (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), 3-48.

7. Nathan Reingold, “Definitions and Speculations: The Professionalization of Science in America in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Early American Republic: American Scientific and Eearned Societies from the Colonial Times to the Civil War, ed. Alexandra Oleson and Sanborn C. Brown (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 33-69, on 34. The following review articles provide useful introductions to the vast literature on the history and sociology of professions and have been relied upon heavily for the account that follows: J. B. Morrell, “Professionalisation,” in Companion to the History of Modern Science, ed. R. C. Olby et al. (London: Routledge, 1990), 980-989; Patricia A. Roos, “Professions,” in Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. Edgar F. Borgatta and Marie L. Borgatta (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 3:1552-1557; and Ivan Waddington, “Professions,” in The Social Science Encyclopedia, ed. Adam Kuper and Jessica Kuper, 2d ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1996), 677-678. See also Gerald L. Geison, ed., Professions and Professional Ideologies in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); Robert Dingwall and Philip Lewis, eds., The Sociology of Professions: Lawyers, Doctors and Others (London: Macmillan, 1983); and Thomas L. Haskell, The Authority of Experts: Studies in History and Theory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). Although dated, A. M. Carr-Saunders and P. A. Wilson, The Professions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), also remains useful.

8. See, for example, Samuel Haber, The Quest for Authority and Honor in the American Professions, 1750-1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

9. While those pursuing this approach have failed to agree on a single set of characteristics that adequately captures all professions, these criteria reappear with frequency in the literature. Geoffrey Millerson identified twenty-three attributes included in twenty-one authors’ attempts to define a profession. See his The Qualifying Associations: A Study in Professionalization (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1964).

10. For the more extreme proponents of this second approach, professional autonomy—the ability to define and control the terms of work—became the single most important attribute of modern professions. For examples of this approach, see Terrence Johnson, Professions and Power (London: Macmillan, 1972); Eliot Freidson, Professional Powers: A Study of the Institutionalization of Formal Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); Magali S. Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976); and JoAnne Brown, “Professional Language: Words That Succeed,” Radical History Review 34 (1986): 33-51.

11. Examples of studies operating within these two frameworks include George H. Daniels, “The Process of Professionalization in American Science: The Emergent Period, 1820-1860,” Isis 58 (1967): 151-166; Joseph Ben-David, “Science as a Profession and Scientific Professionalism,” in Explorations in General Theory in Social Science: Essays in Honor of Talcott Parsons, ed. Jan J. Loubser et al. (New York: Free Press, 1976), 871-888; and Edward Shils, “The Profession of Science,” The Advancement of Science 24 (1968): 469-490.

12. Reingold, “Definitions and Speculations,” 33-69.

13. Howard S. Miller, Dollars for Research: Science and Its Patrons in Nineteenth-Century America (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970), vii.

14. Based on these two closely related characteristics, he suggested a tripartite classification of nineteenth-century scientific communities: (1) “researchers,” characterized by “single-minded devotion to research,” which generally translated into significant publications, but not necessarily into an occupation; (2) “practitioners,” who were employed in science, but whose research accomplishment was qualitatively and quantitatively less than researchers; and (3) “cultivators,” individuals who were often willing to support more advanced practitioners of science (with specimens, money, and time) but who were primarily concerned with “their own self-education, rather than increase or dissemination of new knowledge.” Reingold indicated that his third category was roughly analogous to, but lacking the pejorative connotations now associated with, amateurs.

15. Convenient summaries of his arguments and a bibliography of his numerous periodical publications may be found in Robert A. Stebbins, Amateurs: On the Margin between Work and Leisure (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1979), and Amateurs, Professionals, and Serious Leisure (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992).

16. See, for example, John Lankford, “Amateurs versus Professionals: The Controversy over Telescope Size in Late Victorian Science,” Isis 72 (1981): 11-28; Marc Rothenberg, “Organization and Control: Professionals and Amateurs in American Astronomy,” Social Studies of Science 11 (1981): 305-325; Robert A. Stebbins, “Amateur and Professional Astronomers: A Study of Their Interrelationships,” Urban Life 10 (1982): 433-454, and “Avocational Science: The Avocational Routine in Archeology and Astronomy,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 21 (1980): 34-48; Elizabeth B. Keeney, The Botanizers: Amateur Scientists in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992); W. Conner Sorensen, Brethren of the Net: American Entomology, 1840-1880 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995); James Roger Fleming, Meteorology in America, 1800-1870 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).

17. Marianne G. Ainley made the point emphatically several years ago in her pioneering studies, “The Contribution of the Amateur to North American Ornithology: A Historical Perspective,” The Living Bird 18 (1979): 161-177, and “La professionalisation de l’ornithologie Américaine, 1870-1979” (master’s thesis, Université de Montréal, 1980).

18. [Frank M. Chapman,] “An Opportunity for the Local Ornithologist,” Bird-Lore 7 (1905): 286.

19. From a letter by Leonhard J. Stejneger, quoted in “The Future Problems and Aims of Ornithology,” Condor 7 (1905): 66.

20. Ernst Mayr, “Epilogue: Materials for a History,” 376.

21. The History of Science and Technology On-Line Catalog cites 245 articles and books published over the last twenty years with the word “community” in the title. In most instances the term is apparently used without formal definition, and it is often restricted to scientists in the narrowest sense of the word. For two suggestive exceptions, see Struan Jacobs, “Scientific Community: Formulations and Critique of a Sociological Motif,” British Journal of Sociology 38 (1987): 266-267; and Daniel Goldstein, “‘Yours for Science’: The Smithsonian Institution’s Correspondents and the Shape of the Scientific Community in Nineteenth-Century America,” Isis 85 (1994): 573-599. On ideas about communities within the social sciences, see Sandria B. Freitag, “Community,” in Encyclopedia of Social History, ed. Peter N. Stear (New York: Garland, 1994) , 160-162; and Victor Azarya, “Community,” in The Social Science Encyclopedia, ed. Adam Kuper and Jessica Kuper, 2d ed. (London: Routledge, 1996), 114-115.

The theory of “social worlds” is part of symbolic-interactionist sociology and pragmatist philosophy. For theoretical statements concerning science as a social world, see Elihu M. Gerson, “Scientific Work and Social Worlds,” Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 4 (1983): 357-377; Adele E. Clarke and Elihu Gerson, “Symbolic Interactionism in Social Studies of Science,” in Symbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies, ed. Howard S. Becker and Michal M. McCall (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 179-214; and Thomas Gieryn, “Boundaries of Science,” in Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, ed. Sheila Jasanoff et al. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1995) , 393-443. For case studies applying this theory, see, for example, Adele Clarke, “A Social Worlds Research Adventure: The Case of Reproductive Science,” Theories of Science in Society, ed. Susan E. Cozzens and Thomas F. Gieryn (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1990), 15-42; and Susan Leigh Star and James Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations,’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-1939,” Social Studies of Science 19 (1989): 387-420.

More traditional historical accounts of “networks” in science include A. Hunter Dupree, “The National Pattern of American Learned Societies, 1769-1863,” in The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Early American Republic: American Scientific and Learned Societies from the Colonial Times to the Civil War, ed. Alexandra Oleson and Sanborn C. Brown (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 21-32; Arnold Thackray, “Scientific Networks in the Age of Revolution,” Nature 262 (1976): 20-24; William A. Deiss, “Spencer F. Baird and His Collectors,” Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 9 (1980): 635-645; and Keeney, Botanizers. Recently sociologists of science have developed an even more inclusive “actor-network” approach that incorporates human and nonhuman participants. See, for example, Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987).

22. Previous studies of American ornithology during this period have treated various other aspects of its development. Frank M. Chapman and T. S. Palmer, eds., Fifty Years’ Progress of American Ornithology, 1883-1933 (Lancaster, Pa.: American Ornithologists’ Union, 1933), produced for the fiftieth anniversary of the AOU, was one of the first retrospective views of the field and remains a useful starting point. Robert Henry Welker, Birds and Men: American Birds in Science, Art, Literature, and Conservation, 1800-1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), was the first book to highlight the rich cultural implications of bird study in the American context. More recently, Felton Gibbons and Deborah Strom, Neighbors to the Birds: A History of Birdwatching in America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988); and Joseph Kastner, A World of Watchers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), have focused on the rise of birdwatching, but neither makes sufficient distinction between scientists and recreational observers. See also Charles G. Sibley, “Ornithology,” in A Century of Progress in the Natural Sciences, ed. Edward L. Kessel (San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences, 1955), 629-659; Erwin Stresemann, Ornithology from Aristotle to the Present, trans. Hans J. and Cathleen Epstein, ed. G. William Cottrell (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), especially Ernst Mayr’s epilogue, “Materials for a History of American Ornithology,” 365-396; and William E. Davis and Jerome A. Jackson, eds., Contributions to the History of North American Ornithology (Cambridge, Mass.: Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1995). All provide convenient overviews, but (with the exception of a couple of contributions in the Davis and Jackson volume) all share the benefits and drawbacks of being written by sympathetic insiders. Developments in Canada, mentioned only in passing in this book, are treated in much more detail in Marianne G. Ainley, “From Natural History to Avian Biology: Canadian Ornithology, 1860-1950” (Ph.D. diss., McGill University, 1985), and “The Emergence of Canadian Ornithology—An Historical Overview to 1950,” in Davis and Jackson, Contributions, 283-301.

23. Harold F. Mayfield, “The Amateur in Ornithology,” Auk 96 (1979): 168-171.

CHAPTER ONE

1. On Roosevelt’s interest in natural history, see Paul Russell Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt: The Making of a Conservationist (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985). The discussion of the Roosevelt Museum of Natural History is found on pp. 1-2, 8, 26, 29-31, and 70-72.

2. David E. Allen, The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History, 2d ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 89.

3. On the psychological, historical, and theoretical dimensions of collecting, see Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, and the Collection (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984); Werner Muensterberger, Collecting: An Unruly Passion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); and John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, eds., The Cultures of Collecting (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994). For informative case studies of collecting within two American scientific communities, see Keeney. Botanizers: and Sorensen, Brethren of the Net.

4. On collecting natural history objects as a means of cultivating self-improvement and gentility, see Keeney, Botanizers, 38-50. On displaying natural history objects as a symbol of gentility, see Joseph H. Batty, Practical Taxidermy and Home Decoration (New York: Orange Judd Co., 1880), 177-178; Katherine C. Grier, “The Decline of the Memory Palace: The Parlor after 1890,” in American Home Life, 1880-1930: A Social History of Spaces and Services, ed. Jessica H. Foy and Thomas J. Schlereth (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), 49-74, and Culture and Comfort: People, Parlors, and Upholstery, 1850-1930 (Rochester, N.Y.: Strong Museum, 1988).

5. Natural theology was the belief that God’s attributes could be inferred from an examination of the natural world. The idea has an extensive genealogy that traces backs to the Greeks and Romans, and beginning in the late seventeenth century it became an important impetus for pursuing natural history. See Harold Fruchtbaum, “Natural Theology and the Rise of Science” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1964); Neal C. Gillespie, “Preparing for Darwin: Conchology and Natural Theology in Anglo-American Natural History,” Studies in the History of Biology 7 (1984): 93-145, and “Natural History, Natural Theology, and Social Order: John Ray and the ‘Newtonian Ideology,’” Journal of the History of Biology 20 (1987): 1-49. On natural theology in the American context, specifically as it relates to collecting, see Keeney, Botanizers, 99-111.

6. Oliver Impey and Arthur McGregor, eds., The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

7. Joel J. Orosz, Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740-1870 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990), 11-25; Raymond Phineas Stearns, Science in the British Colonies of America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970); Brooke Hindle, The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735-1789 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va., by University of North Carolina, 1956); and John C. Greene, American Science in the Age of Jefferson (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1984).

8. On the growth of the middle class, see Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 13, 258-297.

9. Daniel Goldstein and Elizabeth Keeney make a similar argument about the inclusive nature of the nineteenth-century natural history community. See Goldstein, “ ‘Yours for Science,’” 573-599; and Keeney, Botanizers, 22-37. One prominent exception to this generalization (discussed in the next chapter) is that few women collected birds.

10. On the transformation of American society in the second half of the nineteenth century, see Thomas Schlereth, Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876-1915 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991); Robert Higgs, The Transformation of the American Economy, 1864-1914: An Essay in Interpretation (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1971); and Stephan Thernstrom, A History of the American People, vol. 2, 2d ed. (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989). The statistics that follow are drawn from these three works.

11. On the growth of the railroad and its impact on American life, see John F. Stover, American Railroads (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); and Albro Martin, Railroads Triumphant: The Growth, Rejection, and Rebirth of a Vital American Force (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). On the importance of the telegraph, see Menahem Blondheim, News Over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994).

12. Alfred Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977).

13. These and other technological innovations in the publishing industry are briefly surveyed in John Tebbel, The Expansion of an Industry, 1865-1919, vol. 2 of A History of Book Publishing in the United States (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1975), 654-660. For a suggestive discussion of changes in how publications were illustrated, see Ann Shelby Blum, Picturing Nature: American Nineteenth-Century Zoological Illustration (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

14. Wayne Fuller, The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972).

15. Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Metropolitan Experience, 1876-1980 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988).

16. The quotation and the figures are from Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1865-1885 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938), 5. For a more recent interpretive history of American periodicals, see John W. Tebbel and Mary E. Zuckerman, The Magazine in America, 1741-1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

17. On the attitude of European settlers toward the North American landscape, see Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 3d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 8-43; William J. Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983); and Carolyn Merchant, Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).

18. The account of Romanticism that follows is drawn largely from Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 44-83. See also Hans Huth, Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1957); Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture: American Landscape Painting, 1825-1875 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); and Franklin L. Baumer, “Romanticism,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Philip Wiener (New York: Scribner, 1974), 4:198-204.

19. The contribution of Transcendentalism to nature appreciation is discussed in Donald Fleming, “Roots of the New Conservation Movement,” Perspectives in American History 6 (1972): 8-10; Huth, Nature and the American, 57-104; and Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 84-95.

20. On the various roots and branches of Thoreau’s ideas, see Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Henry David Thoreau: A Life of the Mind (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); and Lawrence Buell, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995).

21. Among the most prominent late-nineteenth-century bearers of the Transcendentalist torch was John Muir, philosopher, nature worshiper, and founder of the Sierra Club. See Fleming, “Origins of the New Conservation Movement,” 9-10; and Stephen Fox, The American Conservation Movement: John Muir and His Legacy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).

22. The most comprehensive account of the turn-of-the-century “back to nature” movement, which discusses everything from school gardens to nature writing, is Peter J. Schmitt, Back to Nature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969). See also Lutts, Nature Fakers, 1-36.

23. The first state park was created in 1864 when the federal government turned over Yosemite Valley to the state of California. The first national park was Yellowstone, created by Congress in 1872. For an interpretive history of American national parks, see Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience, 2d ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987).

24. Schmitt’s Back to Nature discusses these and other developments. His portrayal of the search for an arcadian middle ground between nature and civilization is informed by Leo Marx’s classic study, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Idea in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964). For a detailed analysis of the rise of suburbs, see John Stilgoe, Borderlands: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820-1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); and Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

25. Thoreau pioneered a new literary genre, the nature essay, to bring his ideas before the American public. See Paul Brooks, Speaking for Nature: How Literary Naturalists from Henry Thoreau to Rachel Carson Have Shaped America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980); Thomas J. Lyon, ed., This Incomperable Lande: A Book of American Nature Writing (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989); and Buell, Environmental Imagination.

26. This fundamental insight belongs to Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 44.

27. Daniel T. Rodgers, The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), is among the most useful studies on the history of the idea of leisure in America, and I have relied heavily upon it for the interpretation that follows. See also Foster R. Dulles, A History of Recreation: America Learns to Play, 2d ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1965); and Donna R. Braden, Leisure and Entertainment in America (Dearborn, Mich.: Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, 1988) .

28. Rodgers, Work Ethic, 6.

29. Between 1856 to 1896 the average workweek for full-time employees in twenty selected industries declined from 66 to about 59.4 hours, but six-day workweeks remained a norm. By 1924 the figure for all manufacturing industries had reached 50.4 hours. From David R. Roediger and Philip S. Foner, Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), x. I have been unable to locate data on work hours for the middle class alone.

The literature on the history of sports during this period is large, but generally disappointing. Some important exceptions include Donald J. Mrozek, Sport and American Mentality, 1880-1910 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983); Stephen Hardy, How Boston Played: Sport, Recreation, and Community (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1982); and John R. Betts, America’s Sporting Heritage: 1850-1950 (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1974).

30. Rodgers, Work Ethic, 108.

31. One of the few historical studies to take a broader look at the Victorian fascination with collecting is Asa Briggs, Victorian Things (London: B. T. Batsford, 1988).

32. Harvey Green, The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America (New York: Pantheon, 1983), 96-97, describes the typical American parlor, complete with prints, figurines, plants, flowers, mementos, and natural history objects. See also Grier, “Decline of the Memory Palace” and Culture and Comfort. On the history of stamp collecting, see Briggs, Victorian Things, 327-368; and Stephen M. Gelber, “Free Market Metaphor: The Historical Dynamics of Stamp Collecting,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 34 (1992): 742-769. On Anglo-American interest in amassing natural history objects in particular, see Allen, The Naturalist in Britain, and his earlier book, The Victorian Fern Craze: A History of Pteridomania (London: Hutchinson, 1969); Lynn L. Merrill, The Romance of Victorian Natural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Keeney, Botanizers; Lynn Barber, The Heyday of Natural History, 1820-1870 (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1890); S. Peter Dance, Shell Collecting: An Illustrated History (London: Faber and Faber, 1966); and J. M. Chalmers-Hunt, comp., Natural History Auctions, 1700-1972: A Register of Sales in the British Isles (London: Sotheby Park Bernet, 1976).

33. Briggs, Victorian Things, 225.

34. Quoted in ibid., 353.

35. E. C. Mitchell, “The Collecting Habit,” Oologist 21 (1904): 25-26.

Oology, the study of eggs (especially birds’ eggs), was once spelled with a diaeresis over the second “o” (i.e., oölogy) to indicate that the two adjacent vowels were pronounced separately. In the late nineteenth century, however, authors and publishers used this mark inconsistently, and their twentiety-century counterparts have all but abandoned the practice. Therefore, I have used the modern spelling of oology and its variants throughout the text and citations.

36. John H. Jackson, “Oology vs. Philately,” Oologist 11 (1894): 280. On the American enthusiasm for exercise, see James C. Whorton, Crusaders for Fitness: The History of American Health Reformers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); and Harvey Green, Fit for America: Health, Fitness, Sport and American Society (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986).

37. Jackson, “Oology vs. Philately,” 279.

38. Ross H. and Mary E. Arnett have resolved the confusion surrounding the various editions of this invaluable reference work in “The 44 Editions of the Naturalists’ Directory,” published in the recent edition of the directory that they compiled, The Naturalists’ Directory and Almanac (International) (Gainesville, Fla.: Flora and Fauna Publications, 1985), 10-21.

39. Frederic Ward Putnam, ed., The Naturalists’ Directory: North America and the West Indies, 2 parts (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1865).

40. Frederic Ward Putnam, ed., The Naturalists’ Directory: North America and the West Indies (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1866).

41. From 1877 to 1936, Samuel E. Cassino published thirty editions of the Naturalists’ Directory under a variety of titles. See the bibliographic information and the estimates for the number of entries in each edition in Arnett and Arnett, “44 Editions.”

42. Ralph Bates, Scientific Societies in the United States, 2d ed. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1958).

43. These figures come from lists of scientific societies in Samuel Cassino, ed., Naturalists’ Directory for 1878 (Salem, Mass.: Naturalists’ Agency, 1878), and Naturalists’ Directory, 1884 (Boston: S. E. Cassino, 1884). On local natural history societies in the Midwest, see Daniel Goldstein, “Midwestern Naturalists: Academies of Science in the Mississippi Valley, 1850-1900” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1989).

44. The Agassiz Association is discussed briefly in Keeney, Botanizers, 140-145; and Lutts, Nature Fakers, 28-29.

45. The quotation is from the Constitution of the Agassiz Association, reproduced in Harlan H. Ballard, Hand-Book of the St. Nicholas Agassiz Association (Pittsfield, Mass.: Axtell and Pomeroy, 1882), 6. The biographical information on Ballard that follows is from his entry, “Harlan Hoge Ballard,” in National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: James T. White, 1907), 9:488-489.

46. Harlan H. Ballard, Hand-Book of the St. Nicholas Agassiz Association, 2d ed. (Lenox, Mass.: Published by the Author, 1884), 10. A full list of the local chapters is found on pp. 91-109.

47. The quotation is from “Harlan Hoge Ballard,” 489. The figures are from Harlan H. Ballard, Three Kingdoms: A Hand-Book of the Agassiz Association, 4th ed. (St. Louis: I. A. Mekeel, 1897), 17.

48. According to Keeney, Botanizers, 141, the association also published proceedings in the Observer, Santa Claus, and Popular Science News. In addition, several local Agassiz Association chapters published their own periodicals.

49. On the history of the nature study movement, see Schmitt, Back to Nature, 77-95; Keeney, Botanizers, 135-145; Lutts, Nature Fakers, 25-30; and E. Laurence Palmer, “Fifty Years of Nature Study and the American Nature Study Society,” Nature Magazine 50 (November 1957): 473-480.

50. Quoted in Schmidt, Back to Nature, 84. Clifton F. Hodge, Nature Study and Life (Boston: Ginn, 1902); Liberty H. Bailey, The Nature-Study Idea (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1903).

51. At least two earlier periodicals with “Nature Study” in their title predated this one, but both were short-lived: Nature Study (1900-1904), published by the Manchester Institute of Arts and Sciences, and Nature Study in Schools (1900), published by C. J. Maynard.

52. Anna Botsford Comstock, Handbook of Nature Study (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1911).

53. The only study of minor natural history periodicals of which I am aware is Jerome A. Jackson’s brief article, “Extinct Bird Journals: Forgotten Treasures?” AB Bookman's Weekly 77 (1986): 2566-2569.

54. Frank L. Burns, “A Bibliography of Scarce or Out of Print North American Amateur and Trade Periodicals Devoted More or Less to Ornithology,” Supplement to the Oologist 32 (1915): 1-32; William J. Fox, “A List of American Journals Omitted from Boulton’s ‘Catalogue of Scientific and Technical Periodicals, 1865-1895,’” Bulletin of Bibliography 5 (1908): 82-85; and Margaret Underwood, comp., Bibliography of North American Natural History Serials in the University of Michigan Libraries (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1954).

55. Quoted in Fuller, American Mail, 133.

56. The incident is recorded in a letter, Charles H. Prince to Jonathan Dwight, Jr., 17 October 1896, bound with the copy of the Oologist’s Advertiser in the Bird Library of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Among the other periodicals denied second-class rates were The Collectors’ Illustrated Magazine, published in 1888 by the California dealer Edward M. Haight, and Our Birds, published by Frank H. Metcalf in 1880. See Burns, “Bibliography,” 8, 25.

57. Fuller, American Mail, 138-139.

58. The copy of American Ornithology 6 (1906) in the Museum of Comparative Library, Cambridge, Mass., contains a postcard dated 29 September 1906 in which the editor Chester A. Reed announces he had suspended publication because he was denied second-class rates. See also Burns, “Bibliography,” 4.

59. As historian Frank L. Mott has observed (American Magazines, 1865-1885, 6), obtaining accurate circulation information on periodicals in the age before independent audits is nearly impossible.

60. The circulation figures that follow are from Burns, “Bibliography,” 2-3, 5, 17, 25, 27, 31.

61. “Editorial Notes,” Ward’s Natural Science Bulletin 2 (1883): 2.

62. “Editorial,” Ornithologist and Oologist 11 (1886): 168.

63. [Frank H. Lattin], “20,000 March Oologists,” Oologist 11 (1894): 37.

64. See the list compiled in the appendix of Mark V. Barrow, Jr., “Birds and Boundaries: Community, Practice, and Conservation in North American Ornithology, 1865-1935” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1992), 579-590, and the discussion of various entrepreneurial naturalists on 76-101. For a fascinating glimpse of one of the most famous American natural history dealers, see Sally G. Kohlstedt, “Henry A. Ward: The Merchant Naturalist and American Museum Development,” Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 9 (1980): 647-661.

65. This is not unlike the basic distinction between Arcadian and imperialistic science that Donald Worster makes in Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

66. First emphasis is in the original, while the second is mine. Elliott Coues, Field Ornithology (Salem, Mass.: Naturalists’ Agency, 1874), 12.

67. A similar point is made in Stewart, On Longing, 152-166. On collecting as an expression of the need to control, see Muensterberger, Collecting, 39 and passim.

CHAPTER TWO

1. Biographical information on Ridgway may be found in Harry Harris, “Robert Ridgway, with a Bibliography of His Published Writings,” Condor 30 (1928): 5-118; Alexander Wetmore, “Biographical Memoir of Robert Ridgway, 1850-1929,” Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 15 (1931): 57-101; Frank M. Chapman, “Robert Ridgway, 1850-1929,” Bird-Lore 31 (1929): 173-178; Harry C. Oberholser, “Robert Ridgeway: A Memorial Appreciation,” Auk 50 (1933): 159-169; and F. Gavin Davenport, “Robert Ridgway: Illinois Naturalist,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 63 (1970): 271-289.

2. The letter, Spencer F. Baird to Robert Ridgway, 23 June 1864, is reproduced in Ridgway’s memorial address, “Spencer Fullerton Baird,” Auk 5 (1888): 12.

3. Robert Ridgway to Spencer Fullerton Baird, 13 November 1865, Robert Ridgway Papers, RU 7167, Box 1, SIA.

4. See the series of letters written from Ridgway to Baird in the years 1864 to 1866 in ibid.

5. The details of Ridgway’s itinerary are contained in his published report, Robert Ridgway, Ornithology, in United States Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, part III, 303-669 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1877). Specific incidents relating to the expedition are also recorded in Harris, “Ridgway,” 21-27. The full citation for the book Ridgway helped to complete is Spencer F. Baird, Thomas M. Brewer, and Robert Ridgway, A History of North American Birds: Land Birds, 3 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1874).

6. Harris, “Ridgway,” 31.

7. The term comes from a chapter title in E. F. Rivinus and E. M. Youseff, Spencer Baird of the Smithsonian (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992).

8. Spencer Trotter, “The Background of Ornithology,” Bird-Lore 10 (1908): 71.

9. Paul Lawrence Farber, “The Development of Taxidermy and the History of Ornithology,” Isis 68 (1977): 550-566.

10. H. O. Green, “The Beginning of Oology,” Oologist 52 (1935): 2-3, argues that Étienne François Turgot, Mémoire instructif sur la maniere de rassembler, de preparer, de conserver, et d’envoyer les diverses curiositiés d’histoire naturelle (Lyon: J. M. Bruyset, 1758), was one of the earliest published accounts to explain how to preserve birds’ eggs. One of the early major egg collectors appears to have been Denis Joseph Manesse, taxidermist and author of Traité sur la manière d’empailler et de conserver les animaux, les pelléteries et les laines (Paris: Guillot, 1787). See H. O. Green, “An Early Oologist,” Oologist 52 (1935): 42-43.

11. Farber, “Taxidermy and Ornithology,” 562-563. Hugh Strickland, “Report of the Recent Progress and Present State of Ornithology,” Report of the Fourteenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1844): 216-217, lists most of the major collections of his day.

12. Peale’s Philadelphia Museum was the most important American natural history museum in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. See, for example, Charles Coleman Sellers, Mr. Peale’s Museum: Charles Willson Peale and the First Popular Museum of Natural Science and Art (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980); Orosz, Curators and Culture; and Tobey Appel, “Science, Popular Culture and Profit: Peale’s Philadelphia Museum,” Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 9 (1980): 619-634.

13. Quoted in Witmer Stone, “Some Philadelphia Ornithological Collections and Collectors, 1784-1850,” Auk 16 (1899): 168.

14. Porter, Eagle’s Nest, 30; Clark Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1983), 4; Sellers, Mr. Peale’s Museum, 203, 205-206. Wilson’s American Ornithology includes the specimen numbers in Peale’s museum upon which the descriptions were based.

15. Porter, Eagle’s Nest, 27. For a broad historical review of the development of habitat exhibits, see Karen E. Wonders, “Bird Taxidermy and the Origin of the Habitat Diorama,” in Non-Verbal Communication in Science Prior to 1900, ed. Renato G. Mazzolini (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1993), 411-447.

16. Walter Faxon, “Relics of Peale’s Museum,” Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 59 (1915): 119-133.

17. The academy has been the subject of several historical studies: Patsy A. Gerstner, “The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1812-1850,” in The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Early American Republic: American Scientific and Learned Societies from the Colonial Times to the Civil War, ed. Alexandra Oleson and Sanborn C. Brown (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 174-193; Porter, Eagle’s Nest, and Orosz, Curators and Culture. See also Frank B. Gill, “Philadelphia: 180 Years of Ornithology at the Academy of Natural Sciences,” in Contributions to the History of North American Ornithology, ed. William E. Davis, Jr., and Jerome A. Jackson (Cambridge, Mass.: Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1995), 1-31.

18. Gerstner, “Academy,” 179.

19. Witmer Stone, “Thomas B. Wilson, M.D.,” Cassinia 13 (1909): 5-6.

20. Philip Lutley Sclater, “Notes on the Birds in the Museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and Other Collections in the United States of America,” Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 25 (1857): 1-9, on 1.

21. Elliott Coues, Key to North American Birds, 5th ed. (Boston: Dana Estes, 1903), xxiv. For biographical sketches of Cassin, see Witmer Stone, “John Cassin,” Cassinia 5 (1901): 1-7; and Theodore Gill, “Biographical Notice of John Cassin,” Osprey n.s. 1 (1902): 50-53.

22. See Deborah Jean Warner, Graceanna Lewis: Scientist and Humanitarian (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979), 54.

23. The history of the Boston Society of the History of Natural History has been examined in Thomas Bouvé, Historical Sketch of the Boston Society of Natural History (Boston: The Society, 1880), and more recently in two articles by Sally G. Kohlstedt, “The Nineteenth-Century Amateur Tradition: The Case of the Boston Society of the History of Natural History,” in Science and Its Public, ed. Gerald Holton and W. A. Blanpied (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1976), 173-190, and “From Learned Society to Public Museum: The Boston Society of Natural History,” in The Organization of Knowledge in Modern America, 1860-1920, ed. Alexandra Oleson and John Voss (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 386-406.

24. The figures are from Bouvé, Historical Sketch, 34, 53.

25. Ibid., 108-110.

26. Orosz, Curators and Culture; Sally Kohlstedt, “Curiosities and Cabinets: Natural History Museums and Education on the Ante-Bellum Campus,” Isis 79 (1988): 405-426; Bates, Scientific Societies in the United States; Charlotte Porter, “The Natural History Museum,” in The Museum: A Reference Guide, ed. Michael S. Shapiro (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), 1-29.

27. The collections of Cassin, Lawrence, Brewer, Samuel Cabot, and Baird are singled out for praise in 1857 by P. L. Sclater, “Notes on the Birds,” 1-3. For biographical information on these ornithologists, see Francis H. Herrick, Audubon the Naturalist, 2d ed. (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1938); Alice Ford, John James Audubon: A Biography (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988); D. G. Elliot, “In Memoriam: George Newbold Lawrence,” Auk 13 (1896): 1-10; J. A. Allen, “Dr. Samuel Cabot,” Auk 3 (1886): 144, and “Thomas Mayo Brewer,” Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 5 (1880): 102-104; George E. Gifford, Jr., “Thomas Mayo Brewer, M.D. ... A Blackbird and Duck, Sparrow and Mole,” Harvard Medical Alumni Bulletin 37, no. 1 (1962): 32-35; Witmer Stone, “John Kirk Townsend,” Dictionary of American Biography 18: 617-618; and Clark A. Elliott, Biographical Dictionary of American Science: The Seventeenth through the Nineteenth Centuries (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1979).

28. Edward Lurie, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); Mary P. Winsor, Reading the Shape of Nature: Comparative Zoology at the Agassiz Museum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Miller, Dollars for Research, 48-97.

29. For example, in preparation for a proposed (but never published) Natural History of the Fishes of the United States, in 1853 Agassiz distributed six thousand copies of a circular request for specimens to “amateur naturalists, sportsmen, fishermen, government officials, and professional scientists.” Lurie, Louis Agassiz, 186-189. A copy of one version of this circular survives in the MCZ Archives: Louis Agassiz, “Directions for Collecting Fishes and Other Objects of Natural History,” new ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1853).

30. Lurie, Louis Agassiz, 246.

31. Annual Report of the Trustees of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, at Harvard College, in Cambridge, together with the Report of the Director, 1866 (Boston: Wright and Potter, State Printers, 1867), 17.

32. This policy is discussed in ibid., 10.

33. Biographical information on Allen, one of the most important American ornithologists in the second half of the nineteenth century, may be found in J. A. Allen, Autobiographical Notes and a Bibliography of the Scientific Publications (New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1916); Frank Sulloway, “Joel Asaph Allen,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography 17:20-23; Frank M. Chapman, “Joel Asaph Allen,” Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 21 (1927): 1-20, and “In Memoriam: Joel Asaph Allen,” Auk 39 (1922): 1-14.

34. The sale of collections often provided naturalists with income. See, for example, Henry W. Henshaw, “Autobiographical Notes,” Condor 22 (1920): 56-57; and T. Gilbert Pearson, Adventures in Bird Protection: An Autobiography (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1937), 15-23.

35. Allen, Autobiographical Notes, 10.

36. In the mid-to-late 1860s, Allen frequently purchased specimens from C. J. Maynard, a dealer from Newtonville, Massachusetts, who is discussed in more detail below. See, for example, “Catalog of Birds,” MCZ Department of Birds, vol. 2, beginning at specimen no. 4326.

37. Annual Report of the Trustees of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, at Harvard College, in Cambridge, together with the Report of the Director for 1869 (Boston: Wright and Potter, 1870), 15.

38. “Catalog of Birds,” Department of Ornithology, MCZ, Cambridge, Mass.

39. Baird’s life and extensive contributions to the development of North American natural history are discussed in three biographies: Dean C. Allard, Spencer Fullerton Baird and the U.S. Fish Commission (New York: Arno Press, 1978); William Healey Dall, Spencer Fullerton Baird: A Biography (Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott, 1915); and Rivinus and Youssef, Baird of the Smithsonian. One of the most useful articles on the development of Baird’s extensive collecting network is William Deiss, “Spencer F. Baird and His Collectors,” Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 9 (1980): 635-645, from which the following account is largely based. On the Baird/Agassiz relationship, see Elmer Charles Herber, ed., Correspondence between Spencer Fullerton Baird and Louis Agassiz: Two Pioneer Naturalists (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1963).

40. No doubt family connections played a role in Baird’s success at recruiting military personnel to collect for him; his father-in-law was Brigadier General Sylvester Churchill, inspector general of the army. Most of the army surgeons discussed in Edgar E. Hume, Ornithologists of the United States Army Medical Corps: Thirty-Six Biographies (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1942), collected for Baird. One Baird collector in particular, the Hungarian John Xantus, has attracted the attention of scholars. See Ann Zwinger, ed., John Xantus: The Fort Tejon Letters, 1857-1859 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1986), and Xantus: The Letters of John Xantus to Spencer Fullerton Baird, from San Francisco and Cabo San Lucas, 1859-1861 (Los Angeles: The Castle Press for Dawson’s Bookshop, 1986); John Xantus, Travels in Southern California, trans. and ed. Theodore Shoenman and Helen Bendele (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1976); and, Letters from North America, trans. and ed. Theodore Shoenman and Helen Bendele (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975); and Henry Miller Madden, Xantus, Hungarian Naturalist in the Pioneer West (Linz, Austria: Oberosterreichischer Landesverlag, 1949).

41. This list is largely derived from Deiss, “Spencer Fullerton Baird,” 639. On the relationship between naturalists in collecting networks, see also Keeney, Botanizers.

42. Deiss, “Spencer F. Baird,” 635.

43. The chronicle of the Division of Birds that follows comes from a manuscript history prepared by Charles W. Richmond in 1906 and now deposited in the Division of Birds, National Museum of Natural History, Records, RU 105, Box 36, SIA. See also Richard C. Banks, “Ornithology at the U.S. National Museum,” in Contributions to the History of North American Ornithology, ed. William E. Davis, Jr., and Jerome A. Jackson (Cambridge, Mass.: Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1995), 33-54.

44. On the relationship between the Wilkes Expedition collections and the Smithsonian, see Nathan Reingold and Marc Rothenberg, “The Exploring Expedition and the Smithsonian Institution,” in Magnificent Voyagers: The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842, ed. Herman J. Viola and Carolyn Margolis (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), 242-253. The western surveys that stocked the National Museum are discussed in William Goetzmann’s two major studies, Army Exploration in the American West, 1803-1863 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), and Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966).

45. The actual number of specimens in the collection cannot be directly inferred from the catalog. From the beginning the Smithsonian had a policy of distributing duplicate material to other institutions.

46. Boardman has been the subject of an uncritical but useful biography written by his son: Samuel Lane Boardman, The Naturalist of the Saint Croix: Memoir of George A. Boardman (Bangor, Maine: Privately printed, 1903). Some of the correspondence used in the construction of that biography survives in the George A. Boardman Papers, RU 7071, SIA.

47. For example, in 1871 George Boardman found a strange duck in a New York game market that he regularly frequented and took it to Washington for identification. Baird identified the specimen as a European crested duck. Boardman, Naturalist, 114-115.

48. William Wood to George A. Boardman, 20 September 1864, quoted in ibid., 217.

49. These developments are discussed in much greater detail in chapter 4.

50. Coues, Field Ornithology, 27-28. Essentially the same advice appeared in the later editions of Coues’s popular guide: Key to North America Birds, 5th ed., 12-13.

51. By 1933 J. H. Fleming’s collection numbered thirty-three thousand skins. James Peters, “Collections of Birds in the United States and Canada: Study Collections,” in Fifty Years’ Progress of American Ornithology, 1883-1933, ed. Frank M. Chapman and T. S. Palmer (Lancaster, Pa.: American Ornithologists’ Union, 1933), 137. Edgar A. Kahn, “Max Minor Peet, 1885-1949,” Surgical Neurology 5 (1976): 63. At the time John Thayer donated his collection to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, it numbered thirty thousand skins and “several thousand” nests and eggs. R[ichard] M. B[arnes], “A Wonderful Gift,” Oologist 48 (1931): 170-171.

52. The completed returns from this survey of over a thousand Smithsonian correspondents survive in the Spencer F. Baird Papers, RU 7002, Box 64, SIA. Daniel Goldstein provides a fascinating analysis of this community in his article, “ ‘Yours for Science.’ ”

53. James L. Peters, “The Bird Collection,” in Notes Concerning the History and Contents of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (n.p., 1936), 50-52.

54. William Brewster Papers, Museum of Comparative Zoology Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass (hereafter cited as MCZ Archives). Besides a large body of incoming correspondence, the collection also includes his extensive journals, photographs, and copies of some outgoing letters.

55. The biographical sketch of Bishop that follows comes from Hildegard Howard, “Louis Bennett Bishop, 1865-1950,” Auk 68 (1951): 440-446; and L. C. Sanford, “Louis B. Bishop: A Reminiscence,” manuscript in Louis B. Bishop folder, Archives, Department of Ornithology, American Museum of Natural History, New York (hereafter cited as AMNH).

56. Like Bishop, Sanford became a physician and continued to collect birds. In 1903 the two joined with T. S. Van Dyke to publish The Water-Fowl Family (New York: Macmillan, 1903). Sanford was later an important patron of the AMNH bird department. See chapter 8.

57. See, for example, Jonathan Dwight, Jr., “Sequence of Plumage and Moults of the Passerine Birds of New York,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 13 (1900): 73-360.

58. J. C. Merrill, “In Memoriam: Charles Emil Bendire,” Auk 15 (1898): 1-6; F. H. Knowlton, “Major Charles E. Bendire,” Osprey 1 (1897): 87-90; and Hume, Ornithologists, 22-37.

59. A Catalogue of the Oological Collection of J. Parker Norris and J. Parker Norris, Jr. (Philadelphia: Privately printed, 1894), [i].

60. The collection belonged to Jean Bell of Pennsylvania, who spent over $25,000 amassing it. [Frank H. Lattin,] [Announcement,] Oologist 19 (1901): 117. In 1906 Childs published a catalog of his collection, “The Ornithological Collections of John Lewis Childs, Floral Park, N.Y,” The Warbler, 2d series, 2 (1906): 66-106.

61. Biographical information on Barnes and his connection with the Oologist, which he owned and edited for over thirty years, is found in the last issue of that periodical issued in December 1941: Oologist 58 (1941): 148-162.

62. Charles F. Batchelder, An Account of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1873 to 1919 (Cambridge, Mass.: The Club, 1937), 13.

63. Quoted in Stone, “John Cassin,” 5, 7.

64. See, for example, Dulles, A History of Recreation, 24-26, 43, 70-71. The distinction between utilitarian and ritualistic sport hunting comes from John M. MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation, and British Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 2-3. See also Stuart A. Marks, Southern Hunting in Black and White: Nature, History, and Ritual in a Carolina Community (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); and Matt Cartmill, A View to Death in the Morning: Hunting and Nature through History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).

65. John F. Reiger, American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation (New York: Winchester Press, 1976), 26.

66. The full title provides more of an indication of the contents: The Sportsman’s Companion; or, An Essay on Shooting: Illustriously Shewing in What Manner to Fire at Birds of Game, in Various Directions and Situations—and Directions to Gentlemen for the Treatment and Breaking Their Own Pointers and Spaniels (New York: Robertson, Mills and Hicks, 1783).

67. E[lisha] J[arett] Lewis, Hints to Sportsmen (Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1851); and Frank Forester [Henry William Herbert], The Complete Manual for Young Sportsmen (New York: Stringer & Townsend, 1856). For a list of similar works, see John C. Phillips, American Game Birds and Mammals: A Catalogue of Books, 1582 to 1925: Sport, Natural History, and Conservation (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1930); and Robert W. Henderson, Early American Sport: A Checklist of Books by American and Foreign Authors Published in America Prior to 1860, including Sporting Songs, 3d ed. (London: Associated University Press, 1977).

68. Reiger, American Sportsmen, 39-40.

69. For example, for several years the Nuttall Ornithological Club, the first society in North America devoted exclusively to ornithology, published its papers in the American Sportsman. See chapter 4, below.

70. Harry B. Bailey indexed the extensive series of bird notes in Field and Stream. See his “Forest and Stream” Bird Notes: An Index and Summary of all the Ornithological Matter Contained in “Forest and Stream,” Vols. I-XI1 (New York: Forest and Stream, 1881). Frank Chapman recalled that “Forest and Stream was not only the leading journal for sportsmen but its high standing made it a recognized means of communication between naturalists. I read it from cover to cover.” Autobiography of a Bird Lover (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1933), 32.

71. Charles Hallock to George A. Boardman, 20 May 1873, George A. Boardman Papers, RU 7071, Box 1, Folder 18, SIA.

72. William Bullock, A Concise and Easy Method of Preserving Objects of Natural History, Intended for the Use of Sportsmen, Travellers, and Others (New York: Printed for the Publisher, 1829).

73. Frank M. Chapman, “John G. Bell,” Auk 7 (1890): 98-99. Chapman described a visit to Bell’s establishment in his Autobiography, 30-31.

74. On the use of stuffed specimens for decorations, see Batty, Practical Taxidermy.

75. Quoted in Chapman, “Bell,” 31.

76. William Dutcher, “Notes on Some Rare Birds in the Collection of the Long Island Historical Society,” Auk 10 (1893): 268-269.

77. What we know about nineteenth-century commercial game hunting comes largely from the literature produced by the turn-of-the-century movement to suppress the practice. See, for example, Frank Graham, Jr., The Audubon Ark: A History of the National Audubon Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 8, 17, 63-65; Reiger, American Sportsmen, 26-28, 38, 63, 70-72; and chapters 5 and 6, below. For a contemporary discussion of the many ways birds were used in the nineteenth century, see T. S. Palmer, “A Review of Economic Ornithology in the United States,” Yearbook of Department of Agriculture for 1899 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900), 267-278. Alan Devoe, “Robins for Sale: Five Cents,” Audubon Magazine 49 (1947): 108-112, calls attention to a fascinating account of the offerings in New York and Boston game markets: Thomas F. De Voe, The Market Assistant (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867).

78. The description is from W. E. D. Scott, The Story of a Bird-Lover (New York: Macmillan, 1904), 71.

79. E. P. Bicknell, “The Status of the Black Gyrfalcon as a Long Island Bird,” Auk 41 (1924): 65.

80. Keir B. Sterling, The Last of the Naturalists: The Career of C. Hart Merriam (New York: Amo Press, 1974), 14.

81. See chapters 5 and 6.

82. The episode is recounted in great detail in Scott, Story of a Bird Lover, 70-77.

83. Spencer Trotter, “Some Old Philadelphia Bird Collectors and Taxidermists,” Cassinia 18 (1914): 2-3.

84. Frank L. Burns, “John Krider, a Typical Professional Collector, 1838-1878,” Oologist 50 (1933): 74; and Trotter, “Old Philadelphia Collectors,” 5-6. In his later advertisements, Krider claims to have established his business in 1836. See Forest and Stream 20 (8 March 1883): iii.

85. John Krider, Krider's Sporting Anecdotes, Illustrative of the Habits of Certain Varieties of American Game, ed. H. Milnor Klapp (Philadelphia: A. Hart, 1853), and Forty Years Notes of a Field Ornithologist (Philadelphia: Joseph H. Weston, 1879).

86. See the list in Reiger, American Sportsmen, 46-47.

87. One of the earliest examples is Spencer F. Baird’s twelve-page pamphlet, Hints for Preserving Objects of Natural History (Carlisle, Pa.: Gitt and Hinkley, 1846).

88. The most complete guide to this early literature is Stephen P. Rogers, Mary Ann Schmidt, and Thomas Gütebier, An Annotated Bibliography on Preparation, Taxidermy, and Collection Management of Vertebrates with Emphasis on Birds, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, special publication no. 15 (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Museum of Natural History, 1989).

89. Although Maynard’s book treated mammals, insects, fishes, reptiles, and a number of invertebrate organisms, its primary emphasis was on birds. C. J. Maynard, The Naturalist's Guide in Collecting and Preserving Objects of Natural History, with a Complete Catalogue of the Birds of Eastern Massachusetts (Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1870). Maynard’s popular book was subsequently issued in many reprinted and new editions. For a complete list of these and Maynard’s numerous other publications, see Charles Foster Batchelder, “Bibliography of the Published Writings of Charles Johnson Maynard (1845-1929)” Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 2 (1951): 227-251.

90. The sources of biographical information on Maynard are Charles W. Townsend, “Charles Johnson Maynard,” Bulletin of the Boston Society of Natural History 54 (1939): 3-7; Batchelder, “Bibliography of Charles Johnson Maynard”; Witmer Stone, “Charles Johnson Maynard,” Dictionary of American Biography 2:457; and Ruth D. Turner, “Charles Johnson Maynard and His Work in Malacology,” Occasional Papers on Mollusks 2 (1957): 137-152.

91. The precise date that Maynard opened his business is unclear. It is listed in the 1865 edition of The Naturalists' Directory.

92. For example, in the mid-1860s Maynard sold many specimens to the MCZ. See, “Catalogue of the Bird Collection,” vol. 2, Department of Ornithology, MCZ.

93. Maynard, Guide, 12.

94. The only way to achieve lifelike mounts, he argued, was extensive study of the attitudes and activities of birds in nature. Ibid., 36.

95. Ibid., 81-159.

96. Elliott Coues, Key to North American Birds (Salem, Mass.: Naturalists’ Agency, 1872).

97. The standard biography of Coues is Paul Russell Cutright and Michael J. Brodhead, Elliott Coues: Naturalist and Frontier Historian (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981). See also [Frank M. Chapman,] “Elliott Coues,” Bird-Lore (1900): 3-4; D. G. Elliot, “In Memoriam: Elliott Coues,” Auk 18 (1901): 1-11; and J. A. Allen, “Biographical Memoir of Elliott Coues,” Biographical Memoirs of National Academy of Sciences 6 (1909): 397-446.

98. Cutright and Brodhead, Elliott Coues, 30.

99. Elliott Coues to Frederic Ward Putnam, 30 April 1868, Frederic Ward Putnam Papers, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Mass.

100. Elliott Coues to Spencer Fullerton Baird, 12 July 1869, quoted in Cutright and Brodhead, Coues, 127.

101. J. A. A[llen], “Coues’s Key to North American Birds, Second Edition,” Auk 1 (1884): 282.

102. Elliott Coues, A Check List of North American Birds (Salem, Mass.: The Naturalists’ Agency, 1873).

103. Spencer F. Baird, Catalogue of North American Birds, Chiefly in the Museum of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1859). Baird’s Catalogue was largely based on his Pacific Railroad Survey Report, completed a year previously with the aid of John Cassin and Thomas M. Brewer.

104. Coues, Field Ornithology.

105. Ibid., 3.

106. Walter Hoxie to William Brewster, 4 December 1885, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives. On the decline of the Bachman’s warbler, which is probably now extinct, see Paul B. Hamel, Bachmans Warbler: A Species in Peril (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986).

107. Coues, Field Ornithology, 28-30.

108. Elliott Coues, Key to North American Birds, 2d ed. (Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1884).

109. Chapman, Autobiography, 31-32.

110. Cutright and Brodhead, Elliott Coues, 258.

111. In the early 1870s, Baird and Ridgway had begun printing an identification guide, Outlines of American Ornithology, from the stereotype plates of the keys found in their three-volume History of North American Birds: Land Birds (1874). Apparently the success of Coues’s Key and the long delay in publishing the two companion volumes on water birds (which did not appear until 1884) undermined their efforts. Only two copies, made from bound proofs, appear to have survived: one in the Bird Library of the Smithsonian Institution and the other in the MCZ Archives. The publication is discussed in Harris, “Ridgway,” 38-39.

112. My emphasis. Robert Ridgway to Spencer Fullerton Baird, 30 January 1886, Division of Birds, National Museum of Natural History, Records, RU 105, Box 1, vol. 1, 356-359, SIA.

113. Robert Ridgway, A Manual of North American Birds (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1887). A second revised edition, incorporating the latest additions and changes in nomenclature, appeared in 1896. The two subsequent editions were merely reprints of the second edition. Harris, “Ridgway,” 94-95.

114. Robert Ridgway, “Directions for Collecting Birds,” United States National Museum, Bulletin no. 39, Part A (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1891).

115. William T. Hornaday, Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting: A Complete Handbook for the Amateur Taxidermist, Collector, Osteologist, Museum-Builder, Sportsman, and Traveller (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891).

116. Ibid., i, 2.

117. See chapters 5 and 6.

118. The first and second editions of Oliver Davie’s popular book were misleadingly titled An Egg Check List of North American Birds (Columbus: Hann & Adair, 1885) and Egg Check List and Key to the Nests and Eggs of North American Birds (Columbus: Hann & Adair, 1886). By the time of the greatly enlarged third edition, Davie had settled on the more appropriate Nest and Eggs of North American Birds (Columbus: Hann & Adair, 1889), which was published in two subsequent editions.

Lattin’s The Oologists’ Hand-Book (Rochester, N.Y: John P. Smith, 1885) was largely a listing of the values of North American eggs, but it also contained instructions for collecting, preparing, displaying, and exchanging eggs.

119. His letterhead in 1881 listed him as a dealer in “stuffed birds, minerals, shells, grasses, artificial eyes for birds and animals, glass shades, naturalists’ and taxidermists’ supplies, and standard books on natural history.” Oliver Davie to William Brewster, 19 May 1881, Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives. In addition to the several editions of his Nests and Eggs of North American Birds, Davie also published an illustrated guide to collecting and preserving animals, Methods in the Art of Taxidermy (Columbus: Hann & Adair, 1894). A biographical sketch in William Coyle, ed., Ohio Authors and Their Books (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1962), 158, mentions that as a boy Oliver Davie opened a shop dealing in “Indian relics, mineral specimens, and curios” above his father’s store in Columbus, Ohio.

120. Oliver Davie to William Brewster, 26 August 1889, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

121. On Lattin and his business, see Barrow, “Birds and Boundaries,” 94-101.

122. In the 1880s Lattin sold these for two cents each and $1.50 per hundred.

123. These periodicals are discussed in more detail in chapter 1.

124. Young Oologist 1 (1884): 3-5, 19-20.

125. Fred J. Davis, “Methods of Climbing for Nests,” Oologist 3 (1878): 93-94; G. Sirrom [i.e., Morris Gibbs], “Courtesy and Business in Exchanging,” Oologist 10 (1893): 136-138; W. G. F., “Auxiliary Gun Barrels for Collecting Bird Specimens,” Wilson Bulletin 39 (1927): 219-222; J. A. Singley, “Instructions for Collecting and Preserving Eggs,” Ornithologists’ and Oologists’ Semi-Annual 1 (1889): 1-12, an expanded version of an earlier article of the same title first printed in Bay State Oologist 1 (1880): 20-21, 28-29, 36-37; Herbert Massey, “Arrangement of an Oological Collection,” Condor 10 (1908): 223-225; Frank Stephens, “About Collecting Chests,” Condor 8 (1906): 112-114; and Loye Holmes Miller, “A Convenient Collecting Gun,” Condor 17 (1915): 226-228.

126. Frank B. Webster, “Practical Taxidermy,” Ornithologist and Oologist 10 (1885): 137.

127. C. A. H., “Notes for Collectors,” Oologist 5 (1888): 126.

128. “The Object of Collecting,” Oologist 2 (1876-1877): 52. See also Louis A. Zerega, “The Great American Egg-Hog,” Ornithologist and Oologist 7 (1882): 183, in which the author asserts that “nine men out of ten prefer to collect their own specimens when possible.”

129. For example, an anonymous story in the Young Oologist 1 (1884): 67, “Egg-Nesting,” described the collecting experiences of William C. Flint, a lawyer from San Francisco who found collecting a “pleasing outdoor recreation” and a “means of restoring his shattered health.” The argument that collecting skins and eggs was important for the training of ornithologists, even if they did observational studies, is discussed in chapter 6.

130. Henry W. Henshaw to William Brewster, 14 September 1901, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives. Robert Stebbins speaks of a similar reaction in a community of amateur archaeologists in Amateurs, 131-132.

131. Walter Hoxie, “On Making Exchanges,” Ornithologist and Oologist 13 (1888): 54-55.

132. Besides the various editions of The Naturalists’ Directory, mentioned in chapter 1, there were also several more specialized listings of bird and egg collectors: S. L. Willard, comp., A Directory of the Ornithologists of the United States (Utica, N.Y.: Office of the Oologist, 1877); H. W. Davis and Geo. C. Baker, comps., The Oologist Directory (Columbus: Hann & Adair, 1885); Letson Balliet, comp., American Naturalist’s Directory (Garland, Maine: H. Stanton Sawyer, 1890).

133. See, for example, Ora Knight to J. A. Allen, 1 October and 12 October 1908, American Ornithologists’ Union, Records, RU 7440, SIA, and William Brewster, “An Ornithological Swindler,” Auk 1 (1884): 295-297.

134. Manly Hardy charged Charles K. Worthen, a dealer from Warsaw, Illinois, with this practice in a letter to William Brewster, 7 September 1885, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

135. See chapter 4, below.

136. See, for example, J. P. Norris, “Instructions for Collecting Birds’ Eggs,” Young Oologist 1 (1884): 3-4.

137. This was the accusation against A. H. Verrill, the son of Addison E. Verrill, in [Henry R. Taylor,] [Announcement,] Nidiologist 3 (1896): 80.

138. See, for example, Oologist 9 (1892): 16; R. W. Shufeldt, “Raineism,” Nidologist 3 (1896): 146-148; and W. H. Winkley, “Correspondence,” The Hawkeye Ornithologist and Oologist 2 (1889): 58-60.

139. The standard biographies of this important figure in American ornithological circles and author of two volumes on the Life Histories of North America Birds are James C. Merrill, “In Memoriam: Charles Emil Bendire,” Auk 15 (1898): 1-6; F. H. Knowlton, “Major Charles E. Bendire,” Osprey 1 (1897): 87-90; and Edgar E. Hume, “Charles E. Bendire (1836-1897): 22-37.

140. The episode is told in Bendire, Life Histories, 231-232. I thank John Hendrickson for bringing the story to my attention.

141. For example, in his frequently reprinted collecting guide, Maynard warned that “Too much caution cannot be used in handling a loaded gun, especially by a professional collector, who may spend up to two thirds of his time with a gun in his hand.” Maynard, Naturalists’ Guide, 8. See also a similar warning in Coues, Field Ornithology, 12-13.

142. Cairns, who was an associate member of the AOU, was the subject of a brief obituary published as J. A. Allen, “John S. Cairns,” Auk 12 (1895): 315. Additional information on Cairns may be found in his correspondence with William Brewster in the William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

143. See J. A. Allen, “J. H. Batty,” Auk 23 (1906): 356-357. More details on the life and career of Batty are provided in chapter 5, below.

144. Batty’s difficulties in the held collecting for the AMNH are detailed in a series of letters to J. A. Allen in the Joseph Batty Folder, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

145. Allen, “Batty,” 357.

146. The episode is recounted in R[ichard] M. B[arnes], “Richard C. Harlow,” Oologist 38 (1921): 42.

147. Details surrounding Crispin’s death are found in “William B. Crispin,” Oologist 30 (1913): 90; R. P. Sharpies, “Wm. B. Crispin Killed by a Fall,” Oologist 30 (1913): 90-91.

148. The story of Birtwell’s demise is provided in Olivia Birtwell, “Francis J. Birtwell,” Auk 27 (1910): 413-414; “Death of Francis Joseph Birtwell,” Osprey 5 (1901): 104; and “General Notes and News,” Condor 3 (1901): 107.

149. Biographical information on Cahoon may be found in F[rank] B[lake] W[ebster], “Horrible Fate,” Ornithologist and Oologist 16 (1891): 73-75; and J. A. Allen, “John C. Cahoon,” Auk 8 (1891): 320-321.

150. Article from St. Johns Evening Telegraph, July 1889, reproduced in Ornithologist and Oologist 15 (1890): 120-121.

151. W[ebster], “Horrible Fate,” 75.

152. The important role of women in botany is discussed in Emanuel D. Rudolph, “Women in Nineteenth-Century American Botany: A Generally Unrecognized Constituency,” American Journal of Botany 69 (1982): 1346-1355, and “Women Who Studied Plants in the Pre-Twentieth Century United States and Canada,” Taxon 39 (1990): 151-205; and Keeney, Botanizers. On women in entomology, see Sorensen, Brethren of the Net, 188-193, 257-258. On women naturalists more generally, see Marcia Myers Bonta, Women in the Field: America's Pioneering Women Naturalists (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1991). On women as marginalized scientists, see Margaret Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982); and Sally G. Kohlstedt, “In from the Periphery: American Women in Science, 1830-1880,” Signs: Journal of Women and Culture and Society 4 (1978): 81-96.

153. Bonta, Women in the Field, 181. Bonta’s book also includes a biographical sketch of Maxwell (pp. 30-41) based on Maxine Benson, Martha Maxwell, Rocky Mountain Naturalist (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986).

154. Elizabeth Keeney addresses the many challenges women botanists faced in Botanizers, 69-82.

155. Nell Harrison, “From a Woman’s Standpoint,” Proceedings of the Nebraska Ornithologist' Union 3 (Dec. 1902): 41. Thirty years earlier the nature writer Wilson Flagg also noted this difficulty: “Women cannot conveniently become hunters or anglers, nor can they without some eccentricity of conduct follow birds and quadrupeds to the woods.” Quoted in Keeney, Botanizers, 72.

156. At about the same time Harrison was writing, Margaret Morse Nice’s parents were strongly discouraging her from tramping in the woods with a rifle for fear that it was dangerous and that she would be branded “an eccentric.” Margaret Morse Nice, Research Is a Passion with Me: The Autobiography of Margaret Morse Nice, ed. Doris H. Speirs (Toronto: Consolidated Amethyst Communications, 1979), 19-20.

157. Deborah Jean Warner, Graceanna Lewis: Scientist and Humanitarian (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979). See also Marcia Bonta’s biographical sketch, which is largely based on Warner, in Women in the Field, 18-29.

158. Bonta, Women in the Field, 21.

159. See Elliott Coues’s variously titled reviews of Jones and Schulze, Nests and Eggs of the Birds of Ohio, Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 4 (1879): 52, 228; 5 (1880): 39; 7 (1882): 45, 112; 8 (1883): 112, 166; Auk 2 (1885): 289; 3 (1886): 406. See also J. A. Alien’s review of the finished production: “Conclusion of the Great Work on the Nests and Eggs of the Birds of Ohio,” Auk 4 (1887): 150-152. On the history of this project, see Edward Wessen, “Jones’ Nests and Eggs of the Birds of Ohio,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 47 (1953): 218-230.

160. Her death was lamented by Elliott Coues in “Genevieve E. Jones,” Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 4 (1879): 228.

161. The title page issued with the final part of the work read: Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of the Birds of Ohio. Illustrations by Mrs. N. E. Jones, with Text by Howard Jones, A.M., M.D. (Circleville, Ohio, 1886). On page vii of the preface, Howard Jones indicated that the plates were “in nearly every instance” based on nests collected for the purpose by himself.

162. The incident is related in Chapman, Autobiography 160-163.

CHAPTER THREE

1. On the history of the AOU, see Cutright and Brodhead, Elliott Coues; and Keir Sterling and Marianne G. Ainley, “A Centennial History of the American Ornithologists’ Union, 1883-1983,” ms. Both works have been crucial to the chapter that follows. See also J. A. Allen, The American Ornithologists' Union: A Seven Years’ Retrospective (New York: AOU, 1891); T. S. Palmer, “A Brief History of the American Ornithologists’ Union,” in Fifty Years’ Progress of American Ornithology, 1883-1933, ed. Frank M. Chapman and T. S. Palmer (Lancaster, Pa.: American Ornithologists’ Union, 1933), 7-27; and Peter F. Cannell, “An Annotated Bibliography of the Founding of the American Ornithologists’ Union,” American Birds 37 (July-August 1983): 355-357.

2. “The American Ornithologists’ Union,” Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 8 (1883): 225.

3. Although dated, Bates, Scientific Societies in the United States, remains useful. More focused are two recent papers: Toby A. Appel, “The Mapping of Biology: Disciplinary Societies in the Biological Sciences,” paper delivered to the annual meeting of the History of Science Society, October 1987, and “Organizing Biology: The American Society of Naturalists and Its ‘Affiliated Societies,’ 1883-1923,” in The American Development of Biology, ed. Ronald Rainger, et al. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 87-120.

4. Appel, “Organizing Biology,” 103-106; and Keith R. Benson and C. Edward Quinn, “The American Society of Zoologists, 1889-1989: A Century of Integrating the Biological Sciences,” American Zoologist 30 (1990): 353-396.

5. Herman K. Skolnick and Kenneth M. Reese, eds., A Century of Chemistry: The Role of Chemists and the American Chemical Society (Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1976).

6. The AOU campaign for nomenclatural reform is discussed in the next chapter.

7. Frank M. Chapman to Lynds Jones, 18 December 1914, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

8. On the history of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, see Batchelder, Account; and William E. Davis, Jr., History of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1873-1986 (Cambridge, Mass.: The Club, 1987). The archives of the Nuttall Ornithological Club are located in the Bird Department, MCZ).

9. Jeannette E. Graustein, Thomas Nuttall, Naturalist: Explorations in America, 1808-1841 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).

10. Quoted from the copy of the Nuttall Ornithological Club Constitution, adopted 14 December 1873, bound with the “Nuttall Ornithological Club, Records of Meetings, Vol. 1,” Nuttall Ornithological Club Archives (hereafter cited as NOC Archives), Bird Department, MCZ.

11. Davis, History, 5, 89-92.

12. Charles J. Maynard to J. A. Allen, 30 July 1876, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

13. Several years earlier, Maynard and another Nuttall Club member, Ruthven Deane, had tried to launch their own periodical, the American Ornithologist. They got as far as issuing a prospectus in the American Sportsman, but the periodical was never published. C. J. Maynard to J. A. Allen, 30 July 1876, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

14. See the accounts in Batchelder, Account, 28-30, and Davis, History, 13. Both authors rely almost entirely on the cryptic minutes kept of the meetings of 6, 13, 20, 23, and 27 May 1876; 8, 15, and 22, July 1876; and 5 August 1876 in “Records of Meetings,” vol. 1, NOC Archives, Bird Department, MCZ.

15. The position was largely honorary and intended to bring prestige to the new venture. On Baird’s acceptance of the position, see Spencer F. Baird to J. A. Allen, 23 May 1876, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

16. Maynard’s position is detailed in a lengthy letter written to J. A. Allen, 30 July 1876, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

17. Batchelder, Account, 45.

18. The best treatment of the social and ecological consequences the English sparrow’s introduction into North America is Robin Doughty, “The English Sparrow in the American Landscape: A Paradox in Nineteenth Century Wildlife Conservation,” Oxford University, School of Geography, Research Papers 19 (Oxford: Oxford Publishing Co., 1978). See also Michael J. Brodhead, “Elliott Coues and the Sparrow War,” New England Quarterly 44 (1971): 420-432.

19. Doughty, “English Sparrow,” 12.

20. Quoted in Thomas Gentry, The House Sparrow at Home and Abroad (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen, and Haffelfinger, 1878), 83.

21. Coues’s claim appears on p. 190 of his extensive annotated bibliography of the sparrow question: “On the Present Status of Passer Domesticus in America, with Special Reference to the Western States and Territories,” Department of the Interior, United States Geological and Geographical Survey, Bulletin 5, no. 2 (1879): 175-193.

22. Roosevelt had entered Harvard with the hope of becoming a professional naturalist. After discovering that the biological curriculum at Harvard was devoid of the field studies he so loved, he abandoned his plans. See Paul Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt: The Making of a Conservationist (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 97-133.

23. Batchelder, Account, 38.

24. See, for example, “Sparrows—The Nuttall Ornithological Club Decides against Them,” Boston Daily Advertiser, 23 February 1878; C. E. H[amlin], “The English Sparrows,” The [Bath, Maine] Times, 26 February 1878; and “Sparrows Brought to Judgment—Discussion of the Nuttall Ornithological Club upon the Merits and Demerits of the English Sparrow in the United States,” The Country 1 (23 February 1878): 245-246.

25. Munchausen, “The Sparrows,” Boston Evening Transcript, 27 February 1878, which states, “There seems to be a growing impression that one or two of the boys of the Nuttall Club rather overloaded their fowling pieces in their war on the sparrow.”

26. J. A. Allen to Thomas M. Brewer, 19 March 1878, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

27. “History Repeating Itself,” Boston Journal, 14 March 1878, reproduced in Batchelder, Account, 39-40.

28. J. A. Allen to William Brewster, 17 March 1878, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

29. J. A. Allen, “The Nuttall Ornithological Club,” letter to the editor of Boston Evening Transcript, 21 March 1878, 4. See also a similar letter in the Boston Journal, 19 March 1878.

30. William Brewster, “The Nuttall Ornithological Club of Cambridge,” Boston Daily Advertiser, 20 March 1878.

31. Davis, History, 15.

32. William Brewster to Charles F. Batchelder, 10 February 1883, quoted in Batchelder, Account, 46.

33. The issue of the AOU and nomenclatural reform is discussed in detail in chapter 4.

34. Elliott Coues, “Compliments of the Season,” Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 8 (1883): 1-6, on 5-6.

35. Elliott Coues to J. A. Allen, 19 and 30 March 1883, manuscript copies of original from the Blacker-Wood Library, McGill University (hereafter cited as B-W), American Ornithologists’ Union, Records (hereafter cited as AOU Records), RU 7150, Box 1, Folder 1, SIA.

36. See Elliott Coues to J. A. Allen, 3 May 1883 and 24 May 1884, manuscript copy of originals in B-W, ibid. Elliott Coues to J. A. Allen, 29 April 1883, Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

37. Elliott Coues to William Brewster, 1 and 12 June 1883, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

38. Elliott Coues to J. A. Allen, 8 June 1883, manuscript copy of original in B-W, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 1, Folder 1, SIA.

39. Early in the series of extensive deliberations that led to the creation of the AOU, Coues had suggested that they might want to invite Henry A. Ward, of Ward’s Natural Science Establishment, and “Webster, Halliday and Lucas,” three of the taxidermists who had trained under Ward. However, the final invitation list included neither these nor any other commercial naturalists. Elliott Coues to J. A. Allen, 4 and 13 June 1883, manuscript copies of originals in ibid.

40. Ibid.

41. Elliott Coues to J. A. Allen, 5 June 1883, manuscript copy of original in B-W, ibid.

42. J. A. Allen, Elliott Coues, and William Brewster to--------- (printed invitation), 1 August 1883, reproduced in Cutright and Brodhead, Elliott Coues, 267; Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 8 (1883): 221; and Forest and Stream 21 (1883): 45.

43. Several responses to the invitation are found in the Joel Asaph Allen Papers, 67/125z, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (hereafter cited as J. A. Allen Papers, Bancroft).

44. AOU Meeting Minutes, 26 September 1883, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 5, vol. 1, p. 28, SIA. Baird’s formal letter accepting membership is also in the AOU Records: Spencer F. Baird to Clinton Hart Merriam, 7 November 1883, Box 1, Folder 7. Brewster reported to Allen on the success of the meeting in William Brewster to J. A. Allen, 27 September 1883, J. A. Allen Papers, Bancroft.

45. Apparently Brewster expected to be elected chair of the meeting. Brewster’s proposed agenda survives in the AOU archives with the notation “Moved, seconded, & put to vote. Exit W.B.” AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 1, Folder 12, SIA.

46. See the announcement in Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 8 (1883): 223. Corresponding membership was quickly restricted to individuals living outside the United States and Canada, leaving, in effect, two membership categories for North Americans. Honorary memberships were established in 1887, when the foreign membership category was dropped.

47. AOU Meeting Minutes, 27 September 1883, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 5, vol. 1, SIA.

48. J. B. Holder of the AMNH chaired the committee, which gathered information on the sparrow through a widely circulated letter. The final report of the Sparrow Committee is in AOU Records, ibid. The committee’s findings were also published in Forest and Stream 25 (1885): 24-25.

49. See, Elliott Coues to J. A. Allen, 30 March 1883, manuscript copy of original in B-W, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 1, Folder 1, SIA.

50. AOU Council Minutes, 28 September 1883, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 3, vol. 1, SIA. The offer became “official” at the 1 October 1883 meeting of the Nuttall Ornithological Club in which members offered their “goodwill and subscription list” to the AOU. See “Records of Meetings,” vol. 2, NOC Archives, Bird Department, MCZ.

51. The other contenders were American Ornithologist and Bulletin of the American Ornithologists’ Union.

52. On the history of the British Ornithologists’ Union, see Allen, Naturalist in Britain; and P. L. Sclater, “A Short History of the British Ornithologists’ Union,” Ibis, series 9, vol. 2 (1908): Jubilee Supplement, 19-69.

53. AOU Council Minutes, 13 December 1883, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 3, vol. 1, SIA. Several weeks earlier Chamberlain had agreed to serve as associate editor. He made it clear that he considered himself an “amateur” and intended to represent the interests of amateurs both on the council and as an associate editor. See J. A. Allen to Montague Chamberlain, 18 and 23 November, 3 and 5 December, 1883, J. A. Allen Papers, Bancroft.

54. The announcement that invitations had been mailed appeared in Forest and Stream, Nation, and Canadian Naturalist. On complaints about the private invitations, see, for example, W. A. Stearns to J. A. Allen, 21 September 1883, J. A. Allen Papers, Bancroft; and C. J. Maynard to C. Hart Merriam, 20 September 1883, Clinton Hart Merriam Papers, 83/129c, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (hereafter cited as C. Hart Merriam Papers, Bancroft).

55. An appreciative biographical sketch of Wade is W. Otto Emerson, “Joseph Marshall Wade: An Appreciation,” Oologist 28 (1911): 158-161. On his connection to the Ornithologist and Oologist and its predecessor, the Oologist, see Frank A. Bates, “Reminiscences,” Ornithologist and Oologist 16 (1891): 177-179; and [Samuel L. Willard], “The Oologist: Its History from the Commencement,” Ornithologist and Oologist 6 (1881): 1-3.

56. C. Hart Merriam to J. M. Wade, 13 September 1883, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

57. C. Hart Merriam to William Brewster, 20 September 1883, ibid.

58. J[oseph] M. Wade, “Plain English,” Ornithologist and Oologist 8 (1883): 85, suppressed editorial appended to William Brewster’s copy of Ornithologist and Oologist now in the MCZ library.

59. Ibid.

60. Witmer Stone, “In Memoriam—John Hall Sage,” Auk 43 (1926): 9.

61. Montague Chamberlain to William Brewster, 11 October 1883, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

62. William Brewster to [J. A.] A[llen], note on letter from Montague Chamberlain to William Brewster, ibid.

63. Montague Chamberlain to William Brewster, 22 October 1883, ibid. On Chamberlain’s attempts to buy the Ornithologist and Oologist, see also Montague Chamberlain to C. Hart Merriam, 25 October and 8 November 1883, C. Hart Merriam Papers, Bancroft.

64. Montague Chamberlain to William Brewster, 12 November 1883, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

65. My italics. AOU Meeting Minutes, 28 September 1883, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 5, vol. 1, p. 49, SIA.

66. Wade declined the invitation to join the organization he had criticized. Joseph M. Wade to C. Hart Merriam, 9 December 1883, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 7, Folder 8, SIA.

67. AOU Council Minutes, 28 September 1883, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 3, vol. 1, pp. 13-15, SIA.

68. See, for example, Montague Chamberlain to William Brewster, 29 July 1884, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives, in which Chamberlain claims that “All the amateurs that I have heard from, who have seen the magazine [the Auk], think it is too scientific tho’ some have subscribed to it.” See also, J. C. Know, “Some Suggestions,” Auk 20 (1903): 234, which complains that too much of Auk was taken up with “technical and local faunal articles.” See also the last section of this chapter.

69. Montague Chamberlain to C. Hart Merriam, 22 July 1884, C. Hart Merriam Papers, Bancroft.

70. Ainley, “Contribution of the Amateur,” 66. Earlier Frank Chapman pointed out that in 1883 the ornithologists W. E. D. Scott and Ernest F. Lorquin also had paid curatorships (at Princeton University and the California Academy of Sciences, respectively), though neither was an active AOU member during this period. See Chapman, “Collections of Birds,” 143.

71. Merriam’s life has been the subject of a full-length biographical study that stresses his contribution to field of mammalogy and to the work of what became the Bureau of the Biological Survey: Sterling, Last of the Naturalists, which was also published in a revised edition in 1977. The biographical information that follows comes largely from pp. 6-77 of that book. See also Elizabeth Noble Shor, “Clinton Hart Merriam,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography 9 :313-314; Wilfred H. Osgood, “Biographical Memoir of Clinton Hart Merriam,” Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 24 (1944): 1-57; and T. S. Palmer, “In Memoriam: Clinton Hart Merriam,” Auk 71 (1954): 130-136.

72. On John Wallace and his role in ornithology, see chapter 2, above.

73. A. K. Fisher describes the exploits of the young medical students in an unpublished biographical fragment in A. K. Fisher Papers, Box 40, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

74. On physicians as naturalists, see the testimony of Dr. W. S. Strode, “A Difficult Climb after a Red-Tailed Hawk’s Nest,” Oologist 3 (1886): 34-35. See also William Wood to George Boardman, 29 November 1872, George A. Boardman Papers, RU 7071, Box 1, Folder 37, SIA.

75. The two offices were divided in 1885, after Merriam resigned as treasurer. He held the post of secretary until 1889.

76. In establishing his extensive migration monitoring network, Merriam was following several precedents. The most notable of these were the networks organized by the Allgemeine Deutsche Ornithologische Gesellschaft, Brunswick, in 1875, by J. A. Harvie-Brown and John Cordeaux in Great Britain in 1879, and by W. W. Cooke in the United States in 1881. See Allen, Naturalist in Britain, 196-201; Stresemann, Ornithology from Aristotle to the Present, 334-335; and T. S. Palmer, “In Memoriam: Wells Woodbridge Cooke,” Auk 39 (1917): 122-123.

77. C. Hart Merriam, “American Ornithologists’ Union: Bird Migration,” circular issued in 1884, p. 1, from copy bound with AOU Meeting Minutes, 2 October 1884, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 5, vol. 1, following p. 101, SIA Archives. A copy of the circular was also published in the Auk 1 (1884): 71-76.

78. Ibid.

79. “Second Annual Report of the American Ornithologists’ Union,” Auk 1 (1884): 377-378. See also the more extensive manuscript version of that report in the AOU Meeting Minutes, 2 October 1884, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 5, vol. 1, pp. 101-111, SIA.

80. Sterling, Last of the Naturalists, 56, 61.

81. Ibid., 109.

82. AOU Meeting Minutes, 2 October 1884, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 5, vol. 1, p. 109, SIA.

83. Sterling, Last of the Naturalists, 110-111.

84. AOU Meeting Minutes, 17 November 1885, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 5, vol. 1, p. 159, SIA.

85. Palmer, “A Review of Economic Ornithology,” 259-292; W. L. McAtee, “Economic Ornithology,” in Fifty Years’ Progress in American Ornithology, 1833-1933, ed. Frank M. Chapman and T. S. Palmer (Lancaster, Pa.: American Ornithologists’ Union, 1933), 111-129; and Matthew D. Evenden, “The Laborers of Nature: Economic Ornithology and the Role of Birds as Agents of Biological Control in North American Agriculture, ca. 1880-1930,” Forest and Conservation History 39 (1995): 172-183.

86. A copy of the memorial was published as [C. Hart Merriam], “Memorial to Congress,” Ornis 1 (1885): 60-67.

87. Merriam indicated that, if properly funded, analysis of migration data would be the first in a long line of research on the “interrelation of birds and agriculture” that he hoped to complete. Ibid., 63.

88. Ibid., 66.

89. Congressional Record, vol. 16, part 1, 48th Congress, 2d session (1884-1885), 539, 540.

90. AOU Council Minutes, 21 April 1885, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 3, vol. 1, pp. 71-77, SIA.

91. A portion of the letter is reproduced in Congressional Record, vol. 16, part 3, 48th Congress, 2d session (1885), 1939.

92. Sterling, Last of the Naturalists, 100.

93. C. Hart Merriam to J. A. Allen, 8 January 1884 [i.e., 1885], Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH. He repeated his claim in C. Hart Merriam to C. V. Riley, 2 April 1885, C. Hart Merriam Papers, Bancroft.

94. C. V. Riley to B[i.e., J]. A. Allen, 10 March 1885, AOU Records, RU 7440, SIA.

95. Sterling, Last of the Naturalists, 101. On the terms of Merriam’s acceptance and his difficult negotiations with his new boss, see C. Hart Merriam to C. V. Riley, 4, 12, and 18 June 1885, C. Hart Merriam Papers, Bancroft.

96. AOU Council Minutes, 21 April 1885, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 3, vol. 1, pp. 71-77, SIA.

97. Jenks Cameron, Bureau of the Biological Survey: Its History, Activities and Organization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1929), 22-23. On the early history of the Bureau of the Biological Survey, see Keir B. Sterling, “Builders of the U.S. Biological Survey, 1885-1930,” Journal of Forest History 33 (1989): 180-187; Henry Wetherbee Henshaw, “The Policemen of the Air: An Account of the Biological Survey of the Department of Agriculture,” National Geographic Magazine 19 (1908): 79-118; and the annual Reports of the Chief of the Biological Survey.

98. Cameron, Biological Survey, 24. This material was published as Walter B. Barrows, The English Sparrow (Passer Domesticus) in North America, Especially in Its Relations to Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy, Bulletin no. 1 (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1889).

99. Cameron, Biological Survey, 24-32.

100. Sclater, “Notes on the Birds.”

101. On Coues’s European trip, see Cutright and Brodhead, Elliott Coues, 277-291.

102. Elliott Coues to J. A. Allen, date illegible, AOU Records, RU 440, Box 1, SIA.

103. On the development of ideas about type specimens, see Paul Farber, “The Type-Concept during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the History of Biology 9 (1976): 93-119. Sclater’s remarks and the resulting discussion are in the AOU Meeting Minutes, 1 October 1884, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 5, vol. 1, pp. 91-99, SIA.

104. Sclater’s remarks were also incorporated into a letter written to Merriam at his request after the British ornithologist had returned to England: Philip Lutley Sclater to the Secretary of the American Ornithologists’ Union, 18 December 1884, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 1, Folder 33, SIA.

105. AOU Council Minutes, 2 October 1884, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 3, vol. 1, pp. 61-63, SIA.

106. On Alexander Agassiz’s role in financing and running the MCZ, see G. R. Agassiz, Letters and Recollections of Alexander Agassiz, with a Sketch of His Life and Work (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913); and Winsor, Reading the Shape of Nature, 134-163 and passim.

107. See Henry W. Henshaw to J. A. Allen, 24 May 1884 and 12 January 1885, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

108. Ronald Rainger, An Agenda for Antiquity: Henry Fairfield Osborn and Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, 1890-1935 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991), 57-61.

109. On the history of the bird and mammal department, see Allen, Autobiographical Notes, 33-39; Frank M. Chapman, “The Department of Birds, American Museum: Its History and Aims,” Natural History 22 (1922): 307-318; and Wesley E. Lanyon, “Ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History,” in Contributions to the History of North American Ornithology, ed. William E. Davis, Jr., and Jerome A. Jackson (Cambridge, Mass.: Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1995), 113-144.

110. See, for example, his first report as curator of the department of ornithology and mammalogy at the AMNH: Annual Report of the Trustees for the Year 1885 (New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1886), 9-12.

111. Allen, Autobiographical Notes, 35.

112. On scientific societies as gentlemen’s organizations, see Jack Morrell and Arnold Thackray, Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981).

113. Elliott Coues to William Brewster, 28 September and 31 October 1897, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

114. Biographical information on Shufeldt may be found in Hume, Ornithologists, 390-412; Kahman Lambrecht, “In Memoriam: Robert Wilson Shufeldt, 1850-1934,” Auk 52 (1935): 359-361; R. W. Shufeldt, “Complete List of My Published Writings, with Brief Biographical Notes,” Medical Review of Reviews 26 (1920): 17-24, 70-75, 123-130, 200-206, 251-257, 314-320, 368-377, 437-447, and 495-498; and “Robert Wilson Shufeldt,” National Cyclopedia of American Biography 6:242-244 (New York: James T. White, 1896).

115. The account of the meeting of Shufeldt and the Audubons is from Shufeldt, “Complete List,” 124.

116. Robert W. Shufeldt, “Audubon the Naturalist,” The Great Divide 10 (1893): 8-9.

117. R. W. Shufeldt and M. R. Audubon, “The Last Portrait of Audubon, Together with a Letter to His Son,” Auk 11 (1894): 309-313.

118. She returned briefly to Takoma Park for two days in November, only to leave again permanently. “Shufeldt v. Shufeldt,” Atlantic Reporter 39 (1898): 417.

119. The claim of blackmail was first raised in a letter from Elliott Coues to William Brewster, 7 February 1897, which is included in the documents gathered on the incident by John Sage, secretary of the AOU: “AOU, Dr. Robert Shufeldt Matter” (hereafter referred to as “Shufeldt Matter”). This collection is now in the Alexander Wetmore Papers, RU 7006, Box 61, SIA, Washington, D.C.

120. Shufeldt first circulated his charges as a self-published pamphlet in 1896, “On a Case of Female Impotency.” This was later incorporated into “On the Medico-Legal Aspect of Impotency in Women,” The Medico-Legal Journal 14 (December 1896): 289-296. A manuscript copy of this article is found in “Shufeldt Matter.”

121. Shufeldt, “Impotency in Women,” 294-295.

122. “Shufeldt v. Shufeldt,” Atlantic Reporter 39 (1898): 416-421. In 1898, the same year that his divorce from Audubon was finalized, Shufeldt married his former housekeeper.

123. S. P. Langley to R. W. Shufeldt, 8 February 1897, Assistant Secretary in Charge of the U.S. National Museum, 1879-1907, Outgoing Correspondence, RU 112, vol. L125, SIA.

124. R. W. Shufeldt to S. P. Langley, 18 February 1897, Assistant Secretary in Charge of the U.S. National Museum, 1860-1908, Incoming Correspondence, RU 189, Box 117, Folder 1, SIA.

125. The move prompted Shufeldt to ask in feigned innocence if some mistake had been made, to which Acting Assistant Secretary Walcott replied (with obvious relish), “I have the honor to state that the omission of your name from the revised list of Associates of the U.S. National Museum, was fully considered by the Secretary before receiving his approval.” R. W. Shufeldt to Charles D. Walcott, 18 November 1897, Assistant Secretary in Charge of the U.S. National Museum, 1860-1908, Incoming Correspondence, RU 189, Box 117, Folder 1; and Charles Walcott to R. W. Shufeldt, Assistant Secretary in Charge of the U.S. National Museum, 1879-1907, Outgoing Correspondence, RU 112, vol. L134, p. 356, SIA. In retaliation, Shufeldt demanded that the Smithsonian pay for a collection of birds he had previously “donated” to the museum. Anxious to avoid tarnishing the reputation of the Smithsonian, officials reluctantly agreed to Shufeldt’s demands. See the various documents, especially Charles D. Walcott to R. W. Shufeldt, 14 January 1898, in Assistant Secretary in Charge of the U.S. National Museum, 1860-1908, Incoming Correspondence, RU 189, Box 117, Folder 1, SIA.

126. Elliott Coues to William Brewster, 29 January 1897, in “Shufeldt Matter.”

127. William Brewster to Elliott Coues, 4 February 1897, in “Shufeldt Matter.”

128. American Ornithologists’ Union, By-Laws and Rules and List of Members (New York: L. S. Foster, 1887), 4.

129. Elliott Coues to J. A. Allen, 7 February 1897; Elliott Coues to D. G. Elliott, 12 February 1897; Elliott Coues to C. Hart Merriam, 17 February 1897; Elliott Coues to William Dutcher, 8 March 1897, all in “Shufeldt Matter.”

130. J. A. Allen to Elliott Coues, 11 February 1897; D. G. Elliot to Elliott Coues, 15 February 1897; Frank Chapman to Elliott Coues, 15 February 1897; Ruthven Deane to Elliott Coues, 15 February 1897; William Dutcher to Elliott Coues, 12 March 1897, all in “Shufeldt Matter.” Deane, Elliott, and Dutcher favored pressuring Shufeldt to resign, which he refused to do.

131. D. G. Elliot to Elliott Coues, 15 February 1897, in “Shufeldt Matter.”

132. C. Hart Merriam to Elliott Coues, 5 March 1897; H. Randall Webb, Esquire, to Elliott Coues, 11 and 17 March 1897, in “Shufeldt Matter.” On the discussions between Coues and Merriam regarding the episode, see Elliott Coues to C. Hart Merriam, 8 and 14 March, 4 May, 21, 22, and 29 June, 1 and 5 November, 1897, C. Hart Merriam Papers, Bancroft. I have been unable to locate a copy of the formal printed charges in the AOU Archives.

133. Elliott Coues to William Brewster, 30 July 1897, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

134. Ibid.

135. Robert Ridgway relayed the countercharges to AOU Secretary Sage in early August with the recommendation that the union drop the matter. See Robert Ridgway to John H. Sage, 6, 14, and 18 August, 1897; and Robert Ridgway to William Dutcher, 16 September 1897, Division of Birds, National Museum of Natural History, Records, RU 105, Box 10, Letterbook vol. 1887-1900, SIA.

136. Shufeldt’s fourteen-page document, “Charges and Specifications Preferred against Dr. Elliott Coues, of Washington, D.C.,” survives in the Alexander Wetmore Papers, RU 7006, Box 61, SIA. I have been unable to locate Shufeldt’s specific charges against Merriam, which had originally accompanied this document. Shufeldt also threatened to file charges against Merriam at the Department of Agriculture, but I do not know if he followed through on this threat. John Sage to J. A. Allen, 3 August 1897, AOU Records, RU 7440, Box 1, Folder 10, SIA.

137. Elliott Coues to William Brewster, 26 August 1897, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives. See also Elliott Coues to William Brewster, 2 September 1897 and 31 October 1897, from the same collection.

138. J. A. Allen to William Brewster, 20 October 1897, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives. See also Allen’s letters of 1 and 7 December 1897 in the same collection.

139. Elliott Coues to William Brewster, 14 November 1897, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives. Coues argued that the council was evenly split (five to five) on whether or not to recommend expulsion. Allen, on the other hand, said that only three council members favored expulsion and eight were against it. Moreover, Allen claimed that of the eighteen active members present at the meeting, “two thirds were against expulsion.” J. A. Allen to William Brewster, 1 December 1897, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

140. AOU Council Minutes, 10 November 1897, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 3, vol. 2, pp. 129-131, SIA.

141. According to Toby A. Appel, the inclusive membership policy of the AOU was more the exception than the rule among the disciplinary societies created in the biological sciences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was similar, however, to other national societies devoted to natural history. See Appel, “The Mapping of Biology” and “Organizing Biology.”

142. Eds. [of Auk], [Reply to letter of J. C. Knox,] Auk 20 (1903): 234-235.

143. See, for example, L. S. Foster to the Members of the A.O.U., 1 July 1886, circular letter, copy in Division of Birds, National Museum of Natural History, Records, RU 105, Box 17, Folder 6, SIA. See also notice in Auk 5 (1888): 222. Although several active members followed Foster’s advice or simply donated the funds to meet the annual budget shortfalls during this period, AOU leaders were anxious to make the Auk financially self-sufficient. See, for example, the copy of printed circular dated 16 November 1886 requesting donations to place the “Union upon a substantial financial footing,” in AOU Records, RU 7440, SIA.

144. William Dutcher, circular letter, 5 October 1898, copy in AOU Records, RU 7440, SIA.

145. During this same period (1900-1930), the total population of the United States increased approximately 50 percent, from 76 million to 123 million.

146. Mayr, “Epilogue: Materials for a History of American Ornithology,” 380. The following organizations should be added to Mayr’s list: Maine Ornithological Society (1893); Iowa Ornithological Association (1894); Michigan Ornithological Club (1894); Colorado Ornithological Association (1900); Nebraska Ornithologists’ Union (1894). See I. S. Trostler, “President’s Address—History of Ornithology in Nebraska, and of State Ornithological Societies in General,” Proceedings of the Nebraska Ornithologists’ Union 2 (1901): 13-18.

147. Information on the creation of the society comes from the Transactions of the Linnaean Society of New York 1 (1882); and Eugene Eisenmann, “Seventy-Five Years of the Linnaean Society of New York,” Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New York, nos. 63-65 (1951-1953): 1-9. On the founding and the subsequent development of the DVOC, see Witmer Stone, “The Delaware Valley Ornithological Club,” Auk 7 (1890): 298-299; and Samuel N. Rhoads, “Bird Clubs in America: II. The Delaware Valley Club,” Bird-Lore 4 (1902): 57-61.

148. On the history of the Wilson Ornithological Society, see chapter 7, below. Much less has been written about the history of Cooper Club. See H. S. Swarth, A Systematic Study of the Cooper Ornithological Club (San Francisco: n.p., 1929); Harold C. Bryant, “The Cooper Club and Scientific Work,” Condor 16 (1914): 101-107; and Henry B. Keading, “Retrospective,” Condor 10 (1908): 215-218. Much of the early correspondence of the Cooper Ornithological Club is in the Joseph Grinnell Papers, BANC MSS C-B 995, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California.

149. See for example, Lynds Jones to Frank M. Chapman, 16 June 1915, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH, in which Jones stated that most of the members of the Wilson Ornithological Club viewed the AOU as a “strictly eastern organization.” Of the AOU’s first forty annual meetings, thirty-eight were held in four eastern cities: New York, (thirteen), Washington (eleven), Cambridge (eight), and Philadelphia (six). From the appendix to Frank Chapman and T. S. Palmer, eds., Fifty Years’ Progress of American Ornithology, 1883-1933 (Lancaster, Pa.: American Ornithologists’ Union, 1933), 241-242.

150. See chapters 5 and 6.

151. “Brief Notes,” Ornithologist and Oologist 16 (1891): 30.

152. A. B. Farnham, “Association of American Ornithologists,” Ornithologist and Oologist 16 (1891): 76. Notice of the meeting also appeared in the Oologist 8 (1891): 103. See also J. H. Langille, “The New Era of Ornithology,” Oologist 8 (1891): 136-137.

153. P. B. Peabody, “Correspondence,” Ornithologist and Oologist 16 (1891): 175.

154. Frank S. Daggett, “Concerning the Active Membership of the A.O.U.,” Condor 2 (1900): 68. Although Daggett was correct in his assertion that the AOU was primarily an eastern society, there were three California members at the time he penned his complaint. See the membership list in Auk 17 (1900): x-xi.

155. The bird protection activities of the AOU and the tensions they engendered are discussed in much greater detail in chapters 5 and 6, below.

156. Frank Chapman, “The A.O.U. and Audubon Societies,” Bird-Lore 2 (1900): 161-162.

157. The proposed changes were announced in “Notes and News,” Auk 18 (1901): 128.

158. “Editorial Notes,” Condor 3 (1901): 24.

159. Harriet Kofalk, No Woman Tenderfoot: Florence Merriam Bailey, Pioneer Naturalist (College Station: Texas A & M Press, 1989), 29.

160. The term comes from the standard authority on American women in science in the pre-World War II era, Rossiter, Women Scientists in America, 78.

161. The figures on female membership in the AOU are from Sterling and Ainley, “Centennial History,” chap. 16, p. 20.

162. Biographical information on Childs may be found in T. S. Palmer, “John Lewis Childs,” Auk 38 (1921): 494-495; H. H. Bailey, “John Lewis Childs—As I Knew Him,” Oologist 38 (1921): 102-104; “John Lewis Childs,” ibid., 104-106; R. M. B[arnes], “John Lewis Childs,” ibid., 44-45. The limit on the number of elective members had been gradually increased over the years from the original 75 to 100 (1906) to 125 (1925).

163. John Lewis Childs, “Membership Condition in the A.O.U.,” Auk 25 (1908): 494.

164. Ibid.

165. H. H. Bailey, “Proposed Revision of the By-Laws of the American Ornithologists’ Union,” Auk 22 (1915): 134-136. Besides the Auk, Bailey sent identical letters to the editors of the Condor, the Bulletin of the Wilson Ornithological Club, and the Oologist. Only the Auk and the Oologist 32 (1915): 169-171, published the letter. See his biographical sketch in Who Was Who in America, with World Notables 6 (1974-1976): 17 (Chicago: Marquis Who’s Who, 1976).

166. Bailey, “Proposed Revision,” 135.

167. Witmer Stone, [Reply to H. H. Bailey], Auk 22 (1915): 138.

168. Ibid. The same argument appeared in Frank M. Chapman to Lynds Jones, 18 December 1914, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

169. In May 1903 the AOU held a special meeting in San Francisco in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Cooper Ornithological Club. Later that year the organization also held its regular annual meeting in Philadelphia.

170. John Hall Sage, “Thirty-Third Stated Meeting of the American Ornithologists’ Union,” Auk 32 (1915): 491.

171. Harold H. Bailey, “Membership in the A.O.U.,”Auk 33 (1916): 227.

172. Witmer Stone to Alexander Wetmore, 18 August 1935, Alexander Wetmore Papers, RU 7006, Box 66, SIA.

173. T. S. Palmer, “The Fifty-Fourth Stated Meeting of the American Ornithologists’ Union,” Auk 54 (1937): 117.

CHAPTER FOUR

1. The terms “systematics” and “taxonomy” are used interchangeably in this chapter. Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American ornithologists were primarily interested in microtaxonomy, the study of natural relationships of organisms at the level of species and below. The study of geographical distribution was central to this research. Very few Americans pursued research in macrotaxonomy, the study of the natural relationships of organisms at the higher taxonomic levels. On the distinction between micro- and macrotaxonomy, see Ernst Mayr and Peter D. Ashlock, Principles of Systematic Zoology, 2d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991); and Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982).

2. Ridgway began collecting notes for his magnum opus in the 1880s and completed eight volumes before his death in 1929.

3. Robert Ridgway, The Birds of North and Middle America, Bulletin no. 50, United States National Museum (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1901), 1:1-2.

4. For a contemporary critique of Ridgway’s characterization, see Joseph Grinnell, Review of Birds of North and Middle America by Robert Ridgway, Condor 4 (1902): 22-23.

5. A synonymy is a “chronological list of the scientific names which have been applied correctly or incorrectly to a given taxonomic unit, including dates of publication and the authors applying the names.” Mayr and Ashlock, Principles, 431.

6. Frank Chapman, Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America (New York: D. Appleton, 1895), 3.

7. Farber, Emergence of Ornithology, 100.

8. Ibid., 115.

9. The development of biological nomenclature is only beginning to gain the serious historical scrutiny it deserves. The best treatment of the subject is Antonella La Vergata, “Au nom de l’espèce: Classification et nomenclature au XIXe siècle,” in Histoire du concept d’espèce dans les sciences de la vie (Paris: Fondation Singer-Polignac, 1987), 191-225. Earlier discussions also remain useful: David Heppell, “The Evolution of the Code of Zoological Nomenclature,” in History in the Service of Systematics, ed. Alwyne Wheeler and James H. Price (London: Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, 1981), 135-141; and E. G. Linsley and R. L. Usinger, “Linnaeus and the Development of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature,” Systematic Zoology 8 (1958): 39-47. For accounts from some of the participants mentioned in this chapter, see Leonhard J. Stejneger, “A Chapter in the History of Zoological Nomenclature,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 8 (1924): 1-21; and the introduction of The Code of Nomenclature and Check-List of North American Birds Adopted by the American Ornithologists’ Union (New York: American Ornithologists’ Union, 1886) (hereafter cited as AOU Code and Checklist).

Nomenclatural issues often loomed large in the early years of disciplinary societies in biology. See, for example, Richard A. Overfield, Science with Practice: Charles E. Bessey and the Maturing of American Botany (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1993), 100-120; and Sorensen, Brethren of the Net, 242-252.

10. See, for example, the extensive discussion in Jürgen Haffer, “The History of Species Concepts and Species Limits in Ornithology,” Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club, Centenary Supplement 112A (1992): 107-158.

11. Elliott Coues, “On the Application of Trinomial Nomenclature to Zoology,” Zoologist, 3d series, 8 (1884): 244.

12. Janet Browne’s excellent study, The Secular Ark: Studies in the History of Biogeography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), examines pre-Darwinian work in geographical distribution. See also Ronald C. Tobey, Saving the Prairies: The Life Cycle of the Founding School of American Plant Ecology, 1895-1955 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); G. Nelson, “From Candolle to Croizat: Comments on the History of Biogeography,” Journal of the History of Biology 11 (1978): 269-305; Philip F. Rehbock, The Philosophical Naturalists: Themes in Early Nineteenth-Century British Biology (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983); Robert P. McIntosh, The Background of Ecology: Concept and Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 107-110; François Vuilleumier and Allison V. Andors, “Origins and Development of North American Avian Biogeography,” in Contributions to the History of North American Ornithology, ed. William E. Davis, Jr., and Jerome A. Jackson (Cambridge, Mass.: Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1995), 387-428; Jane R. Camerini, “Evolution, Biogeography, and Maps: An Early History of Wallace’s Line,” Isis 84 (1993): 700-727.

13. Agassiz’s notion of biological provinces is discussed in a series of articles: “Notice sur la géographie des animaux,” Revue Suisse et chronique littéraire 8 (1845): 441-452, 538-585; “Sur la distribution géographique des animaux et de l’homme,” Bulletin de la Société Neuchâteloise des sciences naturelles 1 (1845): 162-166; “Observations sur las distribution géographique des être organisés,” Bulletin de la Société Neuchâteloise des sciences naturelles 1 (1846): 357-361, “Observations sur . . . las distribution géographique des différents types actuels d’animaux,” Bulletin de la Société Neuchâteloise des sciences naturelles, 1 (1846): 366-369; and “Geographical Distribution of Animals,” The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 49 (1850): 1-23; and “Sketch of the Natural Provinces of the Animal World and Their Relation to the Different Types of Mankind,” in Types of Mankind, J. C. Nott and George R. Gliddon (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, Grambo, 1854), lviii.

14. Agassiz’s early and somewhat crude geographical groupings of the animals that inhabited the globe were subsequently revised by the British naturalists Philip L. Sclater and Alfred R. Wallace and the Americans Spencer F. Baird and Joseph LeConte. See, for example, Philip L. Sclater, “On the General Geographical Distribution of the Members of the Class Aves,” Journal of the Linnaean Society (Zoology) 2 (1858): 130-145; and Spencer F. Baird, “The Distribution and Migrations of North American Birds,” American Journal of Science, n.s. 41 (1866): 73-91.

15. Louis Agassiz, Essay on Classification, ed. Edward Lurie (1857; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 138-191.

16. Ibid., 177-178.

17. Ibid., 38.

18. Louis Agassiz, “Directions for Collecting Objects of Natural History” [Cambridge, Mass., 1863]. Copy in MCZ Archives.

19. [Spencer F. Baird,] “Directions for Collecting, Preserving, and Transporting Specimens of Natural History. Prepared for the Use of the Smithsonian Institution,” 3d ed. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1859), 5. Reproduced in Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 2 (1862): article 7.

20. See, for example, George Boardman’s statement about aiming to get a “pair of each species” for his collection in William Dutcher, “The Labrador Duck:—A Revised List of Extant Specimens in North America, with Some Historical Data,” Auk 8 (1891): 201-216, on 216.

21. See Witmer Stone, “Problems in Modernizing an Old Museum,” Proceedings of the American Association of Museums 3 (1909): 122-127.

22. Spencer F. Baird, John Cassin, and G. N. Lawrence, Reports of the Explorations and Surveys to Ascertain the Most Practical and Economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean . . . 1853-1856 . . . Volume IX . . . Birds (Washington, D.C.: Beverly Tucker, 1858) (hereafter cited as Pacific Railroad Survey Report).

23. William H. Goetzmann has written extensively on these and other western surveys in Army Exploration and the American West and Exploration and Empire. On the scientific results of these expeditions, see John A. Moore, “Zoology of the Pacific Railroad Surveys,” American Zoologist 26 (1986): 331-341.

24. For a general survey of the development of North American ornithology in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see Elsa G. Allen, The History of American Ornithology before Audubon, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. 41, no. 3 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1951). The best biographical treatments of Bonaparte are Farber, Emergence of Ornithology, 116-122; and Stresemann, Ornithology, 153-169. Audubon has been the subject of several biographies, but Francis Herrick’s study, Audubon the Naturalist, is still one of the most useful. See also Ford, John James Audubon.

25. See, for example, the praise in J. A. Allen, “Progress of Ornithology in the United States during the Last Century,” American Naturalist 10 (1876): 541; Coues, Key to North American Birds, 5th ed., xxv; and Leonhard Stejneger, “On the Use of Trinomials in American Ornithology,” Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum 7 (1884): 70-89. The publication of tables providing detailed measurements of individual specimens was not entirely without precedent. See, for example, J. H. Blasius, “Beilage zum Protokoll der Zehnten Versammlung der deutschen Ornithologen-Gesellschaft,” Naumannia 6 (1856): 433-474. I thank Jürgen Haffer for this reference.

26. Mary P. Winsor, “Louis Agassiz and the Species Question,” Studies in the History of Biology 3 (1979): 98-102.

27. Louis Agassiz, Contributions to the Natural History of the United States of America (Boston: Little Brown, 1857), 1:445, quoted in Winsor, “Louis Agassiz,” 100. One example of Agassiz’s later denial of the existence of constant variation within a species occurs during a justification of the practice of serial collecting: Louis Agassiz, Annual Report to the Trustees of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Together with the Report of the Director, 1863 (Boston: Wright and Potter, 1864), 11.

28. Louis Agassiz, “Circular in Reference to Obtaining Data Concerning the Distribution of North American Birds in the Breeding Season,” 4 June 1868. A copy of this circular is in the George A. Boardman Papers, RU 7071, SIA.

29. Agassiz’s well-known opposition to the theory of evolution by natural selection is discussed in Edward J. Pfeifer, “United States,” in The Comparative Reception of Darwinism, ed. Thomas F. Glick (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974), 168-206; Lurie, Louis Agassiz, 252-302; and Winsor, Reading the Shape of Nature, 104-113.

30. By 1863 Agassiz was arguing that his examination of the series collections at the MCZ had demonstrated that varieties did not exist in nature. See Louis Agassiz, Annual Report to the Trustees of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Together with the Report of the Director, 1863 (Boston: Wright and Potter, 1864), 11.

31. See, for example, Baird, Cassin, and Lawrence, Pacific Railroad Survey Report, 526-527.

32. S. F. Baird, “Notes on a Collection of Birds Made by Mr. John Xantus, at Cape St. Lucas, Lower California,” Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences 11 (1859): 300. Baird’s correlation between altitude and latitude had deep roots in the biogeographical tradition, beginning with Linnaeus’s notion (borrowed from Tournefort) that the Paradise described in the Bible was a mountain of various ecological conditions, arranged as belts from tropical through temperate to polar zones. The close identification between altitude and latitude was later more fully elaborated by Humboldt. See Browne, Secular Ark, 16-23, 44-46.

33. Spencer F. Baird, “The Distribution and Migrations of North American Birds,” American Journal of Science, 2d series, 41 (1866): 78-90, 184-192. He discusses the laws of geographic variation on pp. 189-192.

34. Constantin Lambert Gloger, Das Abändern der Vögel durch Einfluss des Klima's (Breslau: A. Schulz, 1833). When J. A. Allen repeated many of Baird’s geographic variation laws in his “On the Mammals and Winter Birds of East Florida, with an Examination of Certain Assumed Specific Characters in Birds, and a Sketch of the Bird Faunae of Eastern North America,” Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 2, no. 3 (1871): 161-450, discussed below, he failed to cite Gloger in the lengthy bibliography appended to his work. In addition, both Allen and Baird were apparently unaware that they had also been anticipated by Carl Bergmann, Über die Verhältnisse der Wärmeökonomie der Thiere zu ihrer Grösse (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1847). On Bergmann, see William Coleman, “Bergmann’s Rule: Animal Heat as a Biological Phenomena,” Studies in History of Biology 3 (1979): 67-88. According to Haffer, “History of the Species Concept,” 123, Peter Simon Pallas, Frederik Faber, and others also noted the phenomenon of geographical variation in the early nineteenth century.

35. Allen, “Mammals and Winter Birds,” 228.

36. Although the point was only implicit in “Mammals and Winter Birds,” Allen was later to argue explicitly that the characteristics exhibited by different geographical forms of a species were directly induced by environmental conditions. J. A. Allen, “The Influence of Physical Conditions in the Genesis of Species,” Radical Review 1 (1877): 108-140. Allen’s views on the influence of the environment on the formation of species have been lumped together with the ideas of many other Americans—the so-called Neo-Lamarckians—who accepted evolution but rejected the mechanism of natural selection in causing the transmutation of species. See Pfeifer, “United States,” 168-206. See also Peter Bowler, The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolutionary Theories in the Decades around 1900 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).

Allen’s arguments for the direct influence of the environment on organisms (unmediated by natural selection) seem to have found a sympathetic audience among naturalists in this country. Even Darwin was impressed. See Charles Darwin to E. S. Morse, 23 April 1877, reproduced in Francis Darwin, ed. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (New York: Basic Books, 1959), 2:409.

37. Allen, “Mammals and Winter Birds,” 246. In his entry on “Geographical Distribution” for the Dictionary of Birds (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1893-1896), 344, Alfred Newton noted the importance of serial collecting practices in North America to the discovery of laws of geographical distribution and the general absence of such collections in Europe.

38. Stejneger, “Use of Trinomials,” 75.

39. Stejneger provided several examples of the use of trinomialism before the adoption of the AOU Code in 1886. Ibid., 70-81. Haffer’s recent “History of Species Concepts” is even more detailed. According to Haffer, the Gloger-Middendorff school deserves credit for developing the concept of the subspecies and the establishment of modern trinomialism but gained few contemporary followers. Even British ornithologists, who were generally unsympathetic to the later nomenclatural innovations associated with geographical variation, were unstinting in their praise of Alien’s 1871 paper, especially the tables of measurements. See, for example, R. B. Sharpe’s review in Zoological Record for 1871, ed. Alfred Newton (London: John Van Voorst, 1873), 24-25.

40. Elliott Coues, “Progress of American Ornithology,” American Naturalist 5 (1871): 371-372.

41. Ibid., 373; J. A. Allen, “Recent Literature,” Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 4 (1879): 168.

42. For a contemporary account of American contributions to evolutionary thought, see E. S. Morse, “Address,” Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 25 (1876): 137-176.

43. Coues, Key to North American Birds.

44. Soon Coues would be among those who would call for the elimination of this abbreviation.

45. Coues also issued revised checklists of North American birds based on the catalogues in his Key. Coues, A Check List of North American Birds, and The Coues Check List of North American Birds, 2d ed. (Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1882).

46. Allen, “Notes of an Ornithological Reconnaissance of Portions of Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah,” Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 3 (July 1872): 113-183. On earlier uses of trinomial nomenclature, see Stegneger, “Use of Trinomials,” and Haffer, “History of Species Concepts.”

47. Allen, “Progress of Ornithology,” 549.

48. Ibid., 549-550.

49. Ibid., 550.

50. Ridgway, “On the Use of Trinomials in Zoological Nomenclature,” Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 4 (1879): 132. A series of statements in support of trinomialism and nomenclatural reform followed in the Bulletin: J. A. Allen, “Recent Literature,” ibid., 168; Elliott Coues, ibid., 171; Henry Henshaw, “The Use of Trinomials,” ibid., 232-233.

51. Opposition to the American use of trinomial nomenclature was particularly strong in Britain. See, for example, R. Bowlder Sharpe, “The AOU Code and Checklist of American Birds,” Nature 34 (1886): 168-170; “Zoological Nomenclature,” Nature 30 (1884): 256-259, 277-279; J. A. Allen, “Zoological Nomenclature,” Auk 1 (1884): 338-353; and Alfred Newton, Dictionary of Birds, 343.

52. Robert Ridgway, “A Catalogue of the Birds of North America,” Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum 3 (1880): 163-246.

53. The ongoing feud between the two is documented in Cutright and Brodhead, Elliott Coues, 151-155, 157, 289, 316, and passim.

54. Robert Ridgway, Nomenclature of North American Birds, Chiefly Contained in the United States National Museum, United States National Museum, Bulletin no. 21 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1881).

55. Charles B. Cory to J. A. Allen, 14 June 1881, Charles B. Cory Folder, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

56. One collector, Montague Chamberlain, commented in 1883 that he, like many other naturalists, dealers, and collectors, preferred the “Smithsonian system” to arrange his specimens. Montague Chamberlain to William Brewster, 15 August 1883, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives. See also the favorable notice of Ridgway’s list in “Nomenclature of North American Birds,” Ornithologist and Oologist 6 (1881): 28.

57. Coues, The Coues Check List of North American Birds. A rough idea of the differences in the two lists can be gained by comparing the number of bird forms contained in each. Ridgway’s 1880 “Catalogue” contained 924 forms (species and subspecies), while Coues’s 1882 Check List contained 888.

58. C. Hart Merriam to Joel A. Allen, 7 August 1881, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

59. “The Coues Checklist,” Ornithologist and Oologist 6 (1882): 93. Starting from Baird’s 1859 list, American checklists invariably contained separate numbers attached to each entry. Collectors used these numbers as a shorthand for the species name to ease labeling and exchanging specimens.

60. Coues, “Compliments of the Season.”

61. J. A. Allen, Elliott Coues, and William Brewster to --------- (printed invitation), 1 August 1883, AOU Records, RU 7150, SIA. A published version of the invitation later appeared in the Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 8 (1883): 221.

62. Robert Ridgway to Elliott Coues, 11 August 1883, Division of Birds, National Museum of Natural History, Records, RU 105, Box 15, Folder 3, SIA.

63. Robert Ridgway to J. A. Allen, 18 August 1883, copies in Division of Birds, National Museum of Natural History, Records, RU 105, Box 12, Folder 2, SIA; and Joel Asaph Allen Papers, 67/125z, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

64. AOU Meeting Minutes, 27 September 1883, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 5, vol. 1, SIA.

65. The minutes of the committee still survive as “Proceedings of the Committee on Classification and Nomenclature, 1883-1885,” AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 38, SIA. The story of the committee and its meetings is told in great detail in Sterling and Ainley, “Centennial History.”

66. AOU Council Minutes, 21 April 1885, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 3, vol. 1, SIA.

67. AOU Code and Checklist, 11.

68. Ibid., 30.

69. Ibid., 31.

70. Ibid.

71. Ibid., 31-32.

72. David S. Jordan, “The A.O.U. Code and Check-List of North American Birds,” Auk 3 (1886): 393-397. The correspondence between Allen and Jordan leading up to the review is in the Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH. On Jordan’s role in the development of evolutionary theory, see David C. Magnus, “In Defense of Natural History: David Starr Jordan and the Role of Isolation in Evolution,” Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1993.

73. Jordan, “AOU Code,” 397.

74. Even before the official publication of the AOU Code and Checklist in 1886, Allen began editing Auk papers to conform to it. See William Brewster to J. A. Allen, 15 December 1885, AOU Records, RU 7440, Box 1, Folder 8, SIA.

75. “Notes and News,” Auk 4 (1889): 82.

76. A manuscript copy of this committee’s report, dated 18 November 1890, is in the AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 39, SIA.

77. S. Prentiss Baldwin, Harry C. Oberholser, and Leonard G. Worley, The Measurement of Birds, Scientific Publications of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, no. 2 (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Natural History, 1931). This work attempted to standardize methods for measuring 176 different external parameters.

78. C. Hart Merriam, “A Plea for the Metric System in Ornithology,” Auk 1 (1884): 203-205.

79. AOU Council Minutes, 12 November 1888, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 3, vol. 1, p. 143, SIA.

80. Robert Ridgway, A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists and Compendium of Useful Knowledge for Ornithologists (Boston: Little, Brown, 1886).

81. Robert Ridgway, Color Standards and Color Nomenclature (Washington, D.C.: The author, 1912).

82. See, for example, William T. Hornaday’s “A Demand for English,” Auk 12 (1895): 90-92, in which he decried the tendency to give new species only Latin names. Hornaday reminded scientists that they depended on the “money and the friendly interest of the unscientific public” to support their studies and lamented the fact that the gap between the two was “growing wider and wider, day by day.” Hornaday also complained about the growing use of the metric system. For a reply, see F. E. L. Beal, “A Demand for English Names,” Auk 12 (1895): 192-194, in which the author defended the use of scientific names and the public’s ability to learn and use them. Others complained about the particular common names chosen for the AOU Checklist. See, for example, Ernest E. T. Seton, “The Popular Names of Birds,” Auk 2 (1885): 316-317, and his plea that appeared almost thirty-five years later, “On the Popular Names of Birds,” Auk 36 (1919): 229-233, to allow the people, not scientists, to decide on common names.

83. See chapter 3.

84. Montague Chamberlain, “Plain English,” Ornithologist and Oologist 8 (1883): 53-54, on 53.

85. Montague Chamberlain, “A Reply to Dr. Coues,” Ornithologist and Oologist 8 (1883): 57-59. Chamberlain, who for reasons discussed in the previous chapter was soon elected to the AOU Council, later diminished, but did not entirely recant, his criticism of the use of scientific nomenclature. See his “More ‘Plain English,’” Ornithologist and Oologist 10 (1885): 9. As Haffer, “History of the Species Concept,” has made clear, not all European naturalists rejected trinomialism.

86. Besides the AOU (1886), Coues (1882), and Ridgway (1881) lists, the author is probably referring to the Baird (1859) and the earlier Coues (1873) checklists.

87. “Editorial,” Ornithologist and Oologist 11 (1886): 72.

88. “Brief Notes,” Ornithologist and Oologist 13 (1888): 144; and “Editorial,” Ornithologist and Oologist 14 (1889): 60-62, on 62.

89. XX, “A New Sub-Species,” Ornithologist and Oologist 14 (1889): 80.

90. “ ‘H’ A.O.U.” refers to honorary membership in the AOU.

91. Another, “The Mystery Solved,” Ornithologist and Oologist 14 (1889): 144.

92. This refers to the common practice of indicating membership in a learned society by appending an abbreviation of the society’s name to an individual’s name.

93. The L. b. portion of the name is an abbreviation of the binomial designation of the Northern shrike, Lanius borealis.

94. “Jottings,” Young Oologist 1 (1884): 139.

95. Harry G. Parker, “A Review of the Check Lists of North American Birds, with Special Reference to the New A.O.U. List,” Oologist 3 (1886): 37-39. See also the explanation of scientific nomenclature in the article by S, “Trinomial Nomenclature,” Oologist 10 (1893): 155-156.

96. “The Editor [R. M. Barnes],” “Widening,” Oologist 39 (1922): 136.

97. R. M. B[arnes], “Scientific Snobbery,” Oologist 40 (1923): 81. See also [R. M. Barnes,] “Technical Names,” Oologist 35 (1918): 165-166, in which the editor attacks the tendency to overuse scientific nomenclature in the Auk when the publication is almost exclusively supported by associate members, most of whom “are compelled to make a living in the business world and have no time to delve into the intricacies and mysteries of super-scientific ornithology and latinized bird names.” Similar critiques appeared regularly in Barnes’s publication. See, for example, the following authored by Barnes in Oologist: “Business is Dull,” 34 (1917): 217; “More Chaos,” 35 (1918): 82; “The Result of Being Too Scientifically Scientific,” 40 (1923): 167-168; “More About Names,” 41 (1924): 91; “Ad Nauseate,” 47 (1930): 139-140; “Some Books,” 48 (1931): 135-137; “The 1931 A.O.U. Checklist,” 28 (1931): 171; “More Millimeter Races,” 50 (1933): 27-28. See also P. B. Peabody, “Amenities of Nomenclature,” 36 (1919): 25-27, and “Millimeter Races,” 39 (1922): 52; and Fred Μ. Dille, “The Fourth Edition: The New A.O.U. Checklist,” 49 (1932): 2-8.

98. See, for example, the series of letters from Montague Chamberlain to J. A. Allen, beginning in November 1883, Joel Asaph Allen Papers, 67/ 125z, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, and the series of letters between Chamberlain and C. Hart Merriam, Clinton Hart Merriam Papers, BANC MSS C-B 995, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

99. Montague Chamberlain, “Are Trinomials Necessary?” Auk 1 (1884): 101-102.

100. Chamberlain mentioned in particular the opposition of Mr. Harting, the editor of the Zoologist, and the complete lack of trinomials in the catalog of British birds published by the British Ornithologists’ Union. As I have already suggested, Chamberlain’s claim about the opposition to trinomialism abroad ignores the proponents of trinomialism in the Gloger-Middendorff school (described by Haffer, “History of the Species Concept”). It was more accurate in describing the British response to the idea until the end of the nineteenth century.

101. J. A. A[llen], [Reply to Chamberlain,] Auk 1 (1884): 102-104.

102. Montague Chamberlain, “Are Trinomials Necessary?” Auk 1 (1884): 198-200, on 199.

103. J. A. A[llen], [Reply to Chamberlain II,] Auk 1 (1884): 200-202.

104. Walter B. Hull to J. A. Allen, 8 November 1897, AOU Records, RU 7440, SIA.

105. There were some notable exceptions. For example, throughout his five-volume handlist of the genera and species of birds, the British ornithologist R. Bowlder Sharpe refused to provide formal designation to subspecies, although he believed they existed in nature. See his A Hand-List of the Genera and Species of Birds (London: British Museum [Natural History], 1909), 5:vi.

106. These included the Dall Code, authorized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1877), the Chaper Code, published by the Société Zoologique de France (1881), the Douvillé Code, passed at the International Geological Congress (1893), the code passed by the Deutsche Zoologische Geselleschaft (1893), and the Blanchard Code, adopted by the First International Zoological Congress (1889, published 1890). Linsley and Usinger, “Development of the International Code,” 41-42; Heppell, “Code of Zoological Nomenclature,” 136-137.

107. J. A. Allen (Autobiographical Notes, 40) claimed that the “A.O.U. Code later became the basis of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, framed on essentially the same lines and departing from it in no essential respect, except in point of brevity.” The claim is repeated in Stejneger, “Chapter,” 11-12; and Linsley and Usinger, “International Code,” 44.

108. Heppell, “Evolution of the Code,” 137; Linsley and Usinger, “International Code,” 42.

109. American Ornithologists’ Union, Check-List, 2d and rev. ed. (New York: AOU, 1895); 3d ed. (New York: AOU, 1910); 4th ed. (New York: AOU, 1931). Supplements were published in 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894 (2), 1897, 1899, 1901, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1908, 1909, 1912, 1920, and 1923.

110. In an attempt to achieve nomenclatural stability, naturalists suggested several alternatives to the law of priority. One proposal that gained a wide following was the establishment of a list of nomina conservanda, which would remain in effect even if earlier names for a given species were discovered. Although the International Code of Nomenclature was largely based on the law of priority, it also allowed deviations from that law in certain cases. See Usinger and Linsley, “International Code,” 43-44; and Heppell, “Evolution,” 137-138.

111. Christopher Leahy, The Birdwatcher's Companion: An Encyclopedic Handbook of North American Birdlife (London: Robert Hale, 1982), 617.

112. AOU, Check-List, 1st ed. (1886), 344; 2d ed. (1895), 320; 3d ed. (1910), 363; 4th ed. (1931), 255.

113. [Frank M. Chapman,] [Editorial,] Bird-Lore 27 (1925): 276; and J. D. Dwight, “The Auk,” Bird-Lore 10 (1908): 218.

114. William Leon Dawson, “A Plea for Ten Years of Stability in Nomenclature: An Open Letter to the A.O.U. Committee,” enclosed with his letter to J. A. Allen, 5 October 1905, AOU Records, RU 7440, SIA.

115. William Brewster, “Something More about Black Ducks,” Auk 26 (1909): 179. Similar sentiments are expressed in a letter from Louis B. Bishop to Alexander Wetmore, 30 November 1926, Alexander Wetmore Papers, RU 7006, Box 6, SIA. For an opposing view, see Witmer Stone’s review of W. L. McAtee’s “Local Names of Migratory Game Birds,” Auk 41 (1924): 187.

116. I have not discovered the origin of the terms “splitting” and “lumping” as applied to taxonomic practice, but they were in wide enough usage by the second half of the nineteenth century not to require special explanation. See, for example, J. A. Allen, “To What Extent Is It Profitable to Recognize Geographical Forms among North American Birds?,” Auk 7 (1890): 1-9.

117. Joseph Grinnell, “Some Inferences from the New Check-list,” Auk 49 (1932): 9-13, on 10.

118. A. K. Fisher attributes the term “north light subspecies” to Elliott Coues in his brief biographical sketch of William Brewster, A. K. Fisher Papers, Box 40, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. See also Jonathan D. Dwight, Jr., Review of The Auk, Bird-Lore 3 (1901): 112.

119. Quoted in A. K. Fisher’s short, unpublished biographical sketch of Brewster found in the A. K. Fisher Papers, Box 40, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

120. Auk 7 (1890): 1-9.

121. Ibid., 2.

122. Robert Ridgway, “A Plea for Caution in Use of Trinomials,” Auk 40 (1923): 375-376.

123. Allen, “To What Extent,” 5.

124. Ibid., 8-9.

125. J. A. Allen, “The A.O.U. Check-List—Its History and Its Future,” Auk 20 (1903): 1-9, on 9.

126. Theodore Gill, “A Great Work,” Osprey 3 (1899): 88-94, on 92.

127. Leverett M. Loomis, “Recognition of Geographic Variation in Nomenclature,” Auk 20 (1903): 294-299.

128. Harry S. Swarth, “The Tyranny of the Trinomial,” Condor 33 (1931): 160-162; Jonathan Dwight, Jr., “The Exaltation of the Subspecies,” Auk 21 (1904): 64-66; and J. D. Figgins, “The Fallacy of the Tendency towards Ultraminute Distinctions,” Auk 21 (1904): 62-69.

129. Jonathan Dwight, Jr., “A Method of Obtaining a Temporary Stability of Names,” Auk 21 (1904): 406; William L. Dawson, “A Plea for Ten Years of Stability in Nomenclature,” enclosed with William L. Dawson to J. A. Allen, 5 October 1905, AOU Records, RU 7440, SIA.

130. Wilfred H. Osgood, “Questions of the Day,” Condor 3 (1901): 50-51. Osgood’s sentiments are echoed in Witmer Stone, [Reply to Bergtold,] Auk 44 (1927): 28-34. See also P. A. Taverner, “Subspecific Designations,” Auk 34 (1917): 370-372, which argues that subspecies can safely be ignored by nontechnically oriented students of birds.

CHAPTER FIVE

1. The account of the decline of the parakeet that follows is from Daniel McKinley, The Carolina Parakeet in Florida, Special Publication no. 2 (Gainesville: Florida Ornithological Society, 1985), 27-30; James Greenway, Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World, 2d ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 1967); and Maikku Saikku, “The Extinction of the Carolina Parakeet,” Environmental History Review 14 (1990): 1-18.

2. Charles E. Bendire, Life Histories of North American Birds, U.S. National Museum, Special Bulletin no. 3 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1895), 4.

3. On the role of aesthetics in natural history, see, for example, Merrill, Romance of Victorian Natural History; and Dance, Shell Collecting.

4. Hornaday, Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting, 2.

5. For a comprehensive account of the various attempts to secure the parakeet in Florida, see McKinley, Carolina Parakeet.

6. Ibid., 27, calls the specimens secured on Chapman’s 1889 expedition “the most widely advertised collection of parakeets ever made.” The publicity surrounding this particular set of parakeets is in part due to the various accounts of the trip provided over the years. Chapman published two contemporary descriptions of his trip in “[Notes on Collecting Trip to Brevard County, Florida, Spring 1889,]” Abstract of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society, for the Year Ending March 7, 1890, 2, and “Notes on the Carolina Parakeet,” ibid, 4-6. Chapman’s letters to J. A. Allen relating to the expedition have also survived: Frank M. Chapman to J. A. Allen, 18 March 1889 and 20 March 1889, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH. Elizabeth S. Austin, ed., Frank M. Chapman in Florida: His Journals and Letters (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1967), reproduces these and other documents from the period. The account that follows is largely from Chapman’s previously lost manuscript journal from the expedition found among his papers at the AMNH (hereafter cited as “Parakeet Journal”).

7. The large number of biographical sketches of Chapman in part reflect his influential role in the scientific and popular ornithology of his day. See Austin, Chapman in Florida; Chapman, Autobiography; William K. Gregory, “Biographical Memoir of Frank Michler Chapman, 1864-1945,” National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs 35 (1949): 111-145; Robert H. Welker, “Frank Michler Chapman,” Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 3 (1941-1945): 61-62; Robert C. Murphy, “Frank M. Chapman, 1864-1945,” Auk 67 (1950): 307-315; Ludlow Griscom, “Frank M. Chapman,” Audubon Magazine 48 (1946): 49-52; and Ernst Mayr, “Frank Michler Chapman,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography 17:152-153.

8. Chapman, Autobiography, 25-26; Frank M. Chapman, “Frederick J. Dixon,” Auk 40 (1933): 153.

9. Chapman, Autobiography, 26-27; T. S. Palmer, “Clarence Bayley Riker,” Auk 67 (1950): 550.

10. Chapman, Autobiography, 32-35.

11. Ibid., 42.

12. C. Hart Merriam to Frank M. Chapman, 5 March 1888, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

13. Chapman, Autobiography, 62.

14. Parakeet Journal, 6-7.

15. Ibid., 13.

16. Ibid., 29-30.

17. Ibid., 31.

18. McKinley (Carolina Parakeet, 4) has located 806 specimens in museums throughout the world. The locations and information on when, where, and by whom they were collected are given for most in Paul Hahn, Where Is That Vanished Bird?: An Index to the Known Specimens of the Extinct North American Species (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, University of Toronto, 1963), 291-339.

On the last known parakeet, who died in the Cincinnati Zoo only four years after the last passenger pigeon, see George Laycock, “The Last Parakeet,” Audubon Magazine 71 (March 1969): 21-25; and Daniel McKinley, “The Last Days of the Carolina Parrakeet: Life in the Zoos,” Avicultural Magazine 83 (1977): 42-49.

19. Peter J. Kuznick, Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists as Political Activists in 1930s America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), is one of the few studies to examine scientists’ attempts to grapple with the issues of social responsibility and political activism in the prewar period.

20. Welker, Birds and Men, 158.

21. Lee Clark Mitchell has gathered many of these early expressions of concern for the destruction of the environment in Witnesses to a Vanishing America: The Nineteenth-Century Response (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).

22. The best accounts of the decline and rescue of the North American buffalo are Larry Barsness, Heads, Hides and Horns: The Compleat Buffalo Book (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University, 1985); and David Dary, The Buffalo Book: The Full Saga of the American Animal (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1974). See also James A. Tober, Who Owns Wildlife: The Political Economy of Conservation in Nineteenth-Century America (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981). A. W. Schorger’s The Passenger Pigeon: Its Natural History and Extinction (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1955) is an exhaustive compilation of virtually everything written on that species up to the time of its publication. See also Enrique H. Bucher, “The Causes of Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon,” in Current Ornithology, ed. Dennis M. Power (New York: Plenum Press, 1992), 9:1-36.

23. Schorger, Passenger Pigeon, 199.

24. Wilson, American Ornithology, 5:106.

25. Schorger, Passenger Pigeon, 222.

26. William C. Herman, “The Last Passenger Pigeon,” Auk 65 (1948): 77-79; and McKinley, “Last Days.”

27. Dary, Buffalo Book, 286-287.

28. Ibid., 84-120. Dan Flores argues that native Americans trading with white settlers had already begun to deplete the bison herds by the 1850s. See his “Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy: The Southern Plains from 1800 to 1850,” Journal of American History 78 (1991): 465-485.

29. The best summary of the evidence for federal promotion of bison extermination is David Smits, “The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo, 1865-1883,” Western Historical Quarterly 25 (1994): 313-338.

30. For example, as early as 1832 the artist George Catlin predicted that the extinction of the species was “near at hand” and proposed the creation of a national park to protect both the buffalo and the American Indians. Roderick Nash, American Environmentalism: Readings in Conservation History, 3d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990), 31-35. For this and other early discussions about the decline of the buffalo, see Dary, Buffalo Book, 121-130.

31. Allen’s collecting exploits are more fully described in his Autobiographical Notes, 20-27.

32. J. A. Allen, The American Bisons, Living and Extinct, Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, vol. 4, no. 10 (Cambridge, Mass.: Welch, Bigelow, 1876), 180, my italics. Similar statements abound in the work (e.g., 55, 70).

33. J. A. Allen, “The North American Bison and Its Extermination,” The Penn Monthly 7 (1876): 216.

34. J. A. Allen, “The Extirpation of the Larger Indigenous Mammals of the United States,” The Penn Monthly 7 (1876): 794.

35. Ibid., 798.

36. J. A. Allen, “The Extinction of the Great Auk at the Funk Islands,” American Naturalist 10 (1876): 48. The account of the auk that follows is from Allen’s notice; Greenway, Extinct and Vanishing Birds, 271-291; and David N. Nettleship and Peter G. H. Evans, “Distribution and Status of Atlantic Alcidae,” in The Atlantic Alcidae: The Evolution, Distribution and Biology of the Auks Inhabiting the Atlantic Ocean and Adjacent Water Areas, ed. David N. Nettleship and Tim R. Birkhead (London: Academic Press, 1985), 61-69.

37. J. A. Allen, “Decrease of Birds in Massachusetts,” Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 1 (1876): 53-60.

38. J. A. Allen, “On the Decrease of Birds in the United States,” The Penn Monthly 7 (1876): 931-945.

39. Ibid., 944.

40. Reiger, American Sportsmen; and James B. Trefethen, An American Crusade for Wildlife (New York: Winchester Press and the Boone and Crockett Club, 1975). For a critique of these claims, see Thomas R. Dunlap, “Sport Hunting and Conservation, 1880-1920,” Environmental Review 12 (1988): 51-59; and for John Reiger’s reply, see ibid., 94-96.

41. T. S. Palmer, “Chronology and Index of the More Important Events in American Game Protection, 1776-1911,” United States Department of Agriculture, Biological Survey Bulletin no. 41 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1912).

42. See Reiger, American Sportsmen, 25-49.

43. Allen, “Decrease of Birds,” 944.

44. The best history of the Anglo-American humane movement is James Turner, Reckoning with the Beast: Animals, Pain, and Humanity in the Victorian Mind (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980). For an assessment of the role of the humanitarians in wildlife protection, see Lisa Mighetto, “Wildife Protection and the New Humanitarianism,” Environmental Review 12 (1988): 37-49, and Wild Animals and American Environmental Ethics (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991). On changing conceptions of the human-nature boundary, see James J. Sheehan and Morta Sosna, eds., The Boundaries of Humanity: Humans, Animals, Machines (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

45. The contributions of Romanticism and Transcendentalism to nature appreciation are discussed in Fleming, “Roots of the New Conservation Movement,” 8-10; Huth, Nature and the American Mind, 57-104; and Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 84-95.

46. The most comprehensive account of the turn-of-the-century “back to nature” movement, which discusses everything from school gardens and Boy Scouts to literary genres, is Schmitt, Back to Nature. See also Lutts, Nature Fakers, 1-36.

47. Allen, “Decrease of Birds,” 944.

48. “Second Meeting of the American Ornithologists’ Union,” Auk 1 (1884): 376. The other members of the original AOU bird protection committee were H. A. Purdie, George B. Grinnell, Eugene P. Bicknell, William Dutcher, and Frederic A. Ober.

49. William Brewster to J. A. Allen, 18 January 1885, AOU Records, RU 7440, Box 1, Folder 8, SIA. See also J. A. Allen to William Brewster, 16 January 1885, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

50. George B. Grinnell to J. A. Allen, 24 February 1885, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

51. “Third Meeting of the American Ornithologists’ Union,” Auk 3 (1886): 120.

52. J. A. Allen was apparently working behind the scenes to assure the success of the new committee. See J. A. Allen to William Brewster, 29 November 1885, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

53. The description of the vitality of the new committee is from J. A. Allen to William Brewster, 13 December 1885, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives. Details of Sennett’s life are treated in J. A. Allen, “In Memoriam: George Burritt Sennett,” Auk 18 (1901): 11-23.

54. “Fourth Meeting of the American Ornithologists’ Union,” Auk 4 (1887): 58. The minutes of those meetings survive in the National Audubon Society Records, Box A-188, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, New York Public Library, New York (hereafter cited as NAS Records, NYPL).

55. “Notes and News,” Auk 3 (1886): 143.

56. N. D. C. Hodges to J. A. Allen, 1 December 1885, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH. Hodges’s offer was read at the 12 December meeting of the bird protection committee and may have been one of the factors prompting the meeting. George B. Sennett, “Report of the Committee on the Protection of North American Birds, November 1886,” AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 1, Folder 15, SIA.

57. AOU Committee on Bird Protection, “Supplement,” Science 7 (1886): 191-205, reprinted with limited revisions as the first AOU Bird Protection Bulletin. Figures for the circulation of this pamphlet are from Auk 3 (1886): 191.

58. J. A. Allen, “The Present Wholesale Destruction of Bird-Life in the United States,” Science 7 (1886): 191-193.

59. The rise of the millinery trade in America and Europe is thoroughly examined in Robin Doughty’s Feather Fashions and Bird Preservation: A Study in Nature Protection (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).

60. [J. A. Allen], “Destruction of Birds for Millinery Purposes,” Science 7 (1886): 196-197. In 1884 Frank Chapman took a late afternoon stroll through the uptown shopping district of New York and counted 700 women wearing hats, of which 542 were decorated with feathers from over 40 North American species. See his “Birds and Bonnets,” Forest and Stream 26 (1886): 84, which was incorporated into the pamphlet version of the first AOU Bird Protection Bulletin.

61. Allen, “Present Wholesale Destruction,” 194.

62. John Burroughs, “Bird Enemies,” Century Magazine 31 (1885-1886): 273.

63. Ibid., 274.

64. Wake-Robin (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1871). Quoted from 14th ed. (Houghton, Mifflin, 1877), 231.

65. The quote is from an expanded version of the “Bird Enemies” essay in Signs and Seasons (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1886), 213.

66. Ibid.

67. See William Brewster to J. A. Allen, 29 December 1885, AOU Records, RU 7440, Box 1, Folder 8, SIA.

68. [J. A. Allen], “Notes and News,” Auk 3 (1886): 142.

69. Ibid., 142-143.

70. This argument continues to appear. See, for example, “Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Scientific and Educational Uses of Wild Birds,” Auk 92 (1975): 1A-27A; and American Ornithologists’ Union, Checklist of North American Birds, 6th ed. (Lawrence, Kans: American Ornithologists’ Union, 1983), xxviii-xxix.

71. Allen, “Present Wholesale Destruction,” 194.

72. Numerous ornithologists have concluded that collecting could greatly affect local populations of already endangered species. See, for example, Carl B. Koford, The California Condor, National Audubon Society, Research Report no. 4 (New York: National Audubon Society, 1953), 130; William Brewster, “Nesting Habits of the Parrakeet,” Auk 6 (1889): 336-337; Frank Chapman, Review of “An Attempt to List Extinct and Vanishing Birds,” by J. C. Phillips, Bird-Lore 31 (1929): 352-353; and Hamel, Bachman’s Warbler, 26.

73. W. E. D. Scott, “The Present Condition of Some of the Bird Rookeries of the Gulf Coast of Florida,” Auk 4 (1887): 135-144, 213-222, 273-284. Biographical information on Scott may be found in J. A. Allen, “William Earl Dodge Scott,” Auk (1910): 486-488, and in Scott’s fascinating autobiography, Story of a Bird Lover.

74. Scott, “Present Condition,” 277. On Lechevalier, see Walter P. Fuller, “Who Was the Frenchmen of Frenchman’s Creek?” Tequesta 29 (1969): 45-59.

75. W. E. D. Scott to J. A. Allen, 17 June 1886, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH; and W. E. D. Scott to J. A. Allen, 30 June 1886, AOU Records, RU 7440, SIA. By October 1886 Scott had sold 114 terns to the AMNH, and one year later he was offering a thousand more Florida specimens. See W. E. D. Scott to J. A. Allen, 25 October 1886 and 14 December 1887, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

76. Charles E. Bendire to Robert Ridgway, 9 September 1888, Division of Birds, National Museum of Natural History, Records, RU 105, Box 13, Folder 3, SIA. Christopher Leahy, who is skeptical about the ability of collectors to affect bird populations, called the Bachman’s warbler “the exceptional case in which over-collecting contributed to extinction.” The Birdwatcher’s Companion: An Encyclopedic Handbook of North American Birdlife (London: Robert Hale, 1982), 232. On the demise of the species, see Hamel, Bachman’s Warbler.

77. J. A. Allen, “J. H. Batty,” Auk 23 (1906): 356-357.

78. See, for example, the complaints of Leander S. Keyser and Reginald C. Robbins in chapter 6, below.

79. Allen, “Present Wholesale Destruction,” 193.

80. Ibid.

81. Ibid., 195. Allen also contributed a separate short essay on the subject for the first AOU Bird Protection Bulletin, [J. A. Allen,] “The Relation of Birds to Agriculture,” Science 7 (1886): 201-202.

82. The notion that nature remains in balance has a history stretching back to the Greeks. See Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967); and Frank N. Egerton, “Changing Concepts in the Balance of Nature,” Quarterly Review of Biology 48 (1973): 322-350.

83. The story of the creation of the USDA’s Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy is told in greater detail in chapter 3, above.

84. [J. A. Allen], “Bird Laws,” Science 7 (1886): 202-204.

85. Following protests from several ornithologists who feared that the age limit in the AOU model law would discourage aspiring young ornithologists, the bird protection committee soon dropped the age requirement from its model law. See American Ornithologists’ Union, “Bulletin No. 2 of the Committee on Protection of Birds,” Forest and Stream 27 (1886): 304-305.

86. The biographical sketch that follows comes from John G. Mitchell, “A Man Called Bird,” Audubon Magazine 89 (March 1987): 81-104; and A. K. Fisher, “In Memoriam: George Bird Grinnell,” Auk 56 (1939): 1-12. As editor of Forest and Stream, founder of the first Audubon Society (1886), and cofounder of the Boone and Crockett Club (1887), Grinnell looms large in the histories of turn-of-the-century conservation that stress the contribution of recreational hunters. See Trefethen, American Crusade for Wildlife; and Reiger, American Sportsmen.

87. Quoted in Mitchell, “A Man Called Bird,” 91.

88. Grinnell was among the forty-eight naturalists invited to the founding meeting of the AOU (AOU Minutes, 26 September 1883, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 5, vol. 1, pp. 27-28, SIA) but apparently did not attend and was therefore not listed as one of the twenty-five “founding members.”

89. Dutcher, “History of the Audubon Movement,” 45. See, for example, [George Bird Grinnell,] “Spare the Swallows,” Forest and Stream 21 (1883): 121.

90. George B. Grinnell to J. A. Allen, 24 February 1885, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

91. [George Bird Grinnell], “The Audubon Society,” Forest and Stream 26 (1886): 41.

92. Ibid.

93. Ibid. As chair of the bird protection committee, Sennett sent a letter to Grinnell granting the “sanction of our authority” to the new Audubon Society. Reproduced in an early (undated) pamphlet from the society, “The Audubon Society for the Protection of Birds,” located in the AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 1, Folder 15, SIA.

94. The creation of the society is discussed in Merriam’s article “Our Smith College Audubon Society,” Audubon Magazine 1 (1887): 175-178. The episode is also treated in Kofalk, No Woman Tenderfoot, 32-38, which is largely based on Merriam’s article.

95. Fanny Hardy [Eckstrom] to William Brewster, 24 March 1886, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

96. “Membership of the Audubon Society,” Audubon Magazine 1 (1887): 19.

97. “The Audubon Magazine,” Audubon Magazine 1 (1887): 5.

98. Celia Thaxter, “Woman’s Heartlessness,” Audubon Magazine 1 (1887): 13-14.

99. AOU Minutes, 26 September 1883, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 5, vol. 1, pp. 27-28, SIA. Biographical information on Langdon is from T. S. Palmer, “Frank Warren Langdon,” Auk 51 (1934): 132.

100. Langdon’s remarks were originally published in his local paper, the Cincinnati Commercial-Gazette, and then as “Fourth Paper” in a series of “Papers on the Destruction of Native Birds,” Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History 9 (1886): 181-191. As J. A. Allen pointed out in his reply to the critique (“Bird-Destruction,” Science 8 (1886): 118), Langdon’s ideas were “eagerly seized upon by newspaper editors” and widely reprinted. They were also picked up by natural history periodicals. See, for example, Science 8 (1886): 2; “Facts about the Birds: Misleading Statistics Respecting Fashion’s Demands,” The Hawkeye Ornithologist and Oologist 1 (1888): 29-33; and “The Destruction of Our Native Birds,” Oologist 5 (1888): 54-58. The collecting press saw Langdon as an ally in their challenge to the AOU bird protection committee (see below).

101. Allen, “Bird-Destruction,” 118.

102. Langdon, “Fourth Paper,” 191.

103. The letter and the ensuing exchange are recorded in the AOU Minutes, 17 November 1886, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 5, vol. 1, pp. 251-253, SIA. Another account is in “News and Notes,” Auk (1887): 82-83.

104. On the short-lived Society of American Taxidermists, see Susan Leigh Star, “Craft vs. Commodity, Mess vs. Transcendence: How the Right Tool Became the Wrong One in the Case of Taxidermy and Natural History,” in The Right Tools for the Job: At Work in Twentieth-Century Life Sciences, ed. Adele E. Clarke and Joan H. Fujimura (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 257-286.

105. For example, M. Abbott Frazar and John C. Cahoon, both professional collectors, taxidermists, and natural history dealers, had done extensive collecting for Brewster.

106. William Brewster to G. B. Sennett, 2 February 1886, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

107. “Notes and News,” Auk 4 (1887): 82.

108. Ibid., 83.

109. “Editorial,” Ornithologist and Oologist 9 (1884): 70.

110. F. A. Lucas, “The Destruction of Birds for Millinery Purposes,” Ornithologist and Oologist 9 (1884): 98.

111. W. W. C[astle], “The Destruction of Birds for Millinery Purposes: A Request for Facts,” Ornithologist and Oologist 9 (1884): 116.

112. F. A. Lucas, “The Destruction of Birds for Millinery Purposes,” Ornithologist and Oologist 9 (1884): 128; L. M. McCormick, “The Destruction of Birds for Millinery Purposes,” Ornithologist and Oologist 9 (1884): 138-140. Castle tried to draw Lucas back into the argument by accusing him of withdrawing because he could not produce the facts Castle had earlier demanded. W. W. C[astle], “Editor O. and O,” Ornithologist and Oologist 9 (1884): 140.

113. W. W. C[astle], “The Destruction of Birds for Millinery Purposes,” Ornithologist and Oologist 10 (1885): 15-16. In the interim, a letter in the same periodical blamed the decrease in the number of birds on the large number of cats roaming freely throughout the countryside. A. T. G., “The Destruction of Birds for Millinery Purposes,” Ornithologist and Oologist 9 (1885): 152.

114. F. A. Lucas, “The Destruction of Birds for Millinery Purposes,” Ornithologist and Oologist 10 (1885): 31-32; and L. M. McCormick, “The Destruction of Birds for Millinery Purposes,” Ornithologist and Oologist 10 (1885): 48.

115. The exception to this general trend is a letter from C. S. Brimley, a dealer from North Carolina who argued that “it is not so wicked to kill a bird to adorn a hat as many seem to think.” “The Destruction of Birds for Millinery Purposes,” Ornithologist and Oologist 11 (1886): 160.

116. C. F. Freeman, “The Medium of ‘Bird Protection,’” Ornithologist and Oologist 11 (1886): 48.

117. “Bird Protection,” Ornithologist and Oologist 11 (1884): 56-57.

118. “Editorial,” Ornithologist and Oologist 11 (1886): 72-73. The response was at least partially informed by recent hearings in the Massachusetts state house on the reform of game laws, in which the new inland fish commissioner declared “a war on taxidermists.” Massachusetts Taxidermist, “War Against Taxidermists,” Ornithologist and Oologist 11 (1886): 63-64.

119. W. DeForrest Northrup, “The Study of Ornithology and its Relation to the Decrease of Our Birds,” Ornithologist and Oologist 11 (1886): 112.

120. J. A. Allen to William Brewster, 11 August 1886, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

121. Montague Chamberlain, “The A.O.U. and Amateurs,” Ornithologist and Oologist 11 (1886): 160.

122. “That the pursuits of amateur naturalists have come under a ban to a considerable extent (in the east) from the results of the action of the A.O.U., I believe to be true; perhaps not intentionally.” Massachusetts Taxidermist, “Amateur and A.O.U.,” Ornithologist and Oologist 11 (1886): 176.

123. W. DeForrest Northrup, “The A.O.U. and Amateurs,” Ornithologist and Oologist 11 (1887): 192.

124. Montague Chamberlain, “The A.O.U. and the Amateurs,” Ornithologist and Oologist 12 (1887): 32.

125. J. A. Allen, “The A.O.U. and the Amateurs,” Ornithologist and Oologist 12 (1887): 47-48.

126. Batchelder, Account of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, 49.

127. As has already been mentioned, “Bulletin No. 2. Protection of Birds by Legislation” was first published in Forest and Stream 27 (1886): 304-305, and was largely devoted to a discussion of the bird protection law recently enacted in New York. It also contained a slightly revised version of the AOU model law.

128. Sennett published his 1889 testimony to the Pennsylvania Board of Agriculture as B. G. [i.e., G. B.] Sennett, Bird Legislation (Harrisburg, Pa.: State Printer, 1890).

129. “Notes and News,” Auk 11 (1894): 87. See also AOU Minutes, 20 November 1893, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 5, vol. 3, pp. 81-83, SIA. The claim that “most” states had enacted excellent bird protection laws is false.

130. In a letter to Frank M. Chapman, who was then contemplating initiating Bird-Lore magazine, George B. Grinnell wrote, “Of the 50,000 members of the [Audubon] society which we had at the time on our books, not more than 5% were subscribers [to Audubon Magazine]. The venture was a losing one from the start, as we expected, but after running for two years it gave no prospect of doing much better.” 10 November 1898, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

CHAPTER SIX

1. Hemenway’s role in the creation of the Massachusetts Audubon Society is detailed in several recent publications: Graham, Audubon Ark, 14-18; Joseph Kastner, “Long before Furs, It Was Feathers That Stirred Reformist Ire,” Smithsonian 25 (July 1994): 96-104; Richard K. Walton, “A History of the Massachusetts Audubon Society from 1896 into the 1950s” (ms. available from Massachusetts Audubon Society); and John H. Mitchell, “The Mothers of Conservation,” Sanctuary (January-February 1996): 1-20.

2. Quoted in William Dutcher, “Report of the A.O.U. Committee on Protection of North American Birds [for 1896],” Auk 14 (1897): 31.

3. A list of the early publications of the Massachusetts Audubon Society is reproduced in William Dutcher, “Report of the Committee of the A.O.U. Committee on Protection of North American Birds [for 1897],” Auk 15 (1898): 83-84.

4. This was the primary reason given for the failure of the first Audubon movement by William Dutcher in “History of the Audubon Movement,” Bird-Lore 7 (1905): 55-56.

5. On the historiography of the progressive movement, see Arthur Link and Richard McCormick, Progressivism (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1983). For a discussion of the various manifestations of the pervasive turn-of-the-century desire to reconnect with nature, see Schmitt, Back to Nature.

6. Among the original participants who have written histories of the second Audubon movement are William Dutcher, “History of the Audubon Movement,” Bird-Lore 7 (1905): 45-57; T. Gilbert Pearson, “Fifty Years of Bird Protection,” in Fifty Years' Progress of American Ornithology, 1883-1933, ed. Frank M. Chapman and T. S. Palmer (Lancaster, Pa.: AOU, 1933), 199-213, and Adventures in Bird Protection. More recent histories of the movement are Frank Graham, Jr., and Carl Buchheister, “From the Swamps and Back: A Concise and Candid History of the Audubon Movement,” Audubon 75 (1973): 4-45; Doughty, Feather Fashions and Bird Preservation; Fox, American Conservation Movement, 151-159; Graham, Audubon Ark; and Oliver H. Orr, Jr., Saving American Birds: T. Gilbert Pearson and the Founding of the Audubon Movement (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992).

7. AOU Minutes, 11 November 1895, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 5, vol. 3, p. 149, SIA. Following Sennett’s resignation in 1893, the committee remained inactive under the leadership of its two subsequent chairs, Frank M. Chapman and Gordon Trumbull.

8. The biographical sketch that follows is largely from T. S. Palmer, “In Memoriam: William Dutcher,” Auk 38 (1921): 501-513. For additional biographical information on Dutcher, see Graham, Audubon Ark, 19-22, 26-33, 42-47, and 68-73.

9. William Dutcher, “Wilson’s Plover on Long Island, N.Y,” Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 4 (1879): 242.

10. For example, in an untitled announcement in 1897, Dutcher reported on the recent organization of the Audubon Society of New York and “earnestly” urged the formation of additional state societies. William Dutcher, “Notes and News,” Auk 14 (1897): 257-258. See also the long series of letters between Dutcher and T. Gilbert Pearson in National Audubon Society Records, Box A-6, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, New York Public Library (hereafter cited as NAS Records, NYPL), which led to the creation of the North Carolina Audubon Society.

11. The early records of the Audubon Society of the District of Columbia are found in Audubon Naturalist Society of the Central Atlantic States Archives, RU 7294, SIA.

12. See the list of states in Dutcher, “History of the Audubon Movement,” 47. In several instances members of existing humane societies were the primary force behind the new bird protection societies. For example, see William Dutcher, “Report [for 1897],” 100, 107.

13. A list of pamphlets and circulars issued during the early years of the New York Audubon Society is found in Dutcher, “Report [for 1897],” 91. Copies of these publications are located in the Audubon Society Records, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

14. Frank M. Chapman to William Brewster, 13 November 1897, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

15. Dutcher, “Report [for 1896],” 32.

16. On the origins and early celebration of Arbor Day, see Robert H. Schauffler, ed., Arbor Day: Its History, Observance, Spirit and Significance (New York: Moffat, Yard 1909). The quotation is from T. S. Palmer, Bird Day in the Schools, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Division of the Biological Survey, circular no. 17, 2 July 1896, p. 1.

17. The letter from Florence Merriam outlining this proposal is reproduced in Dutcher, “Report [for 1897],” 111-112.

18. See “Notes and News,” Auk 18 (1901): 127.

19. B. L. Bowdish, “Nature Study,” Oologist 14 (1897): 99.

20. Chapman said as much when he pronounced that “the Union’s Committee on the Protection of North American Birds is, in effect, an Audubon Society.” [Frank M. Chapman,] “The A.O.U. and Audubon Societies,” Bird-Lore 2(1900): 161-162.

21. The announcement that the committee had been enlarged came in “Notes and News,” Auk 14 (1897): 116. By 1901 the committee included twenty-two members. See William Dutcher, “Report of the Committee on the Protection of North American Birds for the Year 1900,” Auk 18 (1901): 103-104.

22. William Dutcher to William Brewster, 4 October 1898, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives. See also the complaint in William Dutcher, “Report [for 1897],” 82.

23. Dutcher resigned in December 1897. Within a few years Stone began lobbying for someone to take over the burdensome work. See, for example, Witmer Stone to William Dutcher, 16 March and 1 October 1900, 2 April 1901, 15 November 1901 (filed under 1902); William Dutcher to Witmer Stone, 1 December 1900, NAS Records, Box A-6, NYPL. Dutcher finally agreed to resume chairing the committee in 1901.

24. James A. G. Rehn, “In Memoriam: Witmer Stone,” Auk 58 (1941): 299-313.

25. Witmer Stone, “Report of the A.O.U. Committee on Protection of North American Birds [for 1899],” Auk 16 (1900): 60.

26. Frank M. Chapman to William Brewster, 22 and 29 October 1898, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

27. Frank M. Chapman to J. A. Allen, 25 April 1899, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

28. He began approaching the various Audubon societies about the idea as early as one year previously. See Frank M. Chapman to Mrs. J. D. Patton [i.e., Patten], 26 October 1897, Audubon Naturalist Society of the Central Atlantic States Archives, RU 7294, Box 1, SIA.

29. Witmer Stone, “Report [for 1899],” Auk 17 (1900): 52. Chapman continued to own and edit the magazine until 1934, when he sold it to the National Association of Audubon Societies.

30. James B. Trefethen, “John Fletcher Lacey,” in National Leaders of American Conservation, ed. Richard H. Stroud (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), 236-237; and Annette Gallagher, “Citizen of a Nation: John Fletcher Lacey, Conservationist,” Annals of Iowa 46 (1981): 9-24.

31. The best study of the Lacey Act is Theodore Whaley Cart, “The Lacey Act: America’s First Nationwide Wildlife Statute,” Forest History (October 1973): 4-13, which is based on his earlier dissertation, “The Struggle for Wildlife Protection in the United States, 1870-1900: Attitudes and Events Leading Up to the Lacey Act” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1971).

32. On the AOU’s role in passing the Lacey Act, see Witmer Stone to William Dutcher, 16 March and 4 May 1900, NAS Records, Box A-6, NYPL.

33. Cart, “Lacey Act,” 6.

34. For example, in 1895 a notice in the Auk reported that several “scientific and other societies” had secured a “special game protector” during the 1894 breeding season to police a colony of terns on Great Gull Island, N.Y. “Notes and News,” Auk 12 (1895): 97.

35. Witmer Stone, “Report of the Committee on the Protection of North American Birds for the Year 1900,” Auk 28 (1901): 69. See also Graham, Audubon Ark, 20-22; and the extensive correspondence between Dutcher and Thayer in NAS Records, NYPL.

36. Stone, “Report for 1900,” 76-77. Details of the particular areas protected are given in the report on pp. 77-103.

37. The states and dates of passage of their laws were Indiana (1891), Vermont (1892), Arkansas (1897), Illinois (1899), and Rhode Island (1900). From Witmer Stone, “Report of the Committee on the Protection of North American Birds [for 1901],” Auk 19 (1902): 36.

38. Between February and August 1901, the District of Columbia and the following states passed bird protection legislation: Wyoming, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Delaware, Florida, New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. On the lobbying campaigns in each state, see Stone, “Report [for 1901],” 36-44. On Dutcher’s role in the passage of this and subsequent state legislation, see “How One Man Secured a Law in Thirty-Two States,” World’s Work 12 (1906): 8137-8138. See also the extensive correspondence between Palmer and Dutcher in NAS Archives, Box A-6, NYPL.

39. Dutcher, “History of the Audubon Movement,” 47.

40. Quoted in Graham, Audubon Ark, 44. Other published accounts of the events leading up to the creation of Pelican Island include Pearson, Adventures, 236-237; and Chapman, Autobiography, 181-182.

41. See William Dutcher to Mrs. F. E. B. Latham, 18 March 1902 and 28 April 1902; William Dutcher to T. S. Palmer, 6 June, 24 July, and 1 August 1902, 16 February 1903; T. S. Palmer to William Dutcher, 30 July 1902, 21 and 25 February 1903; NAS Records, Box A-6, NYPL.

42. Palmer, Adventures, 236, credits C. L. DuBois with the idea.

43. On Bond’s critical role in this process, see T. Gilbert Pearson, “Frank Bond,” Bird-Lore 13 (1911): 175-177.

44. See the list of reservations established by Roosevelt in “Fifth Annual Report of the National Association of Audubon Societies, 1909,” Bird-Lore 11 (1909): 291-294.

45. “Notes and News,” Auk 27 (1900): 404.

46. “Notes and News,” Auk 28 (1901): 127.

47. Dutcher, “History of the Audubon Movement,” 57.

48. William Dutcher, “Report of the A.O.U. Committee on the Protection of North American Birds [for 1902],” Auk 20 (1903): 101-159.

49. The specific circumstances surrounding his resignation are discussed below.

50. See chapter 5.

51. For an opposing view, see Charles L. Phillips, “Are Ornithologists Cruel?” Oologist 15 (1898): 13-14.

52. Leander Keyser, “The Art of Kicking Gently,” Osprey 3 (1898-1899): 109-110.

53. Biographical information on Robbins may be found in his entry for Who Was Who in America (Chicago: A. N. Marquis, 1966), 3:731.

54. The pamphlet was printed by E. W. Wheeler of Cambridge, Mass. The information on the circulation of the pamphlet comes from B. S. Bowdish, “A Further Consideration,” Oologist 19 (1902): 87.

55. Biographical information on Hornaday, a central figure in conservation circles during the early twentieth century, may be found in J. A. Dolph, “Bringing Wildlife to the Millions: William Temple Hornaday, The Early Years: 1854-1896” (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, 1975); Fox, American Conservation Movement, and John G. Mitchell, “The Way We Shuffled Off the Buffalo,” Wildlife Conservation 96 (January-February 1993): 44-51. Hornaday is clearly deserving of a full-length biography.

56. William T. Hornaday, The Extermination of the American Bison (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1889). The text was originally prepared for the Report of the National Museum, 1886-1887.

57. William T. Hornaday, “The Destruction of Our Birds and Mammals: A Report on the Results of an Inquiry,” Annual Report of the New York Zoological Society 2 (1898): 77.

58. Dutcher, “Report [for 1897],” Auk 15 (1898): 114.

59. Stone, “Report of the A.O.U. Committee on the Protection of North American Birds [for 1898],” Auk 16 (1899): 59.

60. An exception is John Lewis Childs to William Dutcher, 8 December 1899, NAS Records, Box A-6, NYPL, in which Childs complains that a proposed bird protection law in New York would put taxidermists out of business.

61. Stone, “Report [for 1898],” 61.

62. Hornaday’s protest came in his “Destruction of Our Birds,” 88-91, where he pointed to an article in the Oologist that included a list of the eggs of warblers in the collection of J. P. Norris of Philadelphia. Among the items in his cabinet were 210 sets of Kentucky warblers numbering some 917 eggs!

63. Stone, “Report [for 1898],” 61.

64. “Editorial Notes,” Condor 5 (1903): 136.

65. Stone, “Report [for 1898],” 62.

66. Frank T. Antes to William Brewster, 5 February 1904, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives. Brewster’s reply has not survived.

67. In addition to Stone, its principal author, the pamphlet was signed by J. A. Allen, Frank M. Chapman, Robert Ridgway, Charles W. Richmond, C. Hart Merriam, T. S. Palmer, A. K. Fisher, William Brewster, William Dutcher, and John H. Sage.

68. [Witmer Stone], “Hints to Young Bird Students,” reproduced in Bird-Lore 1 (1899): 126.

69. Ibid. The New York and Massachusetts Audubon societies refused to distribute the pamphlet because they felt Stone had not gone far enough in denouncing collecting by youngsters. Witmer Stone to William Dutcher, 7 May 1900, NAS Records, Box A-6, NYPL.

70. Five years before the exchange, Norris and his father had already amassed a large collection consisting of 573 species, 5,002 sets, and a total of 20,388 eggs. See A Catalogue of the Oological Collection of J. Parker Norris and J. Parker Norris Jr. (Philadelphia: Privately printed, 1894).

71. J. Parker Norris, Jr., Some Facts about the Consistency of the Chairman of the A.O.U. Committee on Bird Protection and an Answer to His “Hints to Young Students” (Philadelphia: Privately printed, 1899), 3-5. Norris’s “monograph” never materialized.

72. Ibid., 5.

73. Ibid., 6.

74. Ibid.

75. Virtually every issue of volumes 3 and 4 of the Osprey contain letters to the editor regarding egg collecting. See the list in Barrow, “Birds and Boundaries,” 481, n. 77. See also “Bird Protection Versus Sentiment,” Bulletin of the Cooper Ornithological Club 11 (1899): 36-37; and Richard McGregor, “Circumstances Alter Cases,” ibid., 69-70.

76. Coues, “Editorial Eyrie,” Osprey 3 (1898-1899): 124.

77. Pearson, Adventures, 71.

78. Garrett Newkirk, “Editor of ‘The Condor,’” Condor 4 (1902): 147.

79. Ibid. The curious reference to Filipinos related to the bloody resistance that American troops had encountered in the colony they had recently acquired following the Spanish-American War.

80. See, for example, William Brewster to “Fiend” [Frank M. Chapman], 23 October 1906, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

81. William Dutcher, “A Protest,” Condor 5 (1903): 53-54. The article prompting Dutcher’s letter was P. M. Silloway, “The Holboell Grebe in Montana,” Condor 4 (1902): 128-131.

82. Ibid. In his reply, P. M. Silloway resorted to the prevailing view that God had created nature to serve human purposes. As long as collectors used this material for “the advancement of human pleasure and knowledge,” then collecting, on whatever scale, was legitimate. P. M. Silloway, “An Answer,” Condor 5 (1903): 54-55.

83. A. K. Fisher to William Dutcher, 22 April 1903, A. K. Fisher Papers, Box 39, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; and NAS Records, Box A-6, NYPL. Not all scientists agreed with Fisher. See T. S. P[almer], “The Condor,” Bird-Lore 5 (1903): 33-34.

84. For another example of this trend, see F. R. Stearns, “An Ornithological Sermon,” Osprey 3 (1898-1899): 43.

85. William Dutcher, “Report of the A.O.U. Committee on the Protection of North American Birds for the Year 1903,” Auk 21 (1904): 97.

86. Ibid., 103.

87. Ibid., 104.

88. A list of the permits issued through the AMNH survives: “Record of Permits Granted for Collecting Birds,” Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

89. Annual Reports of the Forest, Fish, and Game Commissioner of the State of New York for 1904, 1905, 1906 (Albany: State Printers, 1907): 232-233. Five years previously, the Massachusetts Department of Fisheries and Game had decided to stop issuing permits for “merely private collections.” See Edward A. Brackett to William Brewster, 13 April 1898, and printed circular enclosed with letter, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives. The president of the New Jersey Fish and Game Commission was even more restrictive. See Howard P. Frothingham to William Dutcher, 30 January 1901, NAS Records, Box A-6, NYPL.

90. Fisher failed to mention an Iowa State Supreme Court case that cut off the privilege of collecting game birds for scientific purposes. T. S. Palmer, “Collecting Permits: Their History, Objects, and Restrictions,” unpublished speech delivered before the AOU in 1904, p. 1, in T. S. Palmer Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

91. [Walter K. Fisher,] “Editorial Notes,” Condor 5 (1903): 136. In a characteristically caustic reply, J. A. Allen vigorously defended the law: J. A. Allen, “The A.O.U. Model Law,” Condor 5 (1903): 157-158. Walter K. Fisher’s untitled reply follows on 158-159. See also E. W. Nelson’s call to eliminate the bonding clause, “On the ‘Bonding Clause’ of the A.O.U. Model Law,” ibid., 159.

92. A. K. Fisher to William Brewster, 23 October 1903, A. K. Fisher Papers, Box 39, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. See also Fisher’s letters to George B. Grinnell (23 October 1903), Charles Batchelder (23 October 1903), and Lynds Jones (22 October 1903) in the same collection.

93. AOU Meeting Minutes, AOU Records, 16 November 1903, RU 7150, Box 5, vol. 3, pp. 114-116, SIA.

94. AOU Council Minutes, 12 November 1906, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 3, vol. 3, p. 88, SIA.

95. Fisher outlived many of his contemporaries, so published information on his life is sketchy. See Francis M. Uhler, “In Memoriam: Albert Kendrick Fisher,” Auk 68 (1951): 210-213. A bibliography of his publications until 1926 may be found in T. S. Palmer and W. L. McAtee, “A List of the Publications of A. K. Fisher,” Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 39 (1926): 21-28. Fisher’s extensive collection of papers in the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., includes manuscript fragments for an unfinished autobiography (Box 40).

96. A. K. Fisher, The Hawks and Owls of the United States in Their Relation to Agriculture, Biological Survey Bulletin Series, no. 3 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1893). Cameron, Biological Survey, 217-251, contains a complete bibliography of survey publications until the year 1929.

97. Fisher’s statements to the council for 1906 are typical: AOU Council Minutes, 12 November 1906, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 3, vol. 3, p. 88, SIA.

98. Ibid., 16 November 1908, 130-131.

99. Ibid., 6 December 1909, 147.

100. Ibid., 146-151.

101. “Notes and News,” Auk 29 (1912): 136.

102. Ibid., 136-137.

103. Ibid., 137.

104. For more on Grinnell, see chapter 8.

105. Joseph Grinnell, “Conserve the Collector,” Science 41 (1915): 229-232.

106. Ibid., 229.

107. Ibid. Even some ornithologists who were themselves primarily bird observers appreciated the detailed knowledge of birds gained by collectors. See, for example, A. A. Allen, “Studying Birds’ Eggs,” Bird-Lore 22 (1920): 238.

108. Grinnell, “Conserve the Collector,” 230.

109. Ibid., 231-232.

110. Ibid., 232.

111. The AOU bird protection committee’s continued lack of activity is well documented in the AOU Council Minutes, 8 October 1923, 10 November 1924, 9 November 1925, 10 October 1926, 14 November 1927, 19 November 1928, and 21 October 1929, Box 3, vol. 4, AOU Records, RU 7150, SIA.

112. There are several useful histories of ecology: Sharon E. Kingsland, Modeling Nature: Episodes in the History of Population Ecology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); McIntosh, Background of Ecology, Tobey, Saving the Prairies; Worster, Nature’s Economy; and Gregg Mitman, The State of Nature: Ecology, Community, and American Social Thought, 1900-1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). See also Leslie A. Real and James H. Brown, eds., Foundations of Ecology: Classic Papers with Commentaries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Tobey and Worster both discuss how ecological notions found their way into conservation discourse, but the most useful study of this development is Thomas R. Dunlap, Saving America’s Wildlife (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). For an examination of the Ecological Society of America’s involvement in conservation issues, see Robert A. Croker, Pioneer Ecologist: The Life and Work of Victor Ernest Shelford, 1877-1968 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 120-146; and Sara F. Tjossem, “Preservation of Nature and Academic Respectability: Tensions in the Ecological Society of America, 1915-1979” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1994).

113. This is a major argument of Dunlap’s Saving America’s Wildlife.

114. The paradigmatic example of the shift from a strictly utilitarian to a more ecologically informed conservation framework is Aldo Leopold. See his highly autobiographical A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949); J. Baird Callicott, Companion to A Sand County Almanac: Interpretive and Critical Essays (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987); and Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988).

115. F. A. Lucas, J. A. Allen, Willard G. Van Name, W. DeW. Miller, G. K. Noble, Roy Chapman Andrews, [name ill.], Ludlow Griscom, Walter Granger, John Treadwell Nichols, James P. Chapin, Jonathan Dwight, Charles H. Rogers, and G. Clyde Fisher to “Members of the Committee on Bird Protection of the American Ornithologists’ Union,” 9 March 1920, A. K. Fisher Papers, Box 23, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

116. A. K. Fisher to F. A. Lucas et al., 15 March 1920, Fisher Papers, Box 23, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

117. F. A. Lucas et al. to A. K. Fisher, 31 March 1930; A. K. Fisher to F. A. Lucas, 20 July 1920; F. A. Lucas to A. K. Fisher, 21 July 1920; Willard G. Van Name to A. K. Fisher, 8 October 1920; Willard G. Van Name to John H. Sage, 4 November 1920; A. K. Fisher to Willard G. Van Name, 23 November 1920; A. K. Fisher to F. A. Lucas, 23 November 1923; all in the A. K. Fisher Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

118. Henry P. Carey, “Hawk Extermination,” Auk 43 (1926): 275.

119. Ibid., 276.

120. See, for example, Ernest G. Holt, “Nature-Wasters and Sentimentalists,” Auk 43 (1926): 409-410; W. L. McAtee, “Hawk Abundance and Hawk Campaigns,” Auk 43 (1926): 542-544; and G. M. Sutton, “How Can the Bird-Lover Help Save the Hawks and Owls?” Auk 46 (1929): 190-195.

121. The Biological Survey’s increasing involvement in predator-control activities is detailed in Dunlap, Saving America’s Wildlife, 38-40,48-51,55-59, 66, 77-82, 127-132, 137-141, 160-164; and Jenks, Biological Survey, 42-65.

122. Dunlap, Saving Americas Wildlife, 58.

123. The sixteen-page pamphlet was first privately published in New York and later reissued by the Emergency Conservation Committee, discussed below.

124. The biographical information that follows is from James Chapin, “In Memoriam: Waldron DeWitt Miller, 1879-1929,” Auk 49 (1932): 1-8.

125. The new classification was announced in Alexander Wetmore and Waldron DeW. Miller, “The Revised Classification for the Fourth Edition of the A.O.U. Check-list,” Auk 43 (1926): 337-346.

126. Waldron DeW. Miller to New York Times, 1 July 1923, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH. The lengthy exchange between Miller and officials at Du Pont survives in the Waldron DeW. Miller Papers, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

127. Willard G. Van Name, “Bird Collecting and Ornithology,” Science 41 (1915): 823-825.

128. A series of Van Name’s pamphlets on the subject culminated in a book, Vanishing Forest Reserves: Problems of the National Forests and National Parks (Boston: Richard D. Badger, Gorham Press, 1929).

129. Miller, Van Name, and Quinn, “Crisis in Conservation,” 2.

130. Ibid., 2-4.

131. Ibid., 15.

132. Ibid.

133. See, for example, Frank M. Chapman to P. B. Phillip, 10 August 1929, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH, in which Chapman urged Phillip to use his influence as an officer of the New Jersey Audubon Society to “prohibit the distribution” of the “unfortunate pamphlet.”

134. Irving Brant, Adventures in Conservation with Franklin D. Roosevelt (Flagstaff, Ariz: Northland, 1988), 15.

135. The episode is described in Graham, Audubon Ark, 112-117, which also includes a biographical sketch of Edge. See also Fox, American Conservation Movement, 173-182; and Brant, Adventures in Conservation, 15-22.

136. See copy of letter from T. Gilbert Pearson to Rosalie Edge, 11 November 1929, Box 17, Irving Newton Brant Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

137. The standard histories of the ECC stress the large role of Rosalie Edge in the organization: Graham, Audubon Ark, 112-117; and Fox, American Conservation Movement, 175-181, 193-194, 202-203, 212, 215-217, 265, 282, 384. Brant, Adventures in Conservation, 13-30, provides a more balanced picture from someone intimately involved in the organization for several years.

138. The titles from some of the early ECC pamphlets are typical: U.S. Bureau of Destruction and Extermination and Compromised Conservation: Can the Audubon Society Explain?

139. By 1924 Fisher had been replaced as chair of the bird protection committee, but for the next several years the new committee remained inactive and published no reports. As the following account suggests, A Crisis in Conservation was one of a series of factors that led to the resurrection of the committee in 1930. Also important were Grinnell’s leadership, the controversy surrounding the Biological Survey’s predator control program, pressure from the ECC, and the widespread concern about the drought-induced decline of waterfowl during this period. On the latter problem and its impact on wildlife conservation more generally, see Theodore Cart, “New Deal for Wildlife: A Perspective on Federal Conservation Policy, 1933-40,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 63 (July 1972): 113-120.

140. AOU Council Minutes, 21 November 1929, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 3, vol. 4, p. 188, SIA.

141. Grinnell first approached Bryant about the position in December 1929 and for the first year or so played an important role in spurring on the work of the bird protection committee. See the extensive correspondence between Grinnell and Bryant in MVZ Archives. For biographical information on Bryant, see Ann and Myron Sutton, “The Man from Yosemite,” National Parks Magazine 28 (July-September 1954): 102-105, 130-132, 140; and William H. Behle, “Henry Child Bryant,” Auk 87 (1970): 631-632.

142. Harold C. Bryant to Members of the A.O.U. Committee on Bird Protection, 24 March 1930, AOU Records, Box 73, SIA. The letter is part of the Hoyes Lloyd Correspondence file contained in the AOU Records, an invaluable source of the behind-the-scenes activities of the bird protection committee throughout the 1930s. Copies of much of this correspondence are also in the Henry Childs Bryant file, MVZ Archives.

143. The proposals are contained in a H. C. Bryant to Members of the Bird Protection Committee, 4 June 1930, AOU Records, RU 7159, Box 73, SIA.

144. H. C. Bryant to Members of the Bird Protection Committee, 30 September 1930, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 73, SIA.

145. H. C. Bryant, “Report of the Committee on Bird Protection [for 1930],” Auk 39 (1931): 74-76.

146. AOU Council Minutes, 20 October 1930, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 3, vol. 4, p. 218, SIA.

147. H. C. Bryant to Members of the Bird Protection Committee, 1 November 1930, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 73, SIA.

148. H. C. Bryant, “Report [for 1930],” 93.

149. Paul G. Redington, “The Bird Work of the Biological Survey,” Auk 48 (1931): 229-234.

150. “Notes and News,” Auk 48 (1931): 478. The ornithologists were not entirely opposed to states undertaking limited predator-control programs, only to the Biological Survey’s participation in such programs. See also “Notes and News,” Auk 49 (1932): 275-277.

151. My emphasis. H. C. Bryant, “Report of the Committee on Bird Protection of the American Ornithologists’ Union [for 1932],” Auk 50 (1933): 89-90.

152. The precise wording of Baldwin’s resolution is found in T. S. Palmer to H. C. Bryant, 13 November 1935, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 73, SIA.

153. These are detailed in excruciating detail in Harrison F. Lewis to S. Prentiss Baldwin, 7 November 1935, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 70, SIA.

154. The draft resolution is contained in H. C. Bryant to Committee on Bird Protection, 25 May 1936, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 73, SIA. The American Committee for International Wild Life Protection, organized in 1930, was an offshoot of a Belgian organization begun in the early 1920s. See John C. Phillips and Harold J. Coolidge, Jr., The First Five Years: The American Committee for International Wild Life Protection (n.p., 1934), and Brief History of the Formation of the American Committee for International Wild Life Protection (n.p., n.d.), both in the Alexander Wetmore Papers, RU 7006, Box 79, SIA.

155. The ECC proposal also included numerous other statements of a similar nature, including a call for the creation of a second list of birds not “holding their own,” which could be collected only with special permission; authorities to grant scientific collecting permits only to representatives of public museums and educational institutions; and an end to the practice of collecting rare birds in large series. The full proposal, “Recommendations Concerning Ornithological Collecting Permits,” is included in a letter, H. C. Bryant to Committee on Bird Protection, 25 May 1936, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 73, Folder 6, SIA. P. A. Taverner of the National Museum of Canada responded in detail to the ECC recommendations, calling its authors “sentimental fanatics” who were prone to “exaggeration and absolute misstatements.” In Hoyes Lloyd to H. C. Bryant, 3 June 1936, ibid.

156. “Resolution Adopted by the Board of Directors of the National Association of Audubon Societies as a meeting held June 23, 1936,” copy contained in John H. Baker to H. C. Bryant, 10 November 1937, ibid. Also published in Bird-Lore as “Collecting Resolution Adopted by the Board,” Bird-Lore 39 (1937): 151-152.

157. The proposed resolution is in a letter, H. C. Bryant to Members of the Bird Protection Committee, 23 October 1937, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 73, Folder 6, SIA.

158. AOU Council Minutes, 19 October 1936, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 4, p. 21, SIA.

159. John Baker to H. C. Bryant, 28 November 1936, AOU Records, RU 7150, Box 73, Folder 6, SIA.

160. H. C. Bryant to A. C. Bent, 12 June 1937, ibid.

161. A. C. Bent to H. C. Bryant, 16 June 1937, ibid.

162. The full resolution is printed in H. C. Bryant, “Report of the Committee on Bird Protection, 1938,” Auk 55 (1938): 328-329.

CHAPTER SEVEN

1. Biographical information on Huxley may be found in C. Kenneth Waters and Albert Van Helden, eds., Julian Huxley: Biologist and Statesman (Houston: Rice University Press, 1992).

2. Julian Huxley, “Bird-watching and Biological Science: Some Observations on the Study of Courtship in Birds,” Auk 33 (1916): 142-161, 256-269, on 142.

3. The term “birdwatching” (initially written as two words) was apparently coined by the British naturalist Edmund Selous in the title of his 1901 book, Bird Watching (London: J. M. Dent, 1901). His term was quickly embraced in Britain (see, e.g., E. W. Hendy, “The Aesthetic Appeal of Bird-Watching,” The Contemporary Review 127 [April 1925]: 482-492) but slow to catch on in the United States. When the British ornithologist E. M. Nicholson published The Art of Bird-Watching in 1931, Frank Chapman complained that the author’s choice of “major title does not convey a very clear conception of the contents of his book.” Chapman preferred the term bird “observer” (see Frank M. Chapman, Review of The Art of Bird-Watching, by E. M. Nicholson, Bird-Lore 34 [1932]: 81), though at least one American publication appearing in the previous year contained the term in its title: Frances S. Twining, Birdwatching in the West (Portland, Ore.: Metropolitan Press, 1931). By the late 1930s, “bird students, bird observers, or ornithologists” were the terms normally used to describe individuals who would later be called birdwatchers. See Leighman Hawkins, “Our Need to Dignify Bird Study,” Audubon Magazine 60 (March-April 1958): 55-56. The term “birdwatching” finally began to catch on in this country in the 1940s and 1950s, particularly following the publication of Joseph Hickey’s A Guide to Bird Watching (New York: Oxford University Press, 1943). However, debate continued about whether the term was appropriate. See the responses to Hawkins’s 1958 letter to the editor: R. M. Schramm, “A Bird Watcher by Any Other Name,” Audubon Magazine 60 (May-June 1958): 99; Mrs. Russell Wilson, “Birders and Birding,” ibid., 99-100; Earle E. Greene, “Another Dissenter Writes,” ibid., 100.

4. On the history of birdwatching in the United States, see Kastner, World of Watchers; Gibbons and Strom, Neighbors to the Birds. On birdwatching in Great Britain, see Allen, Naturalist in Britain, 202-219. For a fascinating sociological analysis of contemporary birdwatching practices, see John Law and Michael Lynch, “Lists, Field Guides, and the Descriptive Organization of Seeing: Birdwatching as an Exemplary Observational Activity,” in Representation in Scientific Practice, ed. Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 267-299.

5. Jonathan Dwight, “Editor of ‘The Auk,’” Auk 35 (1918): 262.

6. J. H. Fleming, “In Memoriam: Jonathan Dwight,” Auk 47 (1930): 1-6.

7. See the discussion of Dwight in chapter 3.

8. Dwight, “Editor,” 262.

9. On the aesthetic attraction of birds, see J. A. Allen, “The Present Wholesale Destruction of Bird-Life in the United States,” Science 7 (1886): 195; and Hendy, “Aesthetic Appeal.”

10. The multitude of activities that Audubon leaders employed to promote birdwatching can be traced in its two official organs: Audubon Magazine (1887-1889) and Bird-Lore, begun in 1899.

11. See chapter 2 above.

12. Biographical information on Merriam is contained in Kofalk, No Woman Tenderfoot; and Bonta, Women in the Field, 186-196.

13. On the Smith College Audubon Society, see chapter 6.

14. Florence Merriam, “Hints to Audubon Workers: Fifty Common Birds and How to Know Them,” Audubon Magazine 1 (1887-1888) : 108-113, 132-136, 155-159, 181-185, 200-204, 224-226, 256-259, 271-277; 2 (1888-1889) : 6-12, 34-40, 49-53.

15. Florence Merriam, Birds through an Opera Glass (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1889).

16. Mabel O. Wright, Birdcraft: A Field Guide of Two Hundred Song, Game, and Water Birds (New York: Macmillan, 1895), and Mabel O. Wright and Elliott Coues, Citizen Bird: Scenes from Bird-Life in Plain English for Beginners (New York: Macmillan, 1897), both of which went through several printings and editions. Biographical information on Wright, who was a leading light in the turn-of-the-century Audubon movement, may be found in F[rank] M. C[hapman,] “Mabel Osgood Wright, 1859-1934,” Bird-Lore 36 (1934): 280; Robert H. Welker, “Mabel Osgood Wright,” in Notable American Women, 1607-1950, ed. Edward T. James (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 3:682-684; and Brooks, Speaking for Nature, 168-171 and passim.

Neltje Blanchan, Bird Neighbors (New York: Doubleday and MacClure, 1897), was the first field guide to rely on color illustration and also went through multiple editions. The scanty biographical information on Blanchan is found in Gladys Graham, “Neltje De Graff Doubleday,” Dictionary of American Biography 5 (1930): 392; Robert H. Welker, “Neltje Blanchan De Graff Doubleday,” in Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Edward T. James (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 1:508-509; and Gibbons and Strom, Neighbors, 291, 331, 333.

17. More details surrounding Chapman’s life and early career are contained in chapter 5.

18. [Frank M. Chapman,] [Editorial,] Bird-Lore 1 (1899): 28. The motto began appearing on the mast-head beginning with vol. 1, no. 3 (June 1899).

19. Chapman, Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America. He issued revised editions in 1912 and 1932. The quotation comes from E[dward] P. B[icknell], “Chapman’s ‘Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America,’” Auk 12 (1895): 282-284, on 283.

20. Frank M. Chapman, Bird-Life: A Guide to the Study of Our Common Birds (New York: D. Appleton, 1897).

21. On Seton, who later became a best-selling nature writer, see Betty Keller, Black Wolf: The Life of Ernest Thompson Seton (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1984); and Lutts, Nature Fakers, passim.

22. The quotation comes from a letter from Frank Chapman to William Brewster, 1 October 1903, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives. Frank Chapman, Color Key to North American Birds (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1903).

23. Chapman, Color Key, iv.

24. Biographical information on Reed may be found in Witmer Stone, “Chester A. Reed,” Auk 30(1913): 319.

25. American Ornithology was published until 1906. Publication information and the quotation are from Frank Burns, “A Bibliography of Scarce and Out of Print North American Amateur and Trade Periodicals Devoted More or Less to Ornithology,” supplement to Oologist 32 (1915): 3.

26. Chester A. Reed, Bird Guide, 2 vols. (Worster, Mass.: C. K. Reed, 1906). The book, which was copyrighted in 1905, was also published by W. B. Clark and Co. of Boston in 1906. The publication dates listed in Gibbons and Strom, Neighbors to the Birds, 292, are incorrect.

27. The book was apparently completed by and issued under the name of his father, Charles K. Reed, Western Bird Guide: Birds of the Rockies and West to the Pacific (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, Page, 1913).

28. See, for example, the testimony from Olin.S. Pettingill, Jr., My Way to Ornithology (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 35. On the influence of Reed’s guides on Roger T. Peterson, see Richard L. Zusi, Roger T. Peterson at the Smithsonian (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1984), 14; and John Devlin and Grace Naismith, The World of Roger Tory Peterson (New York: New York Times Books, 1977), 6.

29. Gibbons and Strom, Neighbors to the Birds, 325.

30. A brief but useful history of binoculars is found in “Binocular Instrument,” Encyclopedia Britannica 13th ed. (1926), 3:949-951. See also M[oritz] von Rohr, Die binokularen Instrumente: nach Quellen (Berlin: J. Springer, 1907).

31. Felix Auerbach, The Zeiss Works and the Carl Zeiss Foundation in Jena: Their Scientific, Technical and Sociological Development and Importance Popularly Described, trans. from 5th German ed. by R. Kanthack (London: W & G Foyle, 1927), 85-92.

32. See, for example, the strong endorsement of Lynds Jones, “All Day with the Birds,” Wilson Bulletin 11 (1899): 43.

33. Alfred A. Gross, “History and Progress of Bird Photography in America,” in Fifty Years’ Progress of American Ornithology, 1883-1933, ed. Frank M. Chapman and T. S. Palmer (Lancaster, Pa.: American Ornithologists’ Union, 1933), 159-180.

34. Frank Chapman, Bird Studies with a Camera (New York: D. Appleton, 1900); Francis H. Herrick, The Home Life of Wild Birds (New York: Putnam, 1901); A. Radclyffe Dugmore, Nature and the Camera (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1902); William L. Finley, American Birds, Studied and Photographed from Life (New York: C. Scribner’s and Sons, 1907); Herbert K. Job, Among the Waterfowl (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1903). Finley and Job both became field agents for the National Association of Audubon Societies. On Finley and his career, see Worth Mathewson, William L. Finley: Pioneer Wildlife Photographer (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1986).

35. Chapman (Bird Studies, 3) argued that “hunting with a camera is the highest development of man’s inherent love of the chase.”

36. David V. Herlihy, “The Bicycle Story,” American Heritage of Invention and Technology 7 (Spring 1992): 48-49.

37. Neil F. Posson, “Ornithology and Bicycling,” Oologist 7 (1890): 9-10.

38. See David L. Lewis and Laurence Goldstein, eds.. The Automobile and American Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983); James J. Flink, The Automobile Age (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988).

39. David Allen makes a similar argument in Naturalist in Britain, 207-208. The quotation comes in a letter from Robert Porter Allen to Frank M. Chapman, 2 June 1932, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

40. The distinction was suggested to me by Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 1995).

41. Frank M. Chapman, “Bird Clubs in America,” Bird-Lore 17 (1915): 348.

42. The history of Church and Co. and its bird cards are discussed briefly in Robert Jay, The Trade Card in Nineteenth-Century America (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987), 56 and 103; and Elizabeth Pullar, “Baking Soda Bonus Cards: Arm and Hammer Trade Cards Designed by L. A. Fuertes,” Antiques Journal 35 (January 1980): 36-38.

43. [Frank M. Chapman,] [Editorial,] Bird-Lore 14 (1912): 237.

44. The original edition was Robert W. Wood, How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers: A Manual of Flornithology for Beginners (San Francisco: P. Elder, 1907). Biographical information on Wood comes from R. B. Lindsay, “Robert Williams Wood,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography 14 (1976): 497-499; and G. H. Dieke, “Robert Williams Wood, May 2, 1868-August 11, 1955,” Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 62 (1993): 441-464.

45. In 1908 Wood published a second volume, Animal Analogues: Verses and Illustrations (San Francisco: P. Elder, 1908). He subsequently merged the illustrations and text from his two previous volumes in How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers and Other Woodcuts: A Revised Manual of Flornithology for Beginners (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1917). According to information gleaned from the OCLC catalog, Wood’s popular book was repeatedly reprinted until 1959.

46. The cartoon appeared in the New Yorker 11, no. 12 (4 May 1935): 14.

47. On the activities of several early bird clubs, see the series of articles from Bird-Lore 17 (1915): 347-372.

48. Chapman, “Bird Clubs,” 347.

49. See the list of “Ornithological Societies,” Bird-Lore 37 (September 1935): 367-372. One of the most active bird club promoters was the nature writer Ernst Harold Baynes, who founded the Meriden (N.H.) Bird Club in 1910 and later helped establish more than two hundred similar institutions during his popular national lecture tours. See the obituary, T. S. Palmer, “Ernest Harold Baynes,” Auk 42 (1925): 480-481, and the longer (uncritical) biography by Raymond Gorges, Ernest Harold Baynes: Naturalist and Crusader (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928).

50. Joseph Hickey, “The Amateur Ornithologist and His Bird Club,” Bird-Lore 39 (1937): 425-429, encouraged bird club members to become more active in cooperative studies.

51. [Frank Chapman,] [Editorial,] Bird-Lore 1 (1899): 28.

52. The sales figures are from Pearson, “Fifty Years,” 203.

53. Though not really a field guide, Rev. J[ames] Hibbert Langille, M.A., Our Birds in Their Haunts: A Popular Treatise on the Birds of Eastern North America (Boston: S. E. Cassino, 1884) was among the earliest bird books clearly aimed at a broad audience of noncollectors. In addition to works by Merriam, Wright, Blanchan, Chapman, and Reed, some of the field guides available before Peterson include Austin C. Apgar, Pocket Key of the Birds of the Northern United States, East of the Rocky Mountains (Trenton, N.J.: John L. Murphy, 1893); H. E. Parkhurst, The Birds’ Calendar (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894); Herbert Eugene Walter and Alice Hall Walter, Wild Birds in City Parks, rev. ed. (Chicago, 1902); H. E. Parkhurst, How to Name All the Birds (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903); Ralph Hoffmann, A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1904); John D. Kuser, The Way to Study Birds (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917); Luther E. Wyman and Elizabeth F. Burnell, Field Book of Birds of the Southwestern United States (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925); Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927).

54. See chapter 6.

55. See chapter 4.

56. Histories of the Wilson Ornithological Society and its early publication outlets are found in Jerome Jackson, Harold Mayfield, and George A. Hall, “A History of the First One Hundred Years of the Wilson Ornithological Society,” Wilson Bulletin 100 (1988): 617-618; Harold Mayfield, “The Early Years of the Wilson Ornithological Society: 1885-1921,” ibid.: 619-624; George A. Hall, “The Middle Years of the Wilson Ornithological Society: 1922-1955,” ibid.: 625-631; Jerome A. Jackson, “The Wilson Ornithological Society in the Last Third of Its First Century: 1956-1988,” ibid.: 632-649; and Kastner, World of Watchers, 132-138.

57. See, for example, [Lynds Jones?,] “Notes,” Wilson Quarterly 4, no. 1 (1892): 42, who argued that the Wilson Chapter was unique because “its method is simply co-operation in study.”

58. In 1950 the organization changed its name to the Wilson Ornithological Society.

59. The biographical information that follows is from S. Charles Kendeigh, “In Memoriam: Lynds Jones,” Auk 69 (1952): 258-265; Mrs. H. J. Taylor, “Lynds Jones,” Wilson Bulletin 50 (1938): 225-238; and Keir Sterling, “Lynds Jones,” Dictionary of American Biography supplement 5 (1977): 373-375.

60. By 1900 Jones was offering beginning, advanced, and summer school courses in ornithology. All three were heavily field oriented. See Lynds Jones, “On Methods in Teaching Ornithology at Oberlin College,” Bird-Lore 2 (1900): 14-18.

61. See, for example, the description of the goals of the organization in [Lynds Jones?,] “Notes,” Wilson Quarterly 4, no. 1 (1892): 42. See also Lynds Jones, “A Criticism,” Wilson Bulletin 13 (1901): 75.

62. [Lynds Jones,] “Editorial,” Wilson Bulletin 9 (1897): 10.

63. William L. Dawson, “Editorial,” Wilson Bulletin 9 (1897): 32, and “Committee on Geographical Distribution: Further Mechanical Helps to Observation,” Wilson Bulletin 10 (1898): 28-29. For a biographical sketch of Dawson, see Witmer Stone, “William Leon Dawson,” Auk 45 (1928): 417.

64. See, for example, [Lynds Jones,] “All Day with the Birds: May 7, 1902,” Wilson Bulletin 14 (1902): 125, in which the author argues: “There is a fascination about the quest for the largest list of birds in a day which is not equalled even by the search for new species in a region which one has worked for years.” See also Lynds Jones, “A March Horizon,” Wilson Bulletin 11 (1899): 22-24.

65. On the competitive aspects of listing, see Bartlett Hendricks, “Birding Is a Sport,” Audubon Magazine 48 (1946): 246-248, 304-306; Richard B. Fischer, “That Big Day,” Audubon Magazine (May-June 1953): 114-117, 142; and Roger Tory Peterson, Birds over America (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1948), 13-35. For a defense of the activity of listing, see Guy Emerson, “The Lure of the List,” Audubon Magazine 42 (1940): 36-39. Competitions to find the largest number of birds in a single day seem to have been particularly popular.

66. See the series of editorials from [Lynds Jones]: Wilson Bulletin 10 (1898): 30-31, 77-78; and 19 (1907): 161.

67. See, for example, the series of reports and pleas from Lynds Jones: “A March Horizon,” Wilson Bulletin 11 (1899): 22-24; “Editorial,” Wilson Bulletin 11 (1899): 46-47; “A New Year Horizon for All,” Wilson Bulletin 14(1902): 133; “A May-Day Horizon,” Wilson Bulletin 15 (1903): 31; “Editorial,” Wilson Bulletin 16 (1904): 60-61; “Editorial,” Wilson Bulletin 27 (1915): 287.

68. Lynds Jones, “With the Birds in Fourteen States,” Wilson Bulletin 12 (1900): 1; Lynds Jones, “The Horizons,” Wilson Bulletin 12 (1900): 10-38. For a criticism of the effort, see the review by F.S.D., “The Wilson Bulletin,” Condor 4 (1901): 53-54. For Jones’s reply see “A Criticism,” Wilson Bulletin 13 (1901): 76-78; and for Dawson’s reply, see “A Defense of Bird Horizons,” Condor 4 (1901): 132-133.

69. In the early issues of the Wilson Bulletin, Jones frequently mentioned the need for more articles. See, for example, [Lynds Jones,] “Editorial,” Wilson Bulletin 9 (1897): 64, and “Editorial,” Wilson Bulletin 11 (1899): 62.

70. [Lynds Jones,] “Editorial,” Wilson Bulletin 36 (1924): 93.

71. [Frank M. Chapman,] “A Christmas Bird-Census,” Bird-Lore 2 (1900): 192.

72. See, for example, Peterson, Birds over America, 37-47; Gibbons and Strom, Neighbors to the Birds, 312-313; and Chandler S. Robbins, “The Christmas Count,” in Birds in Our Lives, ed. Alfred Stefferud (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1966), 154-163.

73. Chapman once wrote that the AOU migration network signaled the “beginning of the Epoch of Popular Bird Study.” [Frank M. Chapman,] [Editorial,] Bird-Lore 17 (1915): 216.

74. William Leon Dawson, “Committee on Geographical Distribution,” Wilson Bulletin 9 (1897): 76. Dawson promised that the reports would be published in the next issue of the Bulletin. In January 1898 Jones reported on two “censo-horizons” that he had undertaken on 31 December 1897 and 4 January 1898 (the latter in the company of Dawson). At the end of his report, Jones urged “all who can do so to try this sort of winter work.” Lynds Jones, “The Bird Census,” Wilson Bulletin, 10 (1898): 5-9. The next year Jones printed a series of “December Horizons,” before his efforts were overshadowed by Chapman’s Christmas Census.

75. [Frank M. Chapman,] “The Christmas Bird Census,” Bird-Lore 3 (1901): 28-33.

76. These are reported in [Frank M. Chapman,] “Bird-Lore’s Tenth Christmas Census,” Bird-Lore 12 (1910): 19-36. The total count comes from “Fiftieth Christmas Bird Count,” Audubon Field Notes 4, no. 2 (April 1950): 45.

77. [Frank M. Chapman,] “Bird-Lore’s Thirteenth Christmas Census,” Bird-Lore 15 (1913): 20-45. As was often the case, Chapman highlighted the record (106 species). On the career of Allan Brooks, see Hamilton M. Laing, Allen Brooks: Artist Naturalist (Victoria, B.C.: British Columbia Provincial Museum, 1979).

78. “Bird-Lore’s Thirty-fifth Christmas Census,” Bird-Lore 37 (1935): 31-85. The list of species located is found on pp. 84-85.

79. “Fiftieth Christmas Count,” 45.

80. As early as 1903 Lynds Jones suggested that observers prepare for a count by first scouting out areas in which birds might be found. See his “New Year Horizon,” Wilson Bulletin 15 (1903): 113-114.

81. C[harles] H. R[ogers], “Bird-Lore’s Fifteenth Christmas Census,” Bird-Lore 17 (1915): 22.

82. C[harles] H. R[ogers], “Bird-Lore’s Eighteenth Christmas Bird Count,” Bird-Lore 19 (1917): 317-318.

83. See, for example, [Frank M. Chapman,] [Editorial,] Bird-Lore 13 (1911): 48.

84. [Frank M. Chapman,] [Editorial,] Bird-Lore 24 (1922): 54.

85. The first comment is from “Fiftieth Christmas Bird Count,” 43. The second is from Leonard Wing and Millard Jenks, “Christmas Censuses: The Amateurs’ Contribution to Science,” Bird-Lore 41 (1939): 343-350, on 343.

86. “Preliminary Bibliography of Articles Based on Christmas Bird Counts,” Audubon Field Notes 4, no. 2 (April 1950): 187. By 1950 the number had increased to eighteen, thanks primarily to the work of Leonard Wing, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin who recruited WPA workers to process the mounds of Christmas Census data. On the development of census techniques, see S. Charles Kendeigh, “Measurement of Bird Populations,” Ecological Monographs 14, no. 1 (1944): 67-106. For a more recent discussion and critique of data gathered by Christmas Census and other cooperative observational projects, see John Terbough, Where Have All the Birds Gone?: Essays on the Biology and Conservation of Birds that Migrate to the American Tropics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 11-18.

87. Figures for the total number of migration report contributors are mentioned regularly in the annual Report of the Chief of the Biological Survey.

88. Wells W. Cooke, Report on the Bird Migration in the Mississippi Valley in the Years 1884 and 1885, ed. and rev. by C. Hart Merriam, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Division of Economic Agriculture, Bulletin no. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1888).

89. The quotation comes from T. S. Palmer, “In Memoriam: Wells Woodridge Cooke,” Auk 34 (1917): 132.

90. Biographical information on Cooke comes from Witmer Stone, “Prof. Wells W. Cooke,” Auk 33 (1916): 354-355; and Palmer, “In Memoriam,” 119-132.

91. See William Rowan’s praise in “Fifty Years of Bird Migration,” in Fifty Years’ Progress of American Ornithology, 1883-1933, ed. Frank M. Chapman and T. S. Palmer (Lancaster, Pa.: American Ornithologists’ Union, 1933), 51-63, on 54.

92. Wells W. Cooke, “Preliminary Census of the Birds of the United States,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bulletin no. 187, 11 February 1915.

93. Wells W. Cooke, “Second Annual Report of Bird Counts in the United States, with Discussion of Results,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bulletin no. 396, 23 October 1916, on 3.

94. The announcement and instructions for volunteers appear in “Bird-Lore’s First Breeding-Bird Census,” Bird-Lore 39 (1937): 147-150.

95. Accounts of the development of bird banding are numerous. See, for example, Frederick C. Lincoln, “Bird Banding,” in Fifty Years’ Progress of American Ornithology, 1883-1933, ed. Frank M. Chapman and T. S. Palmer (Lancaster, Pa.: American Ornithologists’ Union, 1933), 65-88; Leon J. Cole, “Early History of Bird Banding in America,” Wilson Bulletin 34 (1922): 108-114; and Harold B. Wood, “The History of Bird Banding,” Auk 62 (1945): 256-265.

96. Cole, who is primarily remembered for his work as a geneticist, obtained a Ph.D. degree at Harvard in 1906. See R. A. McCabe, “Wisconsin’s Forgotten Ornithologist,” Passenger Pigeon 41 (1979): 129-131; and A. B. Chapman, “Leon Jacob Cole,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography 17:173-175.

97. Leon J. Cole, “Suggestions for a Method of Studying the Migration of Birds,” Third Report of the Michigan Academy of Sciences (1901): 67-70.

98. Among the earliest published results of bird banding studies were Paul Bartsch, “Notes on the Herons of the District of Columbia,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection 45 (1904): 104-111; and P. A. Taverner, “The Tagging of Birds,” Bulletin of the Michigan Ornithological Club 5 (1904): 50-51.

99. Cole, “Early History,” 109-110.

100. Wood, “History of Bird Banding,” 262-263.

101. S. Charles Kendeigh, “In Memoriam: Samuel Prentiss Baldwin,” Auk 57 (1940): 1-13.

102. S. Prentiss Baldwin, “Bird Banding by Means of Systematic Trapping,” Abstracts of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New York, no. 31 (1919): 23-56.

103. Lincoln, “Bird Banding,” 71. Biographical information on Lincoln, who developed the concept of migratory flyways from the Biological Survey files, is in John K. Terres, “Big Brother to the Waterfowl,” Audubon Magazine 49 (1947): 150-158; and Ira N. Gabrielson, “Obituary,” Auk 79 (1962): 495-499.

104. Wood, “History of Bird Banding,” 264.

105. Montague Chamberlain, A Popular Handbook of the Ornithology of the United States Based on Nuttall’s Manual (Boston: Little, Brown, 1891), l:vi-vii. Chamberlain repeated the gist of this statement in a revised edition of Nuttall’s manual published five years later: Popular Handbook of the Ornithology of Eastern North America, By Thomas Nuttall, 2d rev. ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1896), 1 :viii-ix.

106. Frank M. Chapman to William Brewster, 15 June 1890, William Brewster Papers, MCZ Archives.

107. Thomas Mayo Brewer, North American Oology, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, no. 11 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1857). Biographical information on Brewer may be found in George E. Gifford, “Thomas Mayo Brewer, M.D. ... A Blackbird and Duck, Sparrow and Mole,” Harvard Medical Bulletin 37, no. 1 (Fall 1962): 32-34; and “Thomas Mayo Brewer,” Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 5 (1880): 102-104.

108. In 1840 Brewer published an inexpensive edition of Wilson’s American Ornithology. He was also a correspondent and friend of Audubon, who named two bird species after him. See Gifford, “Brewer,” 33-34.

109. [Thomas Mayo Brewer,] “Instructions in Reference to Collecting Nests and Eggs of North American Birds,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 2, no. 9 (1860): 1-22. The reference to the high cost of illustrations is from “Thomas Mayo Brewer,” 104.

110. Charles Bendire, Life Histories of North America Birds, with Special Reference to Their Breeding Habits and Eggs, U.S. National Museum, Special Bulletin no. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1892). Biographical information on Bendire may be found in James C. Merrill, “In Memoriam: Charles Emil Bendire,” Auk 15 (1898): 1-6; F. H. Knowlton, “Major Charles E. Bendire,” Osprey 1 (1897): 87-90; and Hume, Ornithologists of the United States Army Medical Corps, 22-37.

111. According to the index of Bendire, Life Histories, 1: 439-446, over 100 individuals contributed observations for the first volume alone.

112. Ridgway’s experiences are described in John Ridgway, “Ridgway’s Drawing for Bendire Plates,” Condor 29 (1927): 177-181.

113. Charles Bendire, Life Histories of North American Birds, with Special Reference to Their Breeding Habits, vol. 2, Special Bulletin no. 3 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1895).

114. For biographical information on Ralph, see A. K. Fisher, “Dr. William LaGrange Ralph,” Auk 24 (1907): 461-462.

115. Arthur Cleveland Bent to Charles D. Walcott, 2 March 1910, Office of the Secretary, 1890-1929, RU 45, Box 7, SIA. This collection contains extensive documentation of Bent’s relationship with the Smithsonian and his negotiations over the right to complete the Life Histories series. Biographical sketches of Bent are found in Wendell Taber, “In Memoriam: Arthur Cleveland Bent,” Auk 72 (1955): 332-339; and Edwin Way Teale, “A. C. Bent: Plutarch of Birds,” Audubon Magazine 48 (1946): 14-20. By the time of his death, Bent’s egg collection numbered over thirty thousand specimens.

116. Frank L. Burns, “The American Crow (Corvus americanus),” Wilson Bulletin 7 (1895): 2-41, and “The Flicker,” Wilson Bulletin 12 (1900): 1-83. For biographical information on Burns, see Frank L. Burns, “The Autobiography of Franklin Lorenzo Burns,” Wilson Bulletin 38 (1926): 132-139; and T. S. Palmer, “Franklin L. Burns,” Auk 65 (1948): 646-647.

117. Frank M. Chapman, “The Warbler Book,” Bird Lore 6 (1904): 61-63.

118. Frank M. Chapman, The Warblers of North America (New York: D. Appleton, 1907). The list of contributors is found on pp. 5-6.

119. Arthur Cleveland Bent to Charles D. Walcott, 29 April 1921, Office of the Secretary, 1890-1929, RU 45, Box 7, SIA.

120. A short history of the series, including titles and dates of each volume and the arrangements made to complete it after Bent’s death in 1954, is found in Oliver L. Austin, Jr., comp. and ed., Life Histories of North American Cardinals, Grosbeaks, Buntings, Towhees, Finches, Sparrows, and Allies; Order Passiformes: Family Fringillidae. Part One: Genera Richmondena through Piplio (Part) (Washington, D.C: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1968), xxiii-xxvii. See also the review of the series by Richard C. Banks, Review of Life Histories of North American Cardinals, by A. C. Bent, Auk 86 (1969): 768-770.

121. A list of Bent’s travels is contained in Taber, “Arthur Cleveland Bent,” 336.

122. A. C. Bent to Charles D. Walcott, 21 March 1910, RU 45, Office of the Secretary, 1907-1924 (Charles D. Walcott), Records, Box 7, SIA.

123. See, for example, Arthur C. Bent, “Smithsonian Institution: Circular Letter Regarding the Work Entitled ‘Life Histories of North American Birds,’” Office of the Secretary (Charles D. Walcott), 1903-1924, RU 45, Box 10, last folder, SIA, and his “Life Histories of North American Birds,” Auk 39 (1922): 590-591.

124. Arthur Cleveland Bent, Life Histories of North American Diving Birds: Order Pygopodes, Smithsonian Institution, U.S. National Museum, Bulletin no. 107 (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1919).

125. Oliver L. Austin, Jr., comp. and ed., Life Histories of North American Cardinals, Grosbeaks, Buntings, Towhees, Finches, Sparrows, and Allies (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1968), xxiv.

126. See chapter 4.

127. See, for example, [T. C. Stephens?,] “Editorial,” Wilson Bulletin 34 (1927): 231.

128. The original article was by G.R.C., “Field Glass,” Ornithologist and Oologist 7 (1882): 150-151; 8 (1883): 5-6. The anonymous review is in Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 8 (1883): 236.

129. For biographical information on Brewster, see chapter 2.

130. William Brewster and Ralph Hoffmann, “Unsatisfactory Records,” Auk 19 (1902): 420.

131. Or so Ludlow Griscom claimed in his article, “Historical Development of Sight Recognition,” Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New York, nos. 63-65 (1954): 16-20, on 19-20. The term “personal equation” appears regularly in discussions about the problem of sight records and was borrowed from the fields of astronomy and psychology. See Simon Schaffer, “Astronomers Mark Time: Discipline and the Personal Equation,” Science in Context 2 (1988): 115-145. .

132. J. A. A[llen], Review of Birds of the Cambridge Region of Massachusetts, by William Brewster, Auk 23 (1906): 466-470.

133. William Brewster, The Birds of the Cambridge Region of Massachusetts, Memoirs of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, no. 4 (Cambridge, Mass.: The Club, 1906), 5.

134. See Walter Faxon, “Brewster’s Warbler (Helminthophilia leucobronchialis) a Hybrid between the Golden-winged Warbler (Helminthophilia chrysoptera) and the Blue-Winged Warbler (Helminthophilia pinus),” Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 40 (August 1913): 311-316. See also F[rank] M. C[hapman], Review of “Brewster’s Warbler,” by Walter Faxon, Bird-Lore 15 (1913): 312.

135. [Frank M. Chapman,] “A Question of Identity,” Bird-Lore 4 (1902): 166-167.

136. [Frank M. Chapman,] [Editorial,] Bird-Lore 11 (1909): 37.

137. Griscom is the subject of a recent biography, William E. Davis, Jr., Dean of the Birdwatchers: A Biography of Ludlow Griscom (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994). Also useful are Roger Tory Peterson, “In Memoriam: Ludlow Griscom,” Auk 82 (1965): 598-605; Edwin Way Teale, “Ludlow Griscom: Virtuoso of Field Identification,” Audubon Magazine 47 (1945): 349-358; and John H. Baker, “Ludlow Griscom: The Man,” Audubon Magazine 61 (1959): 200-201, 213, 238-239.

138. Ludlow Griscom, “The Identification of the Commoner Anatidae of Eastern United States” (master’s thesis, Cornell University, 1915), published as “Field Studies of the Anatidae of the Atlantic Coast,” Auk 39 (1922): 517-530; 40 (1923): 69-80.

139. Ludlow Griscom, “Problems of Field Identification,” Auk 39 (1922): 31-41, on 33.

140. Ibid., 40.

141. Ludlow Griscom, Birds of New York City Region (New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1923).

142. Witmer Stone, Review of Birds of the New York City Region, by Ludlow Griscom, Auk 41 (1924): 173.

143. On the importance of the Bronx Country Bird Club, see the discussion in John Farrand, Jr., “The Bronx County Bird Club: Memories of Ten Boys and an Era That Shaped American Birding,” American Birds 45 (1991): 372-381; Davis, Dean of the Birdwatchers, 107-109; Peterson, “Ludlow Griscom,” 600-601; and Kastner, World of Watchers, 185-194.

144. Roger Tory Peterson, “The Era of Ludlow Griscom,” Audubon Magazine 62 (1960): 102-103, 131, 146. Quoted in Davis, Dean of the Birdwatchers, 107.

145. The appearance of Peterson’s field guide is generally considered to have contributed greatly to the post-World War II birding boom, a subject beyond the scope of the present book. See the discussions in Gibbons and Strom, Neighbors to the Birds, 287-288, 295-305; and Kastner, World of Watchers, 195-208.

146. See for example, Joseph Grinnell’s argument that photographs of birds could replace study skins in documenting the existence of rare species: J. G., “Notes and News,” Condor 39 (1937): 133.

147. On the importance of these early centers of graduate study for the development of ornithology, see the next chapter.

148. Frederick C. Lincoln, “What Constitutes a Record?,” Bulletin of the Audubon Society of New Hampshire 8, no. 2 (Dec. 1928): 17-20.

149. [Witmer Stone], Review of “What Constitutes a Record?” by F. C. Lincoln, Auk 47 (1929): 413-414; and T. C. S[tephens], Review of “What Constitutes a Record?” by F. C. Lincoln, Wilson Bulletin 41 (1929): 113.

150. W. L. McAtee, “The Specimen Fetish,” Scientific Monthly 54 (1942): 565-566.

151. T. S. P[almer], “The Condor,” Bird-Lore 15 (1913): 314.

152. The first mention I have found of this issue is a comment on the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s Bird Lists published in Bird-Lore: “Competitive lists of any kind are always in danger of encouraging careless identification.” [Witmer Stone,] Review of Bird-Lore, Auk 30 (1913): 605. See also [Witmer Stone,] Review of Bird-Lore, Auk 37 (1920): 485-486, and Review of “What Constitutes a Record?,” 414.

CHAPTER EIGHT

1. Joseph Grinnell to Frank M. Chapman, 12 May 1930, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

2. On the growth of the AOU, see chapter 3. On AOU Secretary T. S. Palmer’s recruiting efforts, see P. A. Taverner to Ernst Mayr, 26 November 1935, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUG(FP) 14.7, Professional Correspondence, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts (hereafter cited as Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA).

3. During its first decade of publication, the average number of pages per year in the Auk was 427. From 1901 to 1910, the average was nearly 500. By the 1910s, the average had increased to nearly 600 pages per year, and by the 1920s, to nearly 650 pages. However, the AOU was forced to reduce the size of the publication when many members stopped paying their dues during the Depression. During the 1930s, the average number of pages per year declined to 581.

4. T. S. Palmer, “The Forty-seventh Stated Meeting of the American Ornithologists’ Union,” Auk 47 (1930): 218-230.

5. Joseph Grinnell, “An Analysis of Trends in the A.O.U.,” ms. speech, Joseph Grinnell Papers, 73/25, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California. I located twenty-five of the twenty-seven replies in the archives of the MVZ.

6. Ibid., 2.

7. Herbert Friedmann to Joseph Grinnell, 19 June 1930, MVZ Archives; and Division of Birds, National Museum of Natural History, Records, RU 105, Box 18, Folder 6, SIA.

8. On the favorable impression of Stresemann’s journal among other American reformers, see also J. H. Fleming to Ernst Mayr, undated letter (ca. early 1930s), Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

9. After Grinnell’s death in 1939, Ernst Mayr wrote that “He was closer to the ideas of the younger set of American ornithologists than anybody else of his generation.” Ernst Mayr to Alden Miller, 6 June 1939, MVZ Archives.

10. Grinnell, “Analysis of Trends,” 4. In the corrected copy of the manuscript, Grinnell crossed out the words “real scientists” and inserted “professionals.”

11. Ibid., 5-7. As the previous chapter reveals, by the time he presented his address, Grinnell had already taken significant steps to revitalize the bird protection committee.

12. Ibid., 10.

13. Joseph Grinnell to Herbert Friedmann, 17 July 1930, Division of Birds, Records, RU 105, National Museum of Natural History, Box 18, Folder 6, SIA.

14. Witmer Stone to Joseph Grinnell, 1 June 1930, MVZ Archives.

15. See Joseph Grinnell to Witmer Stone, 24 October 1930, appended to the ms. copy of “Analysis of Trends,” Joseph Grinnell Papers, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, Calif.

16. Witmer Stone to Joseph Grinnell, 20 March 1931, MVZ Archives. The address was never published.

17. See Ernst Mayr to Joseph Grinnell, 14 October 1937, 16 December 1937, 17 March 1938, MVZ Archives. See also Ernst Mayr to Lawrence Hicks, 28 December 1937, and Ernst Mayr to Arthur C. Bent, 18 October 1937, AOU Records, RU 7440, Box 40, Folder 4, SIA.

18. See, Laurence R. Vesey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965); Roger L. Geiger, To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities, 1900-1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 1-57; and Robert Kohler, “The Ph.D. Machine: Building on the Collegiate Base,” Isis 81 (1990): 638-662. The first American Ph.D. degree was awarded in 1861 at Yale, but it was not until a decade later that other institutions followed this lead.

19. Kohler, “Ph.D. Machine,” 643.

20. Determining who earned the first Ph.D. degree in “ornithology” is difficult. One candidate for this honor, Reuben M. Strong, completed his doctoral degree at Harvard in 1901. However, his dissertation, “The Development of Color in the Definitive Feather,” failed to gain much attention in ornithological circles. A decade later, Arthur A. Allen finished his landmark study, “The Red-Winged Blackbird: A Study in the Ecology of a Cattail Marsh,” at Cornell, a dissertation that was widely commented upon by ornithologists and subsequently published.

21. Arthur A. Allen, “Ornithological Education in America,” in Fifty Years’ Progress of American Ornithology, ed. Frank M. Chapman and T. S. Palmer (Lancaster, Pa.: American Ornithologists’ Union, 1933), 215-229, on 225. Allen’s survey did not attempt to count the number of Ph.D.s in other biological fields who did research on birds and joined the AOU, though my sense is that the number was still small in 1933.

22. Jane Maienschein, Transforming Traditions in American Biology, 1880-1915 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 3. Although most who have written on the subject agree that biology changed significantly around the turn of the century, there remains significant disagreement about exactly what changed and why. See William Coleman, Biology in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Garland E. Allen, Life Science in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), and “Naturalists and Experimentalists: The Genotype and the Phenotype,” Studies in History of Biology 3 (1979): 179-209; the series of papers in the “Special Section on American Morphology at the Turn of the Century,” in Journal of the History of Biology 14 (1981); Philip Pauly, “The Appearance of Academic Biology in Late Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of the History of Biology 17 (1984): 369-397; Keith R. Benson, “From Museum Research to Laboratory Biology: The Transformation of Natural History into Academic Biology,” in The American Development of Biology, ed. Ronald Rainger, Keith R. Benson, and Jane Maienschein (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 49-83, as well as the other papers in that volume; and Merriley Borell, Album of Science: The Biological Sciences in the Twentieth Century (New York: Scribner, 1989).

23. On the history of ecology before World War II, see the references in chapter 6, n. 112. On the history of animal behavior studies in the United States, see Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., “Charles Otis Whitman, Wallace Craig, and the Biological Study of Animal Behavior in the United States, 1898-1925,” in The American Development of Biology, ed. Ronald Rainger, Keith R. Benson, and Jane Maienschein (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 185-218; Donald A. Dewsbury, “A Brief History of the Study of Animal Behavior in North America,” Perspectives in Ethology 8 (1989): 85-122; and Gregg Mitman and Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., “Struggling for Identity: The Study of Animal Behavior in America, 1930-1945,” in The Expansion of American Biology, ed. Keith E. Benson, Jane Maienschein, and Ronald Rainger (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1981), 164-194.

In the 1930s and 1940s, one brand of animal behavior studies coalesced into the scientific discipline of ethology. See W. H. Thorpe, The Origins and Rise of Ethology (London: Heinemann, 1979); Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., “On the Emergence of Ethology as a Scientific Discipline,” Conspectus of History 1 (1981): 62-81, and “The Development of Evolutionary Ethology,” in Evolution from Molecules to Man, ed. D. S. Bendall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 429-444; and John R. Durant, “Innate Character in Animals and Man: A Perspective on the Origins of Ethology,” in Biology, Medicine, and Society, ed. Charles Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 157-192.

24. The standard history of the MCZ is Winsor, Reading the Shape of Nature, but Lurie, Louis Agassiz, remains useful for the early years of the institution. On the development of biology at Harvard, see the above volumes as well as Pauly, “Academic Biology,” and Alfred Romer, “Zoology at Harvard,” Bios 19 (1948): 7-20.

25. Mark V. Barrow, Jr., “Gentlemanly Specialists in the Age of Professionalization: The First Century of Ornithology at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology,” in Contributions to the History of North American Ornithology, ed. William E. Davis, Jr., and Jerome A. Jackson (Cambridge, Mass.: Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1995), 55-94.

26. Peters, “Collections of Birds in the United States,” 131-141.

27. The history of this project—which eventually encompassed sixteen volumes and took over six decades to complete—is detailed in Walter J. Bock, “A Special Review: Peters’ Check-list of the Birds of the World,” Auk 107 (1990): 629-648.

28. In 1953 the MCZ hired Raymond Paynter, Jr., its first ornithological curator with a Ph.D. degree. That same year Ernst Mayr accepted an Alexander Agassiz Professorship at the MCZ. Until his retirement in 1975, Mayr chaired the dissertation committees of all the ornithologists who earned Ph.D. degrees at Harvard.

29. On the history of biology at Berkeley, see Richard M. Eakin, “History of Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley,” Bios 27 (1956): 67-60, and History of Zoology at Berkeley (Berkeley: University of California Printing Department, 1988).

30. Eakin, “History of Zoology,” 69-73. Although most of his research was done on invertebrates, Ritter was also interested in ornithology. See T. S. Palmer, “William Emerson Ritter,” Auk 64 (1947): 665-666.

31. Eakin, “History of Zoology,” 73-76.

32. Grinnell’s life and work are memorialized in three uncritical biographical sketches: Jean M. Linsdale, “In Memoriam: Joseph Grinnell,” Auk 59 (1942): 285; Hilda Wood Grinnell, “Joseph Grinnell, 1877-1939,” Condor 42 (1940): 3-34 (which also contains an extensive bibliography); and Alden Miller, “Joseph Grinnell,” Systematic Zoology 3 (1964): 195-249. Grinnell’s contribution to ornithological training is mentioned prominently in Ned K. Johnson, “Ornithology at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology,” in Contributions to the History of North American Ornithology, ed. William E. Davis, Jr., and Jerome A. Jackson (Cambridge, Mass.: Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1995), 183-221.

33. Completed in May 1913 and published as Joseph Grinnell and H. S. Swarth, “An Account of the Birds and Mammals of the San Jacinto Area of Southern California with Remarks upon the Behavior of Geographic Races on the Margins of Their Habitat,” University of California Publications in Zoology 10 (1913): 197-406.

34. On the history of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, see the Grinnell obituaries cited above; Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations,’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39,” Social Studies of Science 19 (1989): 387-420; and James R. Griesemer and Elihu Gerson, “Collaboration in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology,” Journal of the History of Biology 26 (1993): 185-203. On the differences between Grinnell’s and Alexander’s visions for the proposed museum, see ibid., 188-189.

35. Alexander shared Grinnell’s concern about the decline of California’s native wildlife. For a discussion of Grinnell’s extensive conservation activities and their relationship to his scientific program, see Alfred Runte, Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness, 2nd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990); and Dunlap, Saving America’s Wildlife.

36. Grinnell’s system is discussed in his “Uses and Methods of a Research Museum,” Popular Science Monthly 77 (1910): 163-169, and “The Museum Conscience,” Museum Work 4 (1922): 62-63.

37. Ernst Mayr, “Alden Holmes Miller,” Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 43 (1973): 177-214, on 179-180. Further discussion of Grinnell’s research program is found in Griesemer and Gerson, “Collaboration,” 193-201; and James Griesemer, “Modeling in the Museum: On the Role of Remnant Models in the Work of Joseph Grinnell,” Biology and Philosophy 5 (1990): 3-36.

38. During his long and productive career, Miller advised more than two dozen doctoral students, including several who subsequently joined the faculty at Berkeley. For a complete list, see Johnson, “Ornithology,” 187; and Frank A. Pitelka, “Academic Family Tree for Loye and Alden Miller,” Condor 95 (1995): 1065-1067. On Miller’s life and career, see Richard M. Eakin, A. Starker Leopold, and R. A. Stirton, “Alden Holmes Miller,” in In Memoriam (Berkeley: University of California, 1967), 68-71; John Davis, “In Memoriam: Alden Holmes Miller,” Auk 84 (1967): 192-202; and Mayr, “Miller.”

39. Allen, “Ornithological Education,” 225.

40. On Herrick’s life and career, see Winfred G. Leutner, “Francis Hobart Herrick,” Science 92 (1940): 371-372; and “Francis Hobart Herrick,” National Cyclopedia of American Biography 31 (1944): 276-277. On the history of the Department of Biology that Herrick headed, see Frederick C. Waite, “Natural History and Biology in the Undergraduate Colleges of Western Reserve University,” Western Reserve University Bulletin 7 (1929): 21-41. Among Herrick’s many publications are The Home Life of Wild Birds (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902); The American Eagle: A Study in Natural and Civil History (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1934); and Wild Birds at Home (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1935).

41. See S. Charles Kendeigh, “In Memoriam: Samuel Prentiss Baldwin,” Auk 57 (1940): 1-12; and Francis H. Herrick, “Samuel Prentiss Baldwin,” Science 89 (1939): 212-213.

42. On the history of the Department of Zoology and its relationship to the Museum of Zoology, see A. Franklin Shull, “The Department of Zoology,” in The University of Michigan: An Encyclopedic Survey, ed. Wilfred B. Shaw (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1951), 2:738-750; J. Speed Rogers, “The University Museums” and “The Museum of Zoology,” in The University of Michigan: An Encyclopedic Survey, ed. Walter A. Donnelly (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1956), 4:1431-1442, 1502-1519. Ruthven’s career is discussed in his autobiography, Naturalist in Two Worlds: Random Recollections of a University President (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963). On Van Tyne, see Harold Mayfield, “In Memoriam: Josselyn Van Tyne,” Auk 74 (1957): 322-332.

43. For an up-to-date list of all those who have earned doctoral degrees with an emphasis on ornithology at Michigan, see the homepage for University of Michigan Museum of Zoology Bird Division, http://www.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/birds/birdweb.html.

44. The glowing assessment of Wilder and the Department of Zoology comes from Morris Bishop, A History of Cornell (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962), 172-173. On the history of biology at Cornell, see Albert H. Wright’s disjointed chronicle, “Biology at Cornell University,” Bios 24 (1953): 122-145; and Waterman T. Hewitt, Cornell University: A History, 4 vols. (New York: University Publishing Society, 1905), 2:173-228.

45. J. H. Comstock, “Burt Green Wilder,” Science 61 (1925): 531-533; “Burt Green Wilder,” Who Was Who in America (Chicago: A. N. Marquis, 1942), 1:1345; and “Burt Green Wilder,” National Cyclopaedia of American Biography 4 (1897): 481. On Wilder’s social views, see Edward H. Beardsley, “The American Scientist as Social Activist,” Isis 64 (1973): 51-66. The other Agassiz student who came to Cornell was the geologist Charles Frederic Hartt.

46. Burt Green Wilder and Simon H. Gage, Anatomical Technology as Applied to the Domestic Cat: An Introduction to Human, Veterinary, and Comparative Anatomy (New York: A.S. Barnes, 1882), which went through several editions.

47. Although biological instruction was initially concentrated in the College of Natural Science, over the years Cornell administrators scattered it across several departments and colleges.

48. The major biographical sketches of Alien’s life and career include Olin Sewell Pettingill, Jr., “In Memoriam: Arthur A. Allen,” Auk 85 (1968): 193-202; Edwin W. Teale, “Arthur A. Allen,” Audubon Magazine 45 (1943): 85-89; and Richard B. Fischer, “Ambassador of Birdlife,” Audubon Magazine 67 (January-February 1965): 26-31, and “Arthur Augustus Allen,” in Current Biography Yearbook: 1961, ed. Charles Moritz (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1962), 5-7.

49. Arthur A. Allen, “The Red-winged Blackbird: Study in the Ecology of a Cat-tail Marsh,” Abstract of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New York, no. 24 (1914): 43-138.

50. W[itmer] S[tone], Review of “Redwinged Blackbird,” by Arthur A. Allen, Auk 31 (1914): 414-415. F[rank] M. C[hapman], Review of “Red-winged Blackbird,” by Arthur A. Allen, Bird-Lore 16 (1914): 284-285.

51. Allen had begun serving as an instructor at Cornell in 1910.

52. The history of graduate education in ornithology at Cornell is discussed in Arthur A. Allen, “Ornithological Education in America,” and “Cornell’s Laboratory of Ornithology,” The Living Bird 1 (1962): 7-36; Michael Harwood, “The Lab: From Hatching to Fledging,” Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology Annual Report (1986-1987): 4-13; and Gregory S. Butcher and Kevin McGowan, “History of Ornithology at Cornell University,” in Contributions to the History of North American Ornithology, ed. William E. Davis, Jr., and Jerome A. Jackson (Cambridge, Mass.: Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1995), 223-260.

53. Curiously, for several years Cornell’s Laboratory of Ornithology was housed in the Department of Entomology (within the College of Agriculture) before its transfer to the Department of Zoology in the 1939 and the Department of Conservation in the 1948. See the announcement, “Reorganization of the Work in Zoology at Cornell,” Science 90 (1939): 76-77.

54. Allen, “Ornithological Education,” 225-226.

55. For a list of Cornell graduate students in ornithology and the titles of their theses and dissertations, see Butcher and McGowan, “History of Ornithology at Cornell,” 246-260.

56. While many of Alien’s students seem to have nothing but praise for their mentor and his program, critics charge that his classes were superficial, he failed to supervise theses and dissertations adequately, and he seemed more dedicated to popularization than fundamental research. Expressions of support for Allen and the Cornell ornithology program appear in Harlan Brumsted et al., Voices from Connecticut Hill: Recollections of Cornell Wildlife Students, 1930-1942 (Ithaca: College of Agriculture and Life Science, Cornell University, 1994), 88-90; Olin S. Pettingill, Jr., My Way to Ornithology (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press), 129-192, and “In Memoriam,” 193, 195-197; and George Μ. Sutton, Bird Student: An Autobiography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), 210-216. Conflicting assessments come from Walter Bock (personal communication to author, 17 July 1996), an undergraduate at Cornell from 1951 to 1955, and Ernst Mayr (personal communication to author, 6 August 1996).

Additional evidence suggesting that the impressive numbers of Cornell graduate students do not tell the whole story comes from a listing of “Unpublished Theses in Ornithology” issued by the AOU Committee on Research (Auk 71 [1954]: 191-197). That bibliography reveals that twenty-five of the sixty individuals (over 40 percent) who earned Ph.D. degrees at Cornell by 1951 had still not published any portion of their dissertation by 1954. On the other hand, not one of the two dozen or so doctoral dissertations completed at Berkeley by 1951 appears on the list (though several master’s theses do).

57. For example, within a decade after Arthur Alien’s retirement in 1953, fifty-six of his students were teaching in universities, ten were curators in museums, ten worked for state and federal conservation agencies, twelve were independent scholars, and nine were deceased. Figures are from Allen, “Cornell’s Laboratory of Ornithology,” 7.

58. On Mayr’s role in the modern synthesis, see the articles in Ernst Mayr and William B. Provine, eds., The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980); Joseph Cain, “Common Problems and Cooperative Solutions: Organizational Activities in Evolutionary Studies, 1937-1946,” Isis 84 (1993): 1-25, and “Ernst Mayr as Community Architect: Launching the Society for the Study of Evolution and the Journal Evolution,” Biology and Philosophy 9 (1994): 387-427; Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, “Organizing Evolution: Founding the Society for the Study of Evolution (1939-1950),” Journal of the History of Biology 27 (1994): 241-309; Jürgen Haffer, “Ernst Mayr als Ornithologe, Systematiker, und Zoogeograph,” Biologisches Zentralblatt 114 (1995): 133-142, and “‘Es wäre Zeit, einen “allgemeinen Hartert” zu schreiben’: Die historischen Wurzeln von Ernst Mayrs Beiträgen zur Evolutionssythese,” Bonner Zoologische Beiträge 45 (1994): 113-123.

59. The best source of biographical information on Mayr, especially his early years in the United States, is Walter J. Bock, “Ernst Mayr, Naturalist: His Contributions to Systematics and Evolution,” Biology and Philosophy 9 (1994): 267-327. Bock’s article, which I have relied upon heavily in the account that follows, is one of a series of insightful contributions in a “Special Issue on Ernst Mayr at Ninety,” edited by John Greene and Michael Ruse for Biology and Philosophy. See also Ernst Mayr, “How I Became a Darwinian,” 413-423, and “The Role of Systematics in the Evolutionary Synthesis,” in The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology, ed. Ernst Mayer and William B. Provine (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980) 123-136; Stephen Jay Gould, “Balzan Prize to Ernst Mayr,” Science 223 (1984): 255-257; and “Ernst Mayr,” in Current Biography Yearbook 1984, ed. Charles Moritz (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1985), 258-262.

60. The reason for his decision to attend Greifswald is reported in Mayr, “How I Became a Darwinian,” 413.

61. Stresemann’s significance for the history of evolutionary biology is discussed in Ernst Mayr, “Erwin Stresemann,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography 18 (1990): 888-890; and Jurgen Haffer, “The Genesis of Erwin Stresemann’s Aves (1927-1934) in the Handbuch der Zoologie, and His Contribution to the Evolutionary Synthesis,” Archives of Natural History 21 (1994): 201-216.

62. Quoted in “Ernst Mayr,” 259.

63. His dissertation was published as “Die Ausbreitung des Girlitz (Serinus canaria serinus L.),” Journal für Ornithologie 74 (1926): 571-671.

64. Beyond several technical publications, Mayr also published three popular accounts of his South Pacific expeditions: Ernst Mayr, “My Dutch New Guinea Expedition, 1928,” Novitates Zoologicae 36 (1930): 20-26; “A Tenderfoot Explorer in New Guinea,” Natural History 32 (1932): 83-97; and “A Journey to the Solomons,” Natural History 52 (1943): 30-37, 48.

65. The history of the department is treated in Wesley Lanyon, “Ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History,” in Contributions to the History of North American Ornithology, ed. William E. Davis, Jr., and Jerome A. Jackson (Cambridge, Mass.: Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1995), 113-144.

66. Chapman’s life and career are discussed in chapters 5 and 7. On the accomplishments of the other bird curators associated with the American Museum of Natural History during this period, see the following appreciative biographical sketches: Dean Amadon, “In Memoriam: Robert Cushman Murphy, April 29, 1887-March 20, 1973,” Auk 91 (1974): 1-9; Herbert Friedmann, “In Memoriam: James Paul Chapin,” Auk 83 (1966): 240-252; and Robert Cushman Murphy and Dean Amadon, “In Memoriam: John Todd Zimmer,” Auk 76 (1959): 418-423. On Mayr’s glowing assessment of his colleagues, see Mayr, “Epilogue,” 369-372.

67. Part of the reason Mayr was so productive is that he routinely spent long hours in the evenings and on weekends pursuing his research.

68. Bock, “Ernst Mayr,” 276.

69. On Sanford’s life and his many contributions to the American Museum, especially its Bird Department, see Robert C. Murphy, “Leonard Cutler Sanford,” Auk 68 (1951): 409-410; and Bock, “Ernst Mayr,” 273-278. A glimpse of Sanford’s personality is revealed in “Talk of the Town,” New Yorker 26 (3 June 1950): 17-19.

70. For a fascinating portrait of the financier and polo enthusiast Henry Payne Whitney, see Jack Frost, “Profiles: Up from Fifth Avenue,” New Yorker 1 (25 July 1925): 8-9. See also Alvin F. Harlow, “Henry Payne Whitney,” Dictionary of American Biography 20 (1936): 160-161. On tensions between Chapman and Sanford, see Frank Chapman to Leonard C. Sanford, 24 September 1930, Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

71. The story of Walter Rothschild and his museum at Tring is told in exquisite detail in Miriam Rothschild, Dear Lord Rothschild: Birds, Butterflies, and History (Glenside, Pa.: Balaban Publishers, 1983).

72. The sale and transfer of the Rothschild collection are discussed in ibid., 302-304; Robert C. Murphy, “Moving a Museum,” Natural History 39 (1932): 497-511; and D. W. Snow, “Robert Cushman Murphy and his ‘Journal of the Tring Trip,”’ Ibis 115 (1973): 607-611. After the Rothschild collection was acquired, the number of bird skins in the American Museum of Natural History totaled around 685,000 specimens. The next largest collection in the United States, at the U.S. National Museum, contained only about 252,000. The figures are from a survey that James L. Peters did for the fiftieth anniversary of the AOU: “Collections of Birds in the United States and Canada,” 131-141.

73. Among the founding members were C. Hart Merriam and John Burroughs. Eugene Eisenmann, “Seventy-Five Years of the Linnaean Society of New York,” Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New York, nos. 63-65 (1951-1953): 1-9, provides a convenient summary of the organization’s activities from the time of its founding until the 1950s.

74. The society began issuing the first volume of its Transactions of the Linnaean Society of New York by 1882 and its Abstract of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New York seven years later. In the early 1930s, the name of the latter series was abbreviated to simply Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New York.

75. The best account of the organization is John Farrand, Jr., “The Bronx County Bird Club: Memories of Ten Boys and an Era That Shaped American Birding,” American Birds 45 (Fall 1991): 372-381.

76. Ernst Mayr, “Rousing the Society’s Interest in Ornithology,” in Reminiscences by Members Collected on the Occasion of the Centennial of the Linnaean Society of New York, March 1978 (New York: Linnaean Society, 1978), 4. From a copy of this brochure in the Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

77. Irving Kassoy to Ernst Mayr, 8 February 1933, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

78. Joseph J. Hickey, “The Linnaean Society,” in Reminiscences by Members Collected on the Occasion of the Centennial of the Linnaean Society of New York, March 1978 (New York: Linnaean Society, 1978), 1.

79. Many of these studies were ultimately published. See, for example, William Vogt, “Preliminary Notes on the Behavior and Ecology of the Eastern Willet,” Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New York, no. 49 (1939): 8-42; Richard G. Kuerzi, “Life History Studies of the Tree Swallow,” Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New York, no. 53 (1941): 1-52. On Vogt’s establishment of the breeding bird census, see William Vogt to Ernst Mayr, 10 February 1937, and Ernst Mayr to William Vogt, 18 February 1937, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

80. Ernst Mayr to F. B. Kirkman, 14 December 1938, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

81. Hickey, “Linnaean Society,” 1. See also Stanley A. Temple and John T. Emlen, “In Memoriam: Joseph J. Hickey, 1907-1993,” Auk 111 (1994): 450-452.

82. Joseph J. Hickey, A Guide to Bird Watching (New York: Oxford University Press, 1943). Mayr not only encouraged Hickey to complete the book but also wrote a highly favorable review of it: Ernst Mayr, “Bird Watching: A Hobby and a Science,” Auk 61 (1944): 151-152.

83. Hickey’s mentor at Wisconsin, Aldo Leopold, shared Mayr’s conviction that serious amateurs could make important contributions to science. See his Sand County Almanac, 174, 185-186.

84. Joseph Hickey to Ernst Mayr, 29 April 1944, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

85. Ernst Mayr, personal communication, 11 July 1995.

86. Mayr, “Rousing the Society’s Interest,” 4. Charlie Urner was a birdwatcher, publisher, and active member of the Linnaean Society of New York. See J. L. Edwards, “Charles Anderson Urner, 1882-1938,” Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New York, no. 49 (1938): 1-7.

87. Ernst Mayr to Irving Kassoy, 8 November 1934, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

88. Hickey, “Linnaean Society,” 2.

89. The feat was recorded in “Bird-Lore’s Thirty-Sixth Christmas Bird Census,” Bird-Lore 38 (1936): 49-50.

90. Mayr, “Rousing the Society’s Interest,” 4.

91. Quoted in Milton B. Trautman, “In Memoriam: Margaret Morse Nice,” Auk 94 (1977): 438.

92. For biographical information on Nice, see especially Nice, Research Is a Passion; and Trautman, “In Memoriam,” 430-441. The role of gender in her work and reception is discussed in Bonta, Women in the Field, 222-231; and Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “Field Work and Family: North American Women Ornithologists, 1900-1950,” in Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789-1979, ed. Pnina Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 60-76. The best assessment of Nice’s contribution to science is Gregg Mitman and Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., “Struggling for Identity: The Study of Animal Behavior in America, 1930-1945,” in The Expansion of American Biology, ed. Keith R. Benson, Jane Maienschein, and Ronald Rainger (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 164-194, which I have relied upon heavily for the discussion that follows.

93. Nice, Research Is a Passion, 5.

94. Ibid., 21.

95. Ibid., 23.

96. She published her research as Margaret Morse Nice, “Food of the Bobwhite,” Journal of Economic Entomology 3 (1910): 295-313. However, her master’s degree (for her studies of speech development in children) was not awarded until 1926. According to Nice (Research Is a Passion, 39), the degree was granted retroactively “as of 1915.”

97. Nice’s reaction to the meeting is discussed in Research Is a Passion, 30-32. Her judgment that women were not taken seriously in the AOU came partly because of an experience in which the “gentlemen of the Union” were invited to a reception held in the private museum of William Brewster, while the “ladies” were invited to the home of Mrs. Charles Foster Batchelder.

98. She later regretted her decision not to continue with her graduate studies. Ibid., 33.

99. Mitman and Burkhardt, “Struggling for Identity,” 181.

100. Nice, Research Is a Passion, 34-35.

101. Margaret Morse Nice and Leonard Blaine Nice, The Birds of Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma Bulletin, new series no. 20 (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1924).

102. The quotation is from Mitman and Burkhardt, “Struggling for Identity,” 181. Biographical information on Sherman may be found in Ainley, “Field Work and Family,” 63-67; Bonta, Women in the Field, 197-211; and Sharon E. Wood, “Althea Sherman and the Birds of Prairie and Dooryard: A Scientist’s Witness to Change,” The Palimpsest 70 (1989): 165-184. On the Nice/Sherman relationship, see Margaret Morse Nice, “Some Letters of Althea Sherman,” Iowa Bird Life 22 (1952): 51-55.

103. The quotation comes from Trautman, “In Memoriam,” 440.

104. Nice mentions Wilbur Butts as the inspiration for the idea of using colored celluloid bands to mark her birds in Research Is a Passion, 104.

105. Beyond the scientific publications that resulted from her sparrow studies (discussed below), at the encouragement of Audubon Magazine editor William Vogt, Nice also authored a delightful popular account of her work: Watcher at the Nest (New York: Macmillan, 1939).

106. The relationship between Mayr and Nice is copiously documented in the Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA; the Margaret Morse Nice Papers, Division of Manuscripts and University Archives, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. (which I have not used), and Research Is a Passion. That same year she was elected a member of the AOU, only the sixth woman in the organization’s history to receive that honor. The previous five were Florence Merriam Bailey, Mabel Osgood Wright, Althea Sherman, Elsie Naumburg, and May Thatcher Cooke.

107. Nice, Research Is a Passion, 109.

108. Margaret Morse Nice to Ernst Mayr, 9 November 1931, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

109. Because of the large backlog of articles and the need to economize during the Depression, the Auk would generally not accept articles over twenty pages long. Nice (Research Is a Passion, 116) blamed this policy on editor Witmer Stone’s failure to be more selective in choosing papers.

110. The quotation is from Margaret Morse Nice to Ernst Mayr, 2 June 1933, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA. The paper was published as Margaret Morse Nice, “Zur Naturgeschichte des Singammers,” Journal für Ornithologie 81 (1933): 552-595; 82 (1934): 1-96.

111. Margaret Morse Nice to Ernst Mayr, 19 October 1932, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

112. She estimated that she completed over 3,000 of these reviews. Nice, Research Is a Passion, 257.

113. Margaret Morse Nice to Joseph Grinnell, 21 December 1932, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

114. Margaret Morse Nice to Ernst Mayr, 13 January 1932 [1933] and 16 January 1933, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

115. Konrad Lorenz’s original article appeared as “Der Kumpan in der Umwelt des Vogels,” Journal für Ornithologie 83 (1935): 137-213, 289-413. Herrick eventually convinced Lorenz to prepare an English summary of his paper, “The Companion in the Bird’s World,” Auk 54 (1937): 245-273.

116. Margaret Μ. Nice, “The Theory of Territorialism and Its Development,” in Fifty Years’ Progress of American Ornithology, 1883-1933, ed. Frank Μ. Chapman and T. S. Palmer (Lancaster, Pa.: American Ornithologists’ Union, 1933), 89-100; Ernst Mayr, “Bernard Altum and the Territory Theory,” Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New York, nos. 45 and 46 (1935): 24-38. This was the first in a series of historical publications that Ernst Mayr was to write. On Mayr’s development as a historian of biology, see Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., “Ernst Mayr: Biologist-Historian,” Biology and Philosophy 9 (1994): 359-371; and Thomas Junker, “Factors Shaping Ernst Mayr’s Concepts in the History of Biology,” Journal of the History of Biology 29 (1996): 29-77.

117. Niko Tinbergen, The Behavior of the Snow Bunting in Spring, Transactions of the Linnaean Society of New York, vol. 5 (New York: Linnaean Society of New York, 1939).

118. Mayr, “Rousing the Society’s Interest,” 4. Mayr had begun serving as secretary to the Linnaean Society one year previously.

119. Quoted in Nice, Research Is a Passion, 127.

120. Mayr, “Rousing the Society’s Interest,” 4.

121. A second volume, Margaret Μ. Nice, The Behavior of the Song Sparrow and Other Passerines, Transactions of the Linnaean Society of New York, vol. 6 (New York: Linnaean Society of New York, 1943), followed six years later.

122. See Joe Cain’s insightful study, “Ernst Mayr as Community Architect.”

123. Aldo Leopold to Ernst Mayr, 5 August 1937, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA. Apparently Mayr was unable to convince Science to publish Leopold’s review, which appeared in Canadian Field-Naturalist 51 (November 1937): 126.

124. Ernst Mayr to Joseph Grinnell, 27 May 1937, and Joseph Grinnell to Ernst Mayr, 26 June 1937, Archives, MVZ; and Ernst Mayr to Margaret Morse Nice, 30 September 1938, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA. Jean Μ. Linsdale wrote a one-paragraph notice of the book for the “Notes and News” section of Condor 39 (1937): 180.

125. Quoted in Nice, Research Is a Passion, 159-160.

126. Herbert Friedmann to Ernst Mayr, 10 August 1931, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

127. Stephen I. Rothstein, Ralph W. Schreiber, and Thomas R. Howell, “In Memoriam: Herbert Friedmann,” Auk 105 (1988): 365-368; S. Dillon Ripley, “Herbert Friedmann, April 22, 1900-May 14, 1987,” Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 62 (1993): 143-165; Herbert Friedmann Oral Interview, 22 April 1975, RU 9506, SIA.

128. Herbert Friedmann, “The Weaving of the Red-billed Weaver Bird in Captivity,” Zoologica 2 (1922): 257.

129. Herbert Friedmann, The Cowbirds: A Study in the Biology of Social Parasitism (Springfield, Ill.: C. C. Thomas, 1929).

130. Both were fellows of the AOU. See Witmer Stone, “In Memoriam: Charles Wallace Richmond, 1868-1932,” Auk 50 (1933): 1-22; and Alexander Wetmore, “In Memoriam: Joseph Harvey Riley,” Auk 60 (1943): 1-15.

131. Herbert Friedmann interview, 3.

132. Ibid., 5.

133. Ibid., 57-59, 72. Friedmann did not eschew all taxonomic research. He published several taxonomic monographs, including three parts of Birds of Middle and North America finished between 1941 and 1950. However, he felt that Ridgway lacked the imagination and the training to go beyond the obvious.

134. My italics.

135. Herbert Friedmann to Ernst Mayr, 4 February 1932, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

136. In 1935 Mayr complained “The A.O.U. is in danger of becoming, or at least of remaining, an Eastern bird society, while it really should and could be a national organization.” Ernst Mayr to P. A. Taverner, 7 December 1935, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA. See also Joseph Grinnell to Ernst Mayr, 26 June 1937, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

137. Joseph Grinnell to Ernst Mayr, 26 June 1937, MVZ Archives: “Among zoologists in university circles I too frequently get the insinuation that AOU Fellowship merely involves amateurish or recreational interest in birds—not soundly scientific.”

138. Joseph Grinnell to Herbert Friedmann, 17 January 1935, MVZ Archives.

139. Herbert Friedmann to Joseph Grinnell, 22 January 1935, MVZ Archives.

140. The account that follows is pieced together from a personal conversation with Mayr, 11 July 1995. See also Ernst Mayr to P. A. Taverner, 7 December 1935, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA; and Keir Sterling and Marianne G. Ainley’s “Changes in the AOU By-Laws, 1883-1983,” part of their unpublished history of the AOU.

141. Apparently Friedmann had pushed Nice’s candidacy the previous year as well, but without success. See Herbert Friedmann to Ernst Mayr, 1 November 1934, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

142. No doubt the criticism that Grinnell reported strongly influenced Stone’s decision not to publish the address.

143. Mayr was also troubled by his belief that too many notes and papers emphasized unusual records rather than describing the “normal range and normal occurrences” of birds. Ernst Mayr to J. H. Fleming, 26 October 1933, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA. On the complaints about Stone’s editorship, see Keir Sterling and Marianne Ainley, “A Quarterly Journal of Ornithology,” in their unpublished history of the AOU.

144. Friedmann commented on this trend in his “The Role of the A.O.U. in Ornithology Today,” Auk 55 (1938): 316.

145. The term comes from a discussion with Ernst Mayr, 11 July 1995.

146. W. L. McAtee, “In Memoriam: Theodore Sherman Palmer,” Auk 73 (1956): 367-377; J. S. Wade, “Dr. Theodore Sherman Palmers,” Atlantic Naturalist 12 (1957): 84-88; and E. R. Kalmbach, “In Memoriam: W. L. McAtee,” Auk 80 (1963): 474-485.

147. Twice Grinnell sent Palmer completed nomination blanks for George Willett that somehow failed to appear on the ballot passed out at the annual AOU meetings. See Joseph Grinnell to Herbert Friedmann, 13 October 1936, MVZ Archives.

148. Stone had earlier pleaded to be allowed to serve for twenty-five years, a period that ended in 1936. Herbert Friedmann to Joseph Grinnell, 15 May 1935, MVZ Archives.

149. Herbert Friedmann to Joseph Grinnell, 13 March 1935, MVZ Archives. Even before his election was official, Mayr sent Allen a long series of suggestions for improving the Auk. See Ernst Mayr to Glover A. Allen, 10 September 1936, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

150. Herbert Friedmann to Joseph Grinnell, 27 October 1936, MVZ Archives.

151. The AOU already had a class of membership known as “retired fellow,” but over the years only a handful of fellows had volunteered to transfer themselves to it. Friedmann felt there would be less stigma attached to the term “emeritus,” which was widely used in academic circles and did not suggest that an individual was no longer active in the field. To clear the fellow’s class of excess “deadwood,” he believed that transfer should be automatic when a fellow reached the age of seventy. See Herbert Friedmann to Joseph Grinnell, 22 January 1935, MVZ Archives.

152. A carbon copy of the seven original proposals and Mayr’s reasons for each, “Proposed Amendments to the Constitution and By-Laws of the American Ornithologists’ Union,” is included with Ernst Mayr to Joseph Grinnell, 19 August 1937, MVZ Archives.

153. Mayr and Friedmann were not the only ones concerned about the level of papers presented at the annual AOU meetings. See P. A. Taverner to Ernst Mayr, 26 November 1935, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA. For a sociological account of the referee system, see Harriet Zuckerman and Robert K. Merton, “Patterns of Evaluation in Science: Institutionalization, Structure and Functions of the Referee System,” Minerva 9 (1971): 66-100.

154. According to Mayr, the combined salaries of the two positions amounted to more than 20 percent of the annual income of the organization. Ernst Mayr to Joseph Grinnell, 14 October 1937, MVZ Archives. Friedmann and Mayr also felt that the position of editor should be honorary and that much of the work should be shared with an editorial board.

155. After criticism of this proposal, Mayr dropped it from subsequent drafts that he circulated. See the final version of “Proposed Amendments to the Constitution and By-Laws of the American Ornithologists Union,” attached to Ernst Mayr to Joseph Grinnell, 14 October 1937, MVZ Archives.

156. Ernst Mayr to Joseph Grinnell, 14 October 1937, MVZ Archives.

157. The AOU Council did vote to eliminate the honoraria paid to the secretary and treasurer and to publish a detailed budget each year in the Auk. See Herbert Friedmann to Joseph Grinnell, 2 December 1938, MVZ Archives; and Ernst Mayr to Alden Miller, 24 November 1937, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA. Mayr continued to push his reform package, and within the next five years all of his proposals were enacted in one form or another. See, for example, Ernst Mayr to Lawrence Hicks, 26 January 1938, AOU Records, RU 7440, Box 40, File 4, SIA, which includes a copy of Mayr’s proposals along with a summary of the reaction from several prominent AOU members. In addition, Mayr’s proposal to enlarge the class of members from 125 to 200 (mentioned in Ernst Mayr to Alden Miller, 24 November 1937, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA) was also passed by the council in 1939.

158. Mayr had been warned that it would be “an exceedingly difficult task to bring about any changes with the present group of senior men in charge.” Alden Miller to Ernst Mayr, 22 October 1937, MVZ Archives.

159. In the letter accompanying a copy of the proposals sent to Nice, Mayr mentioned he had “been advised against campaigning too much in favor of these proposals because this would arouse more opposition.” Ernst Mayr to Margaret Morse Nice, 13 October 1937, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

160. Herbert Friedmann to Joseph Grinnell, 13 March 1935, MVZ Archives.

161. Edward S. Thomas, “In Memoriam: Lawrence Emerson Hicks,” Auk 75 (1958): 279-281. On Friedmann’s promotion of Hicks’s candidacy, see Herbert Friedmann to Joseph Grinnell, 27 October 1936, MVZ Archives.

162. On Palmer’s refusal to resign as promised, see Ernst Mayr to Alden H. Miller, 24 November 1937, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA. Hicks was sympathetic to Mayr’s reform proposals. See Lawrence E. Hicks to Ernst Mayr, 14 December 1937, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

163. Herbert Friedmann to Joseph Grinnell, 2 December 1937, MVZ Archives. Mayr had also suggested the need for the AOU to play a larger role in “initiating and assisting ornithological research.” See Ernst Mayr to Alden Miller, 24 November 1937, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

164. Friedmann remained wary of the strategy of recruiting associate members to shore up AOU finances. See Herbert Friedmann to Lawrence Hicks, 7 January 1938, and Lawrence Hicks to Herbert Friedmann, 12 January 1938, AOU Records, RU 7440, Box 40, Folder 4, SIA. The new AOU president also pursued the idea of establishing an AOU field station on Cape Cod and approaching the National Research Council for a “substantial grant” to support “bird biology,” but apparently he got nowhere with either proposal. See Herbert Friedmann to Ernst Mayr, 30 March 1938, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

165. Not surprisingly, the committee included several active reformers and young Ph.D.s who chaired each subcommittee, including Alden H. Miller, anatomy; Leon J. Cole, migration; Ernst Mayr, migration, homing, and related phenomena; P. A. Taverner, North American faunistics; S. C. Kendeigh, physiology; and Margaret M. Nice, psychology, territory, and individual behavior. See Herbert Friedmann, “The Role of the A.O.U. in Ornithology Today,” Auk 55 (1938): 316. The AOU Council gave its formal approval of the idea at the next annual meeting. See Lawrence E. Hicks, “The Fifty-Sixth Stated Meeting of the American Ornithologists’ Union,” Auk 56 (1939): 113.

166. Ernst Mayr to Josselyn Van Tyne, 2 January 1946, Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA.

167. A copy of the proposal and list of the organizations is included with Herbert Friedmann to Alden Miller, 28 January 1939, MVZ Archives.

168. See Herbert Friedmann to Alden Miller, 1 August 1941, MVZ Archives.

169. Friedmann lost the election to James Chapin. See the minutes of the meeting of 19 June 1939 in AOU Records, RU 7440, Box 40, Folder 5, SIA. Mayr’s campaign to reform the AOU continued for several decades. See the Ernst Mayr Papers, HUA, especially his correspondence with Joseph Hickey and Ludlow Griscom, both of whom shared his interest in reforming the organization.

170. Yet some things were slower to change than others. When the death of Glover Allen in 1942 necessitated the selection of a new editor for the Auk, one of the names discussed as a possible replacement was Margaret M. Nice. Clearly her deep knowledge of ornithological literature, extensive contributions to that literature, and experience as associate editor of Bird-Banding and the Wilson Bulletin qualified her for the position. However, she failed to gain serious consideration, largely because of her gender. As AOU President James Chapin wrote to P. A. Taverner, “we can hardly pick a woman editor for the Auk.” Quoted in Keir Sterling and Marianne Ainley, “A Quarterly Journal of Ornithology,” in their unpublished history of the AOU, 24.

CONCLUSION

1. Witmer Stone, “The Ornithology of Today and Tomorrow,” in The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Nuttall Ornithological Club (Cambridge, Mass.: The Club, 1924), 7-25, on 8.

2. Ibid., 10.

3. Witmer Stone, Bird Studies at Old Cape May: An Ornithology of Coastal New Jersey, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Delaware Valley Ornithological Club, 1937).

4. Stone, “Ornithology,” 11.

5. Ibid., 8-9.

6. Ibid., 12.

7. Willard estimated that the actual number of collectors was around eight hundred. S. L. Willard, ed., A Directory of the Ornithologists of the United States (Utica, NY: The Oologist, 1877).

8. [Frank M. Chapman,] [Editorial,] Bird-Lore 27 (1915): 216. Although most birdwatchers pursued the activity primarily for recreation, enough of them also had scientific aspirations to swell the membership rolls of the AOU.

9. Ridgway, Birds of Middle and North America, 1:1-2.

10. [T. C. Stephens?,] “Editorial,” Wilson Bulletin 44 (1932): 231-232.

11. Joseph Grinnell, “Trends in Modern Ornithology,” Wilson Bulletin 48 (1936): 73-76, talks not only about the shift of interest toward intensive, observational studies of the living bird, but also about changes in taxonomy itself. On Mayr, systematics, and the evolutionary synthesis, see chapter 8.

12. “Fiftieth Christmas Bird Count,” Audubon Field Notes 4, no. 2 (April 1950): 45.

13. The count of volunteer bird-banders and the total number of birds banded comes from the Report of the Chief of the Biological Survey for the year 1939.

14. One particularly active user of the records was Frederick C. Lincoln, the ornithologist who ran the bird-banding network for the Biological Survey and developed the concept of migratory flyways based on his analysis of the returns. On Lincoln and his contributions, see John K. Terres, “Big Brother to the Waterfowl,” Audubon Magazine 49 (1947): 150-158; and Ira N. Gabrielson, “Obituary,” Auk 79 (1962): 495-499.

15. See chapter 7.

16. Broley has been the subject of a series of biographical sketches. See, for example, “Eagle Bander,” New Yorker 30 (19 June 1954): 18-19; and Myrtle Jeanne Broley, Eagle Man: Charles Broley’s Field Adventures with American Eagles (New York: Pellegrini and Cudahy, 1952).

17. See the discussion of Charles Broley’s work in Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 118-119, 122. On the rise and fall of DDT, see Thomas R. Dunlap, DDT: Scientists, Citizens, and Public Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).

18. On Greenewalt’s life and career, see Albert Conway, “In Memoriam: Crawford H. Greenewalt, 1902-1993,” Auk 111 (1994): 188-189; and “Crawford Hallock Greenewalt,” in Current Biography 1949, ed. Anna Rothe (New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1950), 234-236.

19. Crawford H. Greenewalt, Hummingbirds (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1960).

20. Crawford H. Greenewalt, Bird Song: Acoustics and Physiology (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1968).

21. Marianne G. Ainley, “The Contribution of the Amateur to North American Ornithology: A Historical Perspective,” The Living Bird 18 (1979): 161-177, on 169.

22. Mayr, “Epilogue,” 376, and “The Role of Ornithological Research in Biology,” Proceedings of the XIIIth International Ornithological Congress (1963): 27-38, on 27.

23. James R. King and Walter J. Bock, Workshop on a National Plan for Ornithology: Final Report (N.p., n.p., 1978), 4.

24. Ibid., 12. See also Donald A. McCrimmon, Jr., and Alexander Sprunt, IV, eds., Proceedings of a Conference on the Amateur and North American Ornithology (Ithaca, N.Y, 1978).

25. King and Bock, Workshop, 12-13.

26. Jacob Bronowski, A Sense of the Future (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977), 4.

27. Mayr, “Role of Ornithological Research,” 27.

28. See, for example, Beryl Rowland, Birds with Human Souls: A Guide to Bird Symbolism (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1978).