602 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1925 



for permanent preservation in 1896. At the same time, he began com- 

 piling a list of the species of Walworth County, Wis. 



In March, 1901, Ned made an eastern trip to visit the Smithsonian 

 Institution and National Museum, places which had been enshrined 

 in his boyhood fancies. He was always very modest and doubtless 

 made no advances to any of the men he met in Washington, but the 

 following summer he was invited to join a Biological Survey party in 

 Texas as assistant to Vernon Bailey. The appointment was for tem- 

 porary services only, and he gladly accepted for a period of four 

 months, June to September, inclusive. In later years, he often re- 

 lated with much good humor the trepidation with which he w^ent to 

 meet the famous naturalist, whose name he had seen so frequently in 

 print and whose prowess as a traveler and discoverer of new mam- 

 mals had seemed to portend a man of extraordinary physique and 

 commanding, perhaps domineering, character. Ned w^as by no means 

 provincial, but in such reminiscences always represented himself to 

 be; and it was this that gave point to his amusing description of his 

 surprise when he found Mr. Bailey to be a man no larger than him- 

 self, quick, wiry, and active, unassuming and sympathetic. Ned's 

 keen sense of humor was also titillated on this occasion by the fact 

 that Bailey suggested that they have a conference in a quiet place 

 and for this purpose chose the cemetery in the little village of Jef- 

 ferson, Tex. He worked with Bailey for a time and came to have 

 great admiration for him. Soon proving competent for independent 

 assignments he made important collections of mammals and birds at 

 Joaquin, Sour Lake, Comstock, Fort Stockton, and Davis Mountains, 

 Tex., as well as at Weed, Cloudcroft, Ruidoso, Roswell, and Fort 

 Sumner, N. Mex. 



In the fall of 1902, he returned to Delavan, went for a deer hunt in 

 Vilas County, Wis., and then, evidently intending to continue as a 

 private collector, he bought the Kumlien collection of about 1,500 

 specimens and added it to his own in February, 1903. Kumlien's 

 death in December, 1902, after a long illness, was a sad blow, and the 

 Birds of Wisconsin, on which the two had been working for years, 

 was left to be completed by Hollistor. The winter of 1902-3, there- 

 fore, was spent largely on this work and the book appeared in July, 

 1903, a model of care and accuracy. Although a dozen or more notes 

 and short articles had appeared previously, this was his first lengthy 

 publication. 



In the spring of 1903, the question of temporary field assistants 

 again arose in the office of the Biological Survey, this time in connec- 

 tion with an Alaskan trip to which I had been assigned. After a 

 word with Mr. Bailey, I quickly decided that Ned Hollister was the 

 man I wanted and at once made a proposal to him which he accepted. 



