THE OOLOGIST 



38 



of his artistic hands. He was a gen- 

 ius, but too retiring and diffident for 

 his own good. At the time of his 

 death he was in Atlantic Tity, N. J., 

 where he had been for a number of 

 years, and his ambition was for the 

 city to build a museum and take over 

 his collection for the benefit of the 

 public. But the politicians did not 

 see it that way. Poor Werner, this 

 collection was his life work. 



G. B. Benners, 

 278 S. 23d St., Philadelphia, Pa. 



USE YOUR HEAD. 



A Woodpecker pecks a great many 

 specks 

 Of sawdust when building a hut; 

 He works like a nigger, to make the 

 hole bigger; 

 He's sore if his cutter won't cut. 

 He don't bother with plans of cheap 

 artisans, 

 But there's one thing can rightly be 

 said ; 

 The whole excavation has this expla- 

 nation — 

 He builds it by using his head. 



Gerard Alan Abbott, 



Glasgow, Ky. 



An Alaskan Letter. 



An Alaskan letter, dated September 

 30th, 1922, from one of our Alaskan 

 collectors reached us January 8th, ai.-fi 

 contains, among other things: 



"I came to town last week and go 

 back to camp tomorrow. 1 walked 

 in and led a pack horse. It is sixty 

 miles and took four days to come in. 

 Came over the mountains, as the 

 shorter trail would mire the horse. 

 One day we saw ten to twenty thous- 

 and Ptarmigans, and I thought of you 

 and a camera. They were mostly L. 

 Lagopus, but some were Mountain or 

 Rock Ptarmigans, mixed with them. 

 Of course the country could not sup- 

 port such numbers for long, l)ut they 



will move from there soon, as llio 

 snow is now nearly covering the 

 ground. I saw them on the mountain 

 tops. As you know I raise reindeer, 

 and we have two thousand in o:ip herd. 

 Wo should have about seven hundred 

 fawns next spring, and we must move 

 from place to place to keep with the 

 herd. 



The range is what naturalists call 

 Alpine Arctic, and below us, some 

 three or four miles away, is oTten 

 much less and poorer timbered coun- 

 try, called Hudsonian Zone; neither of 

 these places are sandy, gravelly or 

 grassy and none of it is heavily tim- 

 bered. It is from one to three thous- 

 and feet altitude. My range is Tunda, 

 or at least moss covered, and often 

 considered barren land. It is typical 

 of the treeless north. 



Of nesting shore birds we have 

 Phalarope, Snipe, Plover and several 

 Sandpipers, also Hutchin's and White- 

 fronted Geese, and the little Brown 

 Crane, while the Swans nest on the 

 lower ground. The Alice and Varied 

 Thrushes and Robin are common as 

 is also the Harlequin Duck. We have 

 some Green Winged Teal, Pin-tailed, 

 Mallard and Scaup Ducks, Red Breast- 

 ed Mergansers, and also the Pacific 

 Loon, and Holboell's Grebe, and rarer 

 a Curlew. Blackbirds are only too 

 common. 



Long Spurs are abundant, also 

 Horned Larks, the Pipit and Snow 

 Bunting, and high up in the rocks the 

 Rosy Finch. Also Rough-legged Hawk 

 and Western Alaska Red-tailed Hawk, 

 Duck Hawks, Horned Owls, and the 

 Golden Kagle are not found here, but 

 are common in some places on the 

 coast, also Myrtle Blackpoll and Yel- 

 low Warblers, Black Capped Warblers, 

 Western Tree, Gambells and NCUow 

 C'rowned Sparrows. 



I l)elieve timber line here is about 

 2000 feet. It is a low and swampy. 



