THE OOLOGIST 



89 



300 square miles of marsh in the vi- 

 cinity of Circle City and Rampart. The 

 freezing of their northern feeding 

 ground drives them to lower and warm- 

 er latitudes. 



"The next and last flight comes from 

 the Yukon dalta and the Saskatchewan 

 country and consists of thousands and 

 thousands of Canvasbacks and Red- 

 heads. They arrive just as the hunt- 

 ing season opens. 



"All of these kinds of Wild Duck can 

 be seen on Lake Merriett. They know 

 that no hunter's gun can reach them 

 there. I have hunted Duck all over 

 the country, Init on no other body of 

 water have 1 ever seen so many birds 

 of so many different varieties, all 

 dwelling together in peace with each 

 other and with mankind in the heart 

 of a city of 235,000 inhabitants, within 

 a few minutes' walk of the city hall 

 and surrounded by the constant ac- 

 tivity of a great metropolis." — The 

 Evening News, W. A. Strong, San Jose, 

 Cal. 



CONCERNING DATAS 



Nothing save the joy of my own 

 home life has ever given me the hap- 

 piness that 1 have found at times 

 when, through professional activity, 1 

 chance to find that, for some one, life 

 is sweeter and better just because 1 

 have lived — and — living, have spoken. 

 Quite the same has it been the past 

 thirty years, whenever I have chanced 

 to find that something I have said, out 

 of long and tried experiences, may 

 have been suggestive to some young- 

 er brother; and he — to his credit — has 

 been grateful for it. 



Of this c:haracter, have been very 

 gratifying experiences growing out of 

 my own "boosting" for "Standard" 

 Datas. 



I feel quite sure that the publisher 

 of the new price list will not be over- 

 sensitive if 1 criticise the mighty- 



interesting Golden-Eagle Data fac- 

 similied in that price list. (This crit- 

 icism touches just one point.) 



When one has filed in his card- 

 index several hundred datas, and 

 wishes to refer, quickly, to any of 

 Iheni, it is often a time-saver to have 

 the A. O. U. Number and the Set- 

 Mark, together at the upper left hand 

 corner of the data. I have had oc- 

 casion to notice this a hundred times. 

 .A-gain, as to this same matter of data- 

 filing, to some of us it seems posi- 

 tively imperitive to secure uniformity 

 of size for the filing. How fairly 

 maddening it is to try to file a bit of 

 flimsy one-by-two-iiich paper, with its 

 for-too-brief details, beside some over- 

 large, but delightfully circumstantial 

 data for a set of the same species. It 

 just can't be done! 1 feel that a data 

 blank should be at least just lar^e 

 enough to slip inside a number five 

 envelope. That size is quite small 

 enough. Indeed, I should recommend 

 a thing that 1 by no means always 

 practice — the use of documentary en- 

 velopes for enclosing datas; and even 

 these protected by the legand: "Don't 

 tear the contents." The data size I 

 have indicated is just 3l'^x6^^ inches, 

 and this is plenty small enough. In- 

 deed, it is often far too small. 



To meet such cases, 1 would sug- 

 gest that when data blanks are or- 

 dered, the stationer or printer be in- 

 structed to cut about a hundred sheets 

 of the same length, but of a half-inch 

 greater width. Then in cases where 

 one wishes to add particulars, it can 

 l)e done l)y filling in one of these fill- 

 ers, beginning an inch below the upper 

 margin, turning forward the half-inch 

 over-plus and gumming this — with fish 

 glue, if you please — to the top edge of 

 the actual data form. This additum. 

 then, as well as the data, should be 

 signed. (Please sign your full name 

 to datas; it might happen that some- 



