150 



THE OSPREY. 



Galitornia DeDartment. 



EDITED BY DONALD A. COHEN, ALAMEDA, CAL. 



Mr. T. E. Slevin, of San Francisco, has been tem- 

 porarily residing in Alameda. 



Mr. C. W. Randall, Jr., of Oakland, is enjoying a 

 few days at a resort in Lake County. 



The Cooper Club held no June meeting, owing to 

 the inability of many members to attend. 



Mr. C. Barlow, of San Jose, and Mr. H. Ward 

 Carriger, of Sonoma, enjoyed a trip into the Sierre 

 Nevada Mountains in June. 



Mr. Horace A. Gaylord, of Pasadena, Cal., left 

 July 7 for a two week's trip in the Sierra Madre 

 Mountains Mr. Joseph Grinnell left at an earlier 

 date on a similiar trip. 



Mr. J. M. Willard, of Oakland, is contemplating a 

 collecting trip to the coast of Monterey County. He 

 will go on a bicycle, equipped with gun, blankets and 

 other necessary articles. 



According to recent San Francisco newspapers, a 

 man shot a California Condor and sold it to a saloon- 

 keeper in a country town for $2.00. We would like 

 to run a saloon for a while for that kind of business. 



Mr. John W. Mailliard says his series of "Western 

 Nighthawk," birds and eggs, were pronounced posi- 

 tively Texan by Mr. E. A. Mcllhenny. The speci- 

 mens were taken within twenty miles north to one 

 hundred miles south of San Francisco. 



Mr. L. W. Brokaw, of Carmel, Ind., formerly of 

 Monterey, Cal., is still a member of the Cooper Or- 

 nithological Club. He writes: "Have been rather 

 hard on the Crows — took 149 eggs in sets of 4 to 6, 

 including a set of 2 eggs badly incubated. A friend 

 reports a set of i egg, badly incubated." 



We were informed, some two months ago, that Mr. 

 Claude Fyfe, of San Francisco, had gone to London, 

 and also read it in the A^idii/oifisf. Now we hear he 

 is in Northwest Canada, evidently collecting. He 

 departed silentlv and suddenly, but before he went 

 hinted of a "soft snap" of a place for eggs that he 

 might visit. 



Mr. H. C. Johnson, of Alameda, was forced to give 

 up all field work this season, on account of business. 

 He formerly collected near Salt Lake, Utah, where 

 he took a few sets of Wilson's Snipe, and other vari- 

 eties, such as Band-tailed Pigeon, Columbian Sharp- 

 tailed and Sage Grouse, Arizona Jay, Broad-tailed 

 Hummingbird, California Cuckoo, Sharp-shinned 

 Hawk, and many others. 



Up to the middle of June the California Editor has 

 taken six sets of four eggs each of the Duck Hawk, but 

 was assisted by Mr. R. S. Wheeler in two instances, 

 he having an equal share in the eggs of a certain pair 

 of these birds, that yielded up sets on April 3, May i 

 and June 6, all taken from the same cave. Their 

 fourth set will probably be found in July. Owing to 

 lack of time, two other sites were not visited this 

 season. 



June 18, the Editor was favored by a call from Mr. 

 E. A. Mcllhenny, and spent several hours in very 

 interesting conversation. This gentleman and party 

 will leave San Francisco June 25, for Behring Sea. 

 The steam whaler "Jennie" has been chartered for 

 the occasion. Mr. Mcllhenny says he will be a little 

 late, but could not pass the ice in Behring Straits 

 earlier ; but he expects to take many rare and desir- 



able sets, as well as something new. As he will be 

 gone over a year, we expect his ship will bring back 

 a cargo of valuable sets and skins. Several assistants 

 accompany the party, and they will work to the east- 

 ward of Point Barrow where no naturalist has ever 

 been. No geologist accompanies the party — one had 

 decided to go, but found it impossible to be absent 

 so long. We wish the adventurers unqualified success. 



Dr. Goues' Column. 



M^" 



message to the readers of The Osi^rey for 

 July is penned from the mansion of the Audu- 

 bon family in Salem, N. Y., where the gener- 

 ous hospitality of their beautiful home is extended to 

 Mrs. Coues and myself by Mrs. John Woodhouse 

 Audubon and her daughters. Miss M. R. Audubon 

 and Mrs. Florence Audubon Shufeldt. I am delighted 

 to be able to say that the wealth of Auduboniana in 

 the possession of the family is now about to be pro- 

 perly utilized for the first time in the preparation of 

 an adequate biography of John James, with copious 

 extracts from his never published journals, as inti- 

 mated in my last column. 1 am not surprised to find, 

 on examining the literary and artistic materials for 

 Miss Audubon's present work, that no proper use of 

 them has hitherto been made in any of the published 

 biographies. Several persons who have had access 

 to the private journals seem not to have known how 

 to use them. Robert Buchanan, whose book would 

 seem to be authentic, being ostensibly based upon 

 materials furnished by Audubon's widow, botched 

 the whole business, besides indulging in remarks 

 offensive to the family. This was an English pub- 

 lication ; the corresponding American edition of 1868, 

 by James Grant Wilson, is simply Buchanan's, with 

 the offensive passages eliminated, but with no other 

 improvement. Neither of these books is authoritative 

 or reliable. The earlier one, by Mrs. Horace St. 

 John, is a hotch-potch of scraps and clippings already 

 published in Audubon's own works or elsewhere, 

 and lacks all merit but that of feebly good intention, 

 besides being full of errors. This book is practically 

 the basis of several cheap catch-penny affairs, like 

 that of B. K. Pierce, D. D., which appeared in 1889, 

 or the anonymous "Story of Audubon," which was 

 published in London in 1886. All such are beneath 

 criticism, yet they are the mythical pabulum upon 

 which the public has hitherto been fed. Aside from 

 the autobiographical matter which Audubon has 

 woven into his own ornithological and mammalogical 

 works, he left altogether about thirty private jour- 

 nals. Most of these have perished, by fire or other- 

 wise, but I have examined nine of them, now care- 

 fully preserved by Miss Audubon, and to be exten- 

 sively drawn upon for her forthcoming publication, — 

 some of them to be printed in full. They run from 

 1822 to 1843, being thus somewhat more than coin- 

 cident with the extent of his public appearance as 

 the great ornithologist. I wish I could give my 

 readers some idea of the wealth of materials from 

 Audubon's own pen and pencil which grace this his- 

 toric home ; but space forbids, and besides, all will 

 be made fully known by Miss Audubon in the near 

 future. In earnest of what I say. Miss Audubon 

 kindly permits me to send for use in The Osprey a 

 photograph of a never published drawing, made by 

 Audubon himself at Henderson, Kentucky, probably 

 about 1812, and thus some fifteen years before any 

 of his plates were published.* — E. C. 



* This will appear in the next number. 



