CASSINIA 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE DELAWARE VALLEY 

 ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB 



No. Vn. PHILADELPHIA, PA. 1903. 



John Kirk Townsend 



BY WITHER STONE. 



It not infrequently happens that a man of marked ability 

 who would have shown as a star of the first magnitude at 

 another period, is forced to enter upon his activities at a time 

 when another star is already in the ascendant, whose radiance to 

 a great extent casts his light into the shadow. 



Such in a measure was the fate of John K. Townsend. As 

 an ornithologist he appears to have been equal to any this 

 country has produced, a painstaking and reliable observer and 

 a fluent, scholarly writer. But with Audubon as a competitor, 

 an artist of the first rank, whose pictures alone would have 

 given him world-wide reputation, with an almost daring self- 

 reliance, and with rich friends to back his undertakings, it was 

 practically impossible for this modest, non-assertive student, to 

 achieve the notoriety that might otherwise have been his. 

 Furthermore, Townsend was unfortunate in Uving at a time 

 when it was difiicult to secure salaried museum positions which 

 would have enabled him to pursue his favorite study, and his 

 premature death cut ofl" a career that might in spite of all 

 have developed a still greater reputation. 



