78 The Wilson Bulletin — Xo. GO. 



scientific achievements ; while I with my few papers on "hird- 

 bones," occupied, by all odds, the most inferior position in 

 these respects, and was made to feel it by bearing the title of 

 the "Pygmiculus." 



Those were the times when Robert Ridgway held forth in 

 a room, several flights up, in the south tower — a "den" in 

 which he did a large part of his work, and where he was quite 

 removed from all of those maddening annoyances that in- 

 evitably attend an ornithological waiter of his reputation, 

 occupying a government position. There were so many per- 

 sons wdio were more than eager to have hint tell them just 

 how many eggs a chippy-bird laid, or what he used to "stuff 

 birds with," and how much he had to pav for glass-eyes, and 

 was it true that the pelican fed her young with her own blood, 

 and was the Bible right in stating that a bat was a bird, and 

 would all kinds of birds' eggs hatch out in an incubator, and, 

 — and the rest. 



For me, during that summer, it was one of the treats of my 

 life to be able to spend half an hour a couple of times a week 

 in that old room of Ridgway's, especially when he was busily 

 engaged painting the picture of some bird or other, as he sat 

 at the quaint old desk over by the window. I remember how 

 I used to marvel at the rapidity of his work, and his superb 

 appreciation of the value of pigments and color. 



Early one afternoon, somewhere along in the time I have 

 mentioned, I climibed up the narrow and stony stairway to see 

 him' about something I had in mind, and upon coming into 

 the room, to my wonderment I beheld a young pyramid of 

 birdskins piled up on the floor, numbering evidently several 

 hundred, or perhaps a thousand, and representing everything 

 apparently known to the avifauna of this country. In char- 

 acter, the skins much resemfbled those I used to "put up" in 

 my 'teens, and before the opportunity was afiforded me to 

 make an exhibition of my ignorance as to where such a sudden 

 influx of heterogeneous material had come from, Ridg\vay 

 remarked that "Coues intends to turn in his collection" — in 

 other words that ever-open scientific maw of immense pro- 

 portions of the Smithsonian Institution was once again about 



