Notes on the Birds. a lf¢ 
whose untimely death at Waycross, Georgia, July 13, 1889, while studying 
the fishes of southern swamps for the United States Fish Commission. 
just as he was entering upon what promised to be a brilliant scientific 
career, was a great loss to zoological science; G. G. Williamson of Muncie; 
W. A. Millis, now the able president of Hanover College; Chase O. DuBois, 
now prominent as a superintendent of schools in Illinois; W. W. Norman. 
afterward professor of zoology in DePauw University and the University of 
Texas, whose untimely death at Woods Hole, Mass., in the summer of 1894, 
was a severe loss to American science; Robert J. Aley, now the energetic 
president of the University of Maine; and Joseph Swain now the able presi- 
dent of Swarthmore College. Nor must I fail to mention Miss Annie Turner 
of Bloomington who aided us materially in our collecting. All of these were 
then enthusiastic students of birds and all would no doubt have attained dis- 
tinction in ornithological studies, had not the Fates cast their lines in other 
fields. 
Vico County. 
While residing at Terre Haute from July, 1886, to July, 1891, our interest 
in ornithology continued and we were able to pay considerable attention 
to the birds of the region within a radius of some 20 miles of Terre Haute. 
During the school year it was my custom to spend Saturday of each week 
somewhere in the country, a practice which was kept up regardless of 
weather conditions ; rain, storm and snow were never permitted to interfere. 
Usually accompanied by one or more of my students, I would drive afield 
early every Saturday morning, spend the day in woodland, along some stream, 
or in and about some pond or swamp, returning home late in the evening, or 
frequently not until the next day. The late Dr. Josiah T. Scovell, an all- 
round naturalist, was my companion on hundreds of trips, and a more 
delightful companion, or one more enthusiastically and intelligently inter- 
ested in all nature, no one ever had. Dr. Scovell’s interests were many. 
Indian mounds, old river channels, the evidences of glacial action, the geol- 
ogy of the region, the soils, building stone, coal mines, oil, the topographic 
features of the county,—in short, everything geologic, geographic, topo- 
graphic, hydrographic, and climatic, interested him; and his knowledge of 
these subjects was such as enabled him to discuss them all intelligently and 
interestingly. He was also a good botanist and a fair zoologist, especially 
interested in ecological relations. In systematic zoology he perhaps knew 
most about the freshwater mussels (the Unionidz), but he also knew a 
good deal about the local birds. The hundreds of trips I took with Dr. 
Scovell over Vigo County I look back upon as among the most delightful of 
my life, 
Among my students who took special interest in these trips I may be 
permitted to mention a few: Ulysses O. Cox, for many years head of the 
department of biology and dean in the Indiana State Normal School whose 
untimely death at Denver, Colorado, August 20, 1920, took from the faculty 
of that institution one of its ablest, most useful and best loved members ; 
J. Rollin Slonaker, a boyhood chum of Cox, now assistant professor of 
physiology in Stanford University; L. J. Rettger. now head of the depart- 
ment of physiology in the Indiana State Normal School; D. C. Ridgley, now 
