Wao | McAter, In Memoriam F. E. L. Beal. 251 
to questionnaires on the rice-bird or bobolink and on the English 
sparrow. He also studied the distribution of the latter species 
and prepared the range map published in Bulletin 1, 1889. Up 
to the time of Professor Beal’s second appointment, the Biological 
Survey had not succeeded in finding a man to carry on systemati- 
cally the examination of bird stomachs. Professor Beal proved 
to be the best possible choice as he threw himself immediately at 
the task, and except for intervals spent in field work and in pre- 
paring reports, kept steadily at it throughout his career. To what 
purpose he labored may be judged by the results. The grand 
total of bird stomachs examined by Professor Beal for the Biological 
Survey is 37,825, an average of more than 1500 per year. This 
enormous number includes birds of almost all families, but Pro- 
fessor Beal paid particular attention to the woodpeckers, the 
Icteridze, cuckoos, flycatchers, thrushes, and swallows, upon all 
of which he wrote reports. He made a study also of the mockers, 
wrens, thrashers, titmice, creepers, nuthatches, and kinglets, but 
did not report upon them. 
Professor Beal performed five pieces of field work for the Biologi- 
cal Survey; he collected material for the reference collections, and 
studied the feeding habits of birds, particularly nestlings, in Massa- 
chusetts, from June 11 to September 14, 1898. From May 22 to 
September 22, 1901, and from February 16 to October 1, 1903, and 
April 6 to December 11, 1906, he worked in California. From 
July 7 to November 25, 1909, he investigated birds in Washington, 
Oregon, and California. The results of the first three California 
trips are embodied in two 100-page bulletins on Birds of California 
in Relation to the Fruit Industry. Professor Beal was sole author 
of 20 publications of the Biological Survey, one of which — ‘The 
Swallows, a Family of Valuable Native Birds’ — has not yet been 
issued. He collaborated on four other bulletins, treating in a 
popular way, the economic value of a large number of common 
birds. His Farmers’ Bulletin entitled “Some Common Birds in 
Their Relation to Agriculture (F. B. 54, 1897, revised 1904, re- 
written as F. B. 630, 1915) has been reprinted more than 50 times 
and over a million copies distributed. It has had the largest 
circulation of any Biological Survey publication, and probably 
indeed of any publication on American Ornithology. 
