378 Notes and News. [uty 
dead, were John McEwen and Ellen Scofield Betts. His first schooling 
was received at Welton Academy and Chases Academy at Norwalk, Conn. 
From there he went to Cornell where he graduated as a mechanical engineer. 
After holding a position in New York in the Westinghouse Company he 
followed the call of the West and landed on the ranch of a friend in Utah 
where he learned to love the semi-wilderness which was so dear to him 
afterwards. 
Joining the Forestry Service he was engaged in field and laboratory work 
in Lafayette, Ind., St. Louis, Mo., Boulder, Col., and Madison, Wis., but 
routine work did not satisfy his active spirit, and leaving Madison in the 
summer of 1916 he bought a ranch adjoining that of his friend in Uintah 
County, Utah, fifty miles from the railroad, and settled down to the life 
of a rancher. He was on horseback in company with a herder who was 
bringing in some sheep when a storm overtook them not far from home. 
Mr. Betts received the full force of the bolt and was killed instantly as was 
his horse and that of the herder but the latter was only stunned and 
recovered. Mr. Betts was buried at Walden, N. Y., beside his parents. 
His first ornithological contributions were published in ‘The Auk’ and 
‘Bird-Lore’ in 1909 and 1910, and he continued to send in his observations 
on the birds of Colorado, Wisconsin and Montana to these journals and 
‘The Condor’ every year until his removal to Utah. His most important 
publication was his ‘ List of the Birds of Boulder Co., Colo.’ (see Auk, 1914, 
p. 416). 
Whoever had the good fortune of Mr. Betts’ acquaintance will miss him 
sorely, for his character was exemplary and his personality most charming. 
Ornithology itself sustains a real loss, for having trained himself for efficient 
bird study in the most difficult fields he was at the point of doing much 
valuable work in the little known region of his new home.— O. W. 
SAMUEL THORNE, an Associate of the American Ornithologists’ Union, 
from 1908 to 1915, died July 4, 1915, in his 80th year. He was born in 
Dutchess County, N. Y., Sept. 6, 1835, and in early life was a farmer and 
breeder of improved stock at Thorndale, N. Y. From 1868 to 1872 he was 
engaged with his brothers in New York in tanning and selling leather. He 
retired from this business in 1872 and in his later years became a director 
in several railroads and banks, and in the New York Life Insurance and 
Trust Company. Mr. Thorne was a patron of science and was deeply 
interested in the New York Botanical Garden and the New York Zodlogical 
Society. As one of the early members of the Executive Committee he took 
an active part in the constructive work of the Zodlogical Park, and at the 
time of his death he was Vice-President of the Zodlogical Society.— T.S. P. 
AmonG the deceased members of the A. O. U. whose obituaries have not 
been published in ‘The Auk’ is Henry Warden Marsden, an associate from 
1904 to 1914, who died at Pacific Grove, Calif., Feb. 26, 1914, at the age of 
