176 Stone, Some Philadelphia Collections, and Collectors. [A"u 



which subsequent and more extended collections have shown to 

 be distinct species. 



Cassin has been justly termed by Dr. Coues " the only ornithol- 

 ogist this country has ever produced who was as familiar with 

 the birds of the Old World as with those of America," but the 

 opportunity of attaining the great knowledge which he possessed 

 was offered by the liberality of Thomas B. Wilson. 



Had Dr. Wilson endowed his famous collection sufficiently to 

 have ensured a permanent curator, Philadelphia's ornithological 

 history would have gone on without a break, but as it was, the 

 death of Cassin in 1869, marked the close of active work, and for 

 twenty years the collection remained almost untouched by ornithol- 

 ogists. There arose a new generation of bird students, the 

 ' Bulletin ' of the Nuttall Club appeared, the A. O. U. was organ- 

 ized, and meantime the Philadelphia collection was all but for- 

 gotten. Many specimens were there which would have been of 

 the greatest interest to the contributors to the ' Nuttall Bulletin' 

 and the early numbers of ' The Auk'; though much of their impor- 

 tance has been lost to-day owing to the systematic collecting in 

 every part of our country, whereby many of the great rarities of 

 past years have become familiar to all. 



Though it be stretching my theme unduly, I may be permitted 

 to add that the collection is still in a remarkably good state 

 of preservation, and that scarcely any of the types have been 

 lost, while to the 26,000 specimens of old, the past ten years have 

 added 18,000 more. 



It was not my intention to speak of all the ornithologists or all 

 the individual collections which have come to Philadelphia, and 

 I will not therefore weary you with more details, but in closing I 

 must make some allusion to a small collection of skins which- 

 came to the Academy during the past year as a part of the legacy 

 of the late Edward D. Cope. This was a collection formed by- 

 Bernard Hoopes, and included the celebrated series of Warblers 

 formerly the property of Chas. S. Turnbull, author of the ' Birds 

 of East Pennsylvania and New Jersey,' both of these collectors 

 being contemporaries of Cassin. 



This Warbler collection was considered the finest in existence 

 in Turnbull's time and contains such rarities as the Olive,. 



