1919 J Harris, Notes on Harris's Sparrow. 187 



Jackson County, Missouri, where Nuttall and Townsend had left 

 the river nine years previously. Early the next morning they 

 reached Fort Leavenworth. After leaving this post the boat 

 was stranded on a sand-bar from 5 o'clock in the evening until 

 10 the next morning, giving the naturalists considerable time to 

 do some collecting in the neighborhood. In his famous journal x 

 of the voyage, Audubon says under date of May 4: "Friend 

 Harris shot two or three birds which we have not yet fully estab- 

 lished. ... Caught ... a new Finch." And on the next day he 

 states: "On examination of the Finch killed by Harris yesterday, 

 I find it to be a new species, and I have taken its measurements 

 across this sheet of paper." In volume seven of the octavo edi- 

 tion of his ' Birds of America,' where the new species taken on the 

 trip are described, the remarks under the Sparrow are as follows: 

 "The discovery of this beautiful bird is due to my excellent and 

 constant friend Edward Harris, who accompanied me on my late 

 journey to the upper Missouri River, &c, and after whom I have 

 named it, as a memento of the grateful feelings I will always enter- 

 tain towards one ever kind and generous to me. 



" The first specimen seen was procured May 4, 1843, a short 

 distance below the Black Snake Hills. I afterwards had the 

 pleasure of seeing another whilst the steamer Omega was fastened 

 to the shore, and the crew engaged in cutting wood. 



" As I was on the look-out for novelties, I soon espied one of these 

 Finches, which, starting from the ground only a few feet from me, 

 darted on, and passed through the low tangled brushwood too 

 swiftly for me to shoot on the wing. I saw it alight at a great 

 distance, on the top of a high tree, and my several attempts to 

 approach it proved ineffectual ; it flew from one to another treetop 

 as I advanced, and at last rose in the air and disappeared. During 

 our journey up stream my friend Harris, however, shot two others, 

 one of which proved a female, and another specimen was procured 

 by Mr. J. G. Bell, who was also one of my party. Upon our return 

 voyage, my friend Harris had the good fortune to shoot a young 

 one, supposed to be a female, near Fort Crogan, on the fifth of 



1 Audubon and His Journals. By Maria R. Audubon. With Zoological and other Notes 

 by Elliott Couea. 2 Vols. N. Y., 1900. 



