^°^i9l0^^^] Brewster, In Memoriam: James Gushing Merrill. 115 



collection, but with characteristic generosity gave nearly all his 

 specimens to personal friends and to museums; most of the 

 nests and eggs passing, through Major Bendire's hands, into the 

 National Museum, and of the birds into the collection of the writer 

 of this memoir. Altogether, Dr. Merrill's life on the frontier may 

 be said to have been not less profitably than happily spent. It is a 

 pity that it could not have been continued still longer since it suited 

 him so perfectly in every way. 



Although qualified both by nature and by training for deaUng 

 with abstruse and difficult problems of science, and by no means 

 without interest in its purely technical side. Dr. Merrill was dis- 

 tinctively a field naturalist. His published ornithological writings 

 relate almost exclusively to the habits and distribution of western 

 birds. They are not numerous, but their cjuality is of high order, 

 for he was an exceptionally accurate and intelligent observer, as 

 well as a pleasing and finished writer. The earliest, and perhaps 

 also most important one of any length, is that relating to the birds 

 which he found in 1876, 1877, and 1878, in the neighborhood of 

 Fort Brown, Texas. Although this region had been visited in 1863 

 by a competent British ornithologist, INIr. H. E. Dresser, its wonder- 

 fully rich and varied avifauna remained comparatively unnoticed 

 and unknown until attention was called to it by Dr. Merrill. He 

 took there specimens of no less than twelve species and subspecies 

 of birds which, up to that time, had not been ascertained to occur 

 anywhere north of the Mexican boundary; besides many nests 

 and sets of eggs then undescribed or of exceeding rarity. 



Other papers, of almost equal value and importance, are his 

 'Notes on the Birds of Fort Klamath, Oregon,' published in 1883, 

 and his 'Notes on the Birds of Fort Sherman, Idaho,' which appeared 

 in 1897. At Fort Brown he obtained a Goatsucker, at Fort Kla- 

 math a Horned Lark, and at Fort Sherman a Song Sparrow, which 

 have been found to represent fonns previously unknown to science, 

 and now bear his name. 



Although these and others of his ornithological papers are excel- 

 lent of their kind, no one of them is equal in literary merit to his 

 Memorial of Major Bendire, published in 1898. He not only ad- 

 mired, but loved, the bluff, upright Major — as, indeed, who did 

 not ? — and this tribute to the memory of his friend is an altogether 

 admirable piece of work. 



