^°'i9lf ^"^1 ^o'es and News. 137 



regarded as examples of ' scientific ornithologists ' and it is no wonder 

 that they arouse opposition to the granting of any collecting Ucense. 



We believe that legitimate collecting is indispensable to ornithological 

 research, and that such collecting in the past has had a negligible influence 

 upon the abundance of our birds. Therefore it seems that the A. O. U. 

 Protection Committee would confer a great benefit upon ornithology if it 

 undertakes, as suggested at the recent meeting of the Union, to place the 

 needs of ornithological collecting in its true light before the State game 

 commissions and similar bodies; and also to bring all collectors to a full 

 realization of the responsibility which rests upon them of prosecuting their 

 collecting in a manner that will not prove obnoxious to their fellow citizens, 

 and arouse antagonism against ornithologists at large. 



There is still another side to tliis discussion. Perhaps, after all, the 

 stringency of the laws is not the only, or even the main reason, for the 

 decrease in the number of collectors. Many of the younger zoologists in 

 the eastern United States started in their scientific work as ornithologists 

 and as collectors of skins, but later abandoned birds for some other group 

 of animals; not because of difficulty in collecting birds but because they 

 found better opportunities in other fields for original discoveries in local 

 systematic work. There is a limit to the number of species and subspecies 

 w6rth describing in any area, and so far as the study of the birds of east- 

 ern North America is concerned, that limit has practically been reached. 



But systematic ornithology is after all only a branch of systematic zool- 

 ogy, and Ornithology in its truer and broader sense, has to do with Anat- 

 omy, Animal Behavior, Development and Meaning of Coloration, and 

 other broad problems of evolution, just as much as with systematic work. 

 In many of these fields birds furnish exceptional opportunities for the inves- 

 tigator, and moreover the collecting of skins in connection with such work 

 is by no means a necessity, while the investigator is just as much an orni- 

 thologist as is he who concerns himself wholly with the study of specific 

 and subspecific differences. 



So, even while we maintain that collecting birds is still a necessary part 

 of ornithological science in many parts of the world, and will always be 

 so in anatomical and certain other lines of investigation, nevertheless 

 wherever the systematic side of ornithology becomes practically a com- 

 pleted study, we must naturally expect to find a decrease in collectors, 

 and this without danger of ornithologists becoming extinct. 



As IN previous years, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology of the Uni- 

 versity of California was active during the past spring and summer in 

 carrying on zoological field work. This year the work was conducted 

 entirely within the State of California, in accordance with the principle 

 that a knowledge of the native fauna is of first importance to a State insti- 

 tution of this kind. 



The three months from March to May, inclusive, were occupied in 

 exploration of the San Joaquin Valley along its entire length, the particular 



