HISTORY OF OREGON ORNITHOLOGY [53] 



brief stop at Vancouver they traveled south through the Willamette, 

 Umpqua, and Rogue River Valleys, finally crossing out of the State on 

 November 6, 1855. 



During this trip Newberry collected voluminous notes, and his material 

 is the most definite and important contribution to Oregon ornithology 

 up to that date. First records for many of the species within the State 

 limits were made, and this material, together with that collected pri- 

 vately by Dr. George Suckley at The Dalles in 1854-55 a ^ ter ne na d com- 

 pleted his services with a northern survey, furnished most of the basis 

 for Oregon records in Spencer Fullerton Baird's report (Baird, Cassin, and 

 Lawrence 1858), which was the final ornithological result of all the 

 surveys. When one considers the comparative isolation of Diamond Peak 

 and Mount Jefferson, even up to the last few years, it is odd to read the 

 records of Newberry and realize that at that early date scientific men were 

 scouting the fastnesses of the Cascades looking for new information. 



BENDIRE, HENSHAW, MEARNS, AND OTHERS, 1872. TO 1902. 



THE CIVIL WAR and its attendant tension apparently interrupted further 

 work on birds in Oregon, for it was not until Captain Charles Bendire 

 published his work on collections and observations in Harney Valley 

 some twenty years later that the next noteworthy contribution was made. 

 He spent the period from November 1875 to January 1877 in residence at 

 Camp Harney. The results were published in two papers, the first in 

 1875 (Brewer 1875) and the second in 1877 (Bendire 1877). In addition 

 his notes were amplified in many instances in his two volumes on Life 

 Histories of North American Birds , published in 1892. and 1895. As Bendire 

 was the first resident ornithologist in eastern Oregon, he is responsible 

 for a long list of first records. These cover both breeding and occurrences 

 of birds in this rich area and probably make the greatest individual con- 

 tribution to the knowledge of the birds of the State. Most of the speci- 

 mens he collected are deposited in the United States National Museum 

 at Washington. 



Henry Wetherbee Henshaw, who later become Chief of the Biological 

 Survey, was ornithologist of the Wheeler Survey of the Territories from 

 1871 to 1879, * n tne course of which he collected many birds, 2.38 on a 

 trip in 1878 from Carson, Nevada, to The Dalles and Portland, Oregon. 

 In his autobiographical notes Henshaw related the following experience 

 that befell him while collecting birds at Albany, Oregon, in 1881 (Condor 

 2.2.: 55-56, 1910): 



While in Oregon an amusing incident occurred by which I fell into the clutches of the 

 law, the first and only time in my long experience as a bird collector. Being detained in 

 Albany, Oregon, for a few days because of a flood which interfered with the operation of 

 the stages and railroads to the south, I employed an hour's leisure in collecting a few birds 

 on the outskirts of the town, by no means so large then as now. Fate played me a sorry 



