AN EARLY COLORADO NATURALIST—DENIS GALE 31 
I wish you could have seen the Doctor’s expression as he opened the different packages. 
He was perfectly delighted over the lot, says that some of the specimens are just what he 
has been wanting, that they prove certain of his conclusions, that some are different from 
anything he has seen so far, but what pleased him more than anything else is that stump- 
tailed rat with the naked tail. I never saw anyone so pleased. He will write you at 
length when he knows where to address you. The way the skins were made up sur- 
prised him considerably, for he said that he never got any as well prepared ones from 
an amateur before. “Why,” he said, “I could not make them up better myself.” 
On the title-page of Bulletin No. 1 of The Colorado Biological Associa- 
tion, on the “Hymenoptera of Colorado,” published in 1889, the list 
of officers of that early scientific society includes the name of Denis 
Gale as a member of the council, associated with H. W. Nash, Dr. J. 
M. Coulter, Dr. A. S. Packard, Dr. C. H. Merriam and D. W. Park. 
A letter just received from Mr. Horace G. Smith of Denver, contains the 
information that Mr. Gale was the last president of the association and 
was also a member of an earlier organization, the Colorado Ornitho- 
logical Association (not the present organization of that name), 
which was broadened into the Colorado Biological Association. These 
facts connect him with the earliest efforts to establish co-operative 
relations among Rocky Mountain naturalists. . 
Mr. Gale’s notes for the most part are of a prosaic but interesting 
character, consisting of the record of what he actually saw, such as the 
kinds of nesting sites occupied, the use and non-use of the same sites 
year after year, rebuilding of destroyed nests, refilling of rifled nests, 
the ease or difficulty with which the various species are flushed, their 
valor in defense of their young, etc. Occasionally, however, his poetic 
temperament and love for the beautiful in nature reveals itself in passion- 
ate and extravagant descriptions. The following account of the Audu- 
bon hermit thrush affords a good example of both styles, the first part 
being a matter-of-fact and detailed statement of his observations, while 
the closing portion is a picturesque eulogy of the species: 
June 2. Saw the first of this species today, again on the 4th, a single bird. 12th, 
saw each day I was out two or three birds in every case singly. oth, first nest with full 
complement fresh eggs at 9,000 feet. At 10,000 to 11,000 feet two or three weeks later 
as arule. Eggs vary in color, in size and shape. They also differ often in the same set, 
from a beautiful, bright, tender, greenish blue of a clear, semi-transparent character to 
the dull shades of faint greenish indigo. Four eggs are generally the full set, laid con- 
secutively, though three are sometimes the complement and in a single instance I have 
