THE NIDIOLOGIST. 



79 



advice; he made promises right and left. 

 In fact the professor did everything which 

 could be accomplished through the instru- 

 mentality of pen and ink, excepting the 

 writing up of his own notes. 



He had no notes of his own ! Not one! 

 So he used those of the students of the col- 

 lege where he was supposed to teach ento- 

 mology. Then, as a final addition, he 

 secured the twentj^-five years of continu- 

 ous observations by the late lamented Dr. 

 Atkins. 



As a compiler of other's observations, 

 Professor A. J. Cook, of the Agricultural 

 College of lyansing, Michigan, is a success, 

 that is if he did the compiling; but, from 

 letters we have received, one might infer 

 that the under-graduates and assistants at 

 the Experiment Station at the college did 

 fully nine-tenths of the work, as they cer- 

 tainly did the type- writing and much of the 

 drudgery. 



Now, to go back a few years — when an 

 observer of birds in Michigan wrote to this 

 note-sponger for information, he received 

 the following reply on a postal card: 



"Dear Sir: 



Your request received. Can't give you 

 any information. Do not know anything 

 about ornithology. Never took any inter- 

 est in birds. A. J. Cook." 



The above letter seems hardly compati- 

 ble with the following lines taken from the 

 introduction of his Birds of Michigan: 

 "Having taught ornithology for the past 

 twenty-six years at the Michigan Agricul- 

 tural College to large classes," etc. 



Professor Cook is indebted to sixty or 

 more persons for the success of his pam- 

 phlet, and particularly is he indebted to 

 five to ten observers who were vastly more 

 capable of doing the work than he. 



Now comes the sequel to this eminent 

 ornithologist's (?) endeavors. The State 

 published the catalogue of one hundred and 

 fifty pages and Professor Cook is selling 

 the same all over the country, and we know 

 of two dealers who have purchased State 

 Printing of him. 



But this is not the worst, for although 

 the returns from sales should go to the now 

 ignored assistants, not a cent do they get, 

 and not even the promised copies which 

 this sponging, conniving, pseudo-natural- 

 ist so liberally named. 



Not content with the apparent success of 

 the catalogue, he immediately issued a 

 second edition, leaving the work as with 

 the other list to wholly incompetent aids. 

 The result shows the lack of supervision by 

 competent hands, who had refused to assist 

 in this second venture, or who had been 

 ignored by the so-called author because he 

 owed them for their services on the first 

 edition. 



Over fifty ridiculous blunders that show 

 glaringly in the first edition, are still left 

 uncorrected in the second edition, while 

 many typographical errors, and even incor- 

 rect nomenclature, occur. As a single in- 

 stance, we would state that one contributor 

 of observations, and he is not the most 

 prominent, or the only one to complain, 

 states his grievance at over eighty errors. 



These mistakes are mainly the result of 

 mixing two or more species and result from 

 incorrect compilation and lack of supervis- 

 ion. They were unavoidable from the 

 shiftless manner in which the work was 

 conducted. 



It would be impossible to correct half of 

 the errors, unless a month were expended 

 in communication with the many sufferers, 

 and therefore we will not occupy the space 

 for simple mention, but will give a few of 

 the most glaring, if space permits at a later 

 date. 



To the outsider the catalogue reads well, 

 but to a bird student of Michigan, the notes 

 are most incomprehensible at times. We 

 would advise someone to straighten out the 

 incongruous notes so that this State Cata- 

 logue will not go on record as an unchal- 

 lenged menace to the reputation of many of 

 our reliable observers. As it stands it is 

 the most farcical bird-note compilation on 

 record. 



