ISO 



THE NIDIOLOGIST 



My collectors reached home May 12, ex- 

 actly one month from date of their departure. 

 There is no romance concerning the extreme 

 scarcity of this Vulture, as less than half a 

 dozen were observed during the entire trip, 

 covering several hundred miles of the most 

 likely country and a month of time. 



P. S. — Since writing the above the egg has 

 passed into the hands of my esteemed Ornitho- 

 logical friend, Mr. G. Freen Morcom, one of 

 the originators and most active promoters of 

 the old " Ridgeway Ornithological Club," 

 organized in Chicago on August 23, 1883. 



A. M. Shields. 



Los Angeles, Cal. 



Wholesale Frauds. 



WR dislike to give a black eye to any 

 locality where there are good collect- 

 ors, some being members of the 

 Cooper Club, but the very brazenness of the 

 frauds enumerated cause us to publish, for the 

 general good, the following letter to us from an 

 Ornithologist of undoubted standing : 



" 1 never saw such a lot of rank frauds as 

 there are in Southern California at this time. 

 I know of a dozen at least. It will be next to 

 useless to mention names, as I do not know of 

 anyone who has purchased eggs here, but they 

 are on the market. 



" To begin, one chap here hired a fisherman 

 to go to C'oronado Islands for eggs. His first 

 trip secured 900 eggs — not one with a pencil 

 mark, all boxed uj) in one lot. I next saw 

 them /// sets. 



" The same man went back and returned 

 with 2,100 eggs, mostly Cormorant's — both 

 species that nest here. These were treated like 

 the rest and assorted out into species after be- 

 ing mixed. 



" Another chap made three species of Lams 

 out of our colony of L. occidcntalis. He has 

 just returned from a trip down the coast after 

 Z. hccrmanni, expecting to sell at $5 j^er egg. 

 He has a lot of eggs. I don't know what (nor 

 does he), but that don't count with him. 



"Again I was told of one who has a lot of 

 schoolboys in the back country bringing eggs 

 wholesale. I asked about the identity. ' O, 

 that don't matter ; they are for sale and ex- 

 change,' (nice, ain't it ?) 



" A dealer here in shells, etc., has told me 

 that next year he will have an immense lot of 

 rare eggs. He has just received a jirice list and 

 discovered that a good many of our sea birds 

 are rare and high priced. I have seen him bring 

 in eggs, boxes of them, make sets of them, and 

 assign them to all kind of species. This man 



is dangerous, for he will bob up under all kinds 

 of names if exposed. Still another star collect- 

 or, not long since, when shown, the picture of 

 the egg of the California Condor (in Bendire's 

 Life Histories), asked what egg was the nearest 

 like the Condor's. He was shown a European 

 Swan's egg as the nearest. A number of very 

 leading questions followed, and the party ex- 

 pressed himself as convinced that no one could 

 tell the difference ! 



" I'll bet, and give odds, that that chap has 

 eggs of the ' Condor ' in his collection. 



" Now, don't you think that this is getting a 

 little rank ? 



" I think it is safe to regard with more than 

 ordinary suspicion," concludes our corres])ond- 

 ent, "a// eggs from Southern California not re- 

 ceived direct from good reliable collectors. 



" N. B. — I've got no specimens to offer, so 

 the foregoing is not based on any desire to make 

 a market for my own stock. 



" P. S. — Do you know anything about one 

 J. T. Jones, of Everett, Mass. ? He wants to 

 exchange, and has some very desirable species, 

 but writes a very strange letter. I don't know 

 whether to try him or let him slip." 



Isn't the postscript funny ? But our friend 

 had not received the June " Nid " yet when he 

 wrote. 



Oriole Lost at Sea. 



MR. A. P. REDINGTON, of Santa 

 Barbara, Cal., writes us under date 

 of May 31 as follows: "Please ex- 

 cuse delay in writing. Have just returned 

 from a lengthy trip among the South Sea Is- 

 lands. 



" As an Ornithological item of interest I 

 might mention the fact that on the above trip 

 on August 4 last, in latitude 30 degrees 46 

 minutes, and longitude 25 degrees 52 minutes, 

 distance from San Francisco about 450 miles, 

 a female Lcterus Inillockii flew aboard the ship, 

 alighting in the rigging, apparently in an ex- 

 hausted condition. The weather had been 

 thick since leaving port, and the bird had evi- 

 dently been carried out to sea from the south- 

 ern coast of California and lost its bearings. It 

 lived aboard the ship for several days when it 

 was accidentally killed by the violent fla]) of one 

 of the sails during a calm. The specimen was in 

 poor condition, having evidently been at sea 

 and on the wing for several days." 



H. R. Painion, of College Park, Cal., writes: "On 

 "May 25 I collected a set of five eggs of the Russet- 

 backed Thrush, the first set of five in as many years' 

 collecting." . .., 



