DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB d 



phia writes to Wm. L. Baily thanking him for the beautiful 

 picture of the male and female Cape May Warbler which he 

 "accepts with special favor". He adds: "Permit me to re- 

 mark that they are beautiful and indicate artistic taste and 

 quality of execution in a high degree, in which I am not ful- 

 some. They are a spirited facsimile of Audubon, but in my 

 opinion had thee had recourse to the natural subject, thee would 

 have excelled him, in truthfulness and delineation." 



On November 10, 1855, Geo. N. Lawrence says: "The re- 

 markable drawing of Humming Birds is very beautiful and re- 

 markably true to nature; the metallic coloring is very fine in 

 effect and different from anything of the kind I have heretofore 

 seen. If Gould has availed himself of your instructions in 

 using these tints, he certainly should acknowledge it in his 

 work. ' ' 



Again on July 2, 1856, Mr. Lawrence writes: "I was much 

 gratified to find the Humming Bird so favorably thought of by 

 Mr. Gould." 



In the preface of John Gould's superb "Monograph of the 

 Trochilidae " , Vol. 1, p. vii, is contained the following para- 

 graph: 



" Numerous attempts have been made at various times to give something 

 like a representation of the glittering hues with which this group of birds is 

 adorned; but all had ended in disappointment and the subject seemed so 

 fraught with difficulty that I at first dispaired of its accomplishment. I de- 

 termined, however, to make the trial, and, after a series of lengthened, trouble- 

 some, and costly experiments, I have, I trust, partially, if not completely 

 succeeded. Similar attempts were simultaneously carried on in America by 

 Wm. L. Baily, Esq. , who with the utmost kindness and liberality explained 

 his process to me and although I have not adopted it, I must in fairness admit 

 that it is fully as successful as my own. I shall always entertain a lively re- 

 membrance of the pleasant day I spent with this gentleman in Philadelphia. 

 It was in his company that 1 first saw a living Humming Bird, in a garden 

 which has become classic ground to all true Americans, from the pleasing as- 

 sociations connected with its former possessor, the great and good Bartram, 

 and from its having been one of the haunts of the celebrated Wilson, than 

 whom no one has written more pleasingly on the only species of this family 

 which inhabit that part of North America, the Trochilxis Colv^ris." 



In Gould's account of the Ruby throat (Vol III, p. 131), he 



says: 



