DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 6 



but examine these specimens — last evening till 12 o'clock — and 

 I am now going to meet him again. ' ' 



Later he writes: 



"Gambel is exceedingly wild about describing, and it is 

 already very difficult to get him to examine birds that he has 

 concluded are new — concluded, I mean in the woods of Cali- 

 fornia without books — with scarcely knowing the names of late 

 ornithologists. The birds that he has described are not exam- 

 ined at all, and now the four of which he read descriptions last 

 Tuesday evening I have not time to examine, as the paper is to 

 be reported on next Tuesday. I apprehend there will be more 

 work for you, and possibly some additional synonyms for your 

 collection (Baird was making a list of synonyms), and the 

 most doubtful bird, too, probably at least, he has called after 

 me, Mergulus cassinV 



In the winter of 1845-6 Gambel began to study medicine 

 under Dr. S. G. Morton, while at the Academy he seems to 

 have aroused the animosity of John Cassin, who was a good 

 deal of a politician in the Society. Gambel was a candidate 

 for Curator in the year 1847, but was defeated by the late Dr. 

 Joseph Leidy, whose cause Cassin espoused. 



In 1848 Gambel, who had received his medical degree, de- 

 cided to make another trip to California, and Cassin' s politic 

 methods are amusingly shown in one of his letters to Baird. 

 He says ' ' I have taken much pains to cultivate Gambel lately 

 merely because I knew he possessed a very unfavorable impres- 

 sion of me, and I wished to correct it. ' ' Evidently the possibility 

 of more novelties from the far West which might not come 

 under his care went a long way to heal a personal breach, of the 

 merits of which we know but little. However, only misfortune 

 came of Gambel* s second trip, as he perished in the California 

 mountains when only thirty years of age. During his short 

 career Dr. Gambel served as Recording Secretary of the Acad- 

 emy, 1848-49, and on the Publication Committee, 1845-49. 

 His accounts and descriptions of western birds, running through 

 Vols. I-IV of the Academy's Proceedings, and some republi- 

 cations in the Journal, constitute his only contributions to 

 science, but they stamp him as a naturalist of more than ordi- 



