THE-C9nD?R 



Volume X November-December 1908 Number 6 



RETROSPECTIVE 



By HENRY B. KAEDING 



WITH the present issue the Condor closes its first decade, and perhaps we 

 may be pardoned if we occupy a few moments of our readers' time in 

 looking back or planning ahead. Ten years: a long time for some of us, 

 yet all too short for others. Ten years have wrought their changes in all our lives 

 and left their impress on the ornithological work of the Pacific Coast; and it is with 

 no small feeling of pride that the Condor, thru and with its mother organization, 

 the Cooper Club realizes the great strides that have been made in the promulgation 

 of bird knowledge and protection, and the share that we have all had in the work. 



When the Cooper Club was formed in June, 1893, by four earnest bird students 

 in San Jose, little did anyone think of the significance of the movement started, or 

 the extent and magnitude that would be reached in the space of fifteen years. 

 Those were the days when H. R. Taylor was publishing the old Nidiohgist, and 

 it was made the official organ of the Club. The first officers of the Club were: 

 President, W. H. Osgood; Vice-President, H. R. Painton; Secretary, Chester Bar- 

 low; and Treasurer, F. A. Schneider. Monthly meetings were held, and papers 

 read and later published in the "Nid", as the paper was affectionately called. 



The "Nid" filled a long felt want: prior to its issuance we had no publication 

 on the Coast of its kind, and a deep debt of gratitude is due it and its publisher for 

 the impetus it gave to ornithology among men who had hitherto been working in- 

 dependently. By means of the "Nid", and the Cooper Club, we were enabled to 

 get together, to communicate to each other our ideas and discoveries, and to sys- 

 tematize our work. 



The Club grew slowly month by month; by the end of the year 1893 there 

 were seventeen members and by the first anniversary of the Club there were twenty- 

 five; and the membership kept growing till by the end of 1896 we had sixty-seven 

 members. The systematic work of the Club up to that time had been confined to 

 the life histories of the Vireos and Wrens of California, and the general trend of 

 the papers on all subjects was along the lines of the recording of observations, mi- 

 gration and nesting dates. Notable among the papers presented were records from 



