DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 29 



Both of these birds brought me into relations with the then 

 young men of the Nuttall Club and with their newly-started 

 "Bulletin." The Swallow later brought a great letter from 

 Elliot Coues and also a notice of it in his '* Birds of the Colo- 

 rado Valley." During the years 1878-79 and '80 I was a 

 Jessup Fellow at the Academy of Natural Sciences, working on 

 the bird collection which was in a state bordering on chaos. In 

 those days I met Coues, Baird, and two British ornithologists, 

 F. Ducane Godman and Henry Seebohm. Mr. Seebohm had 

 come over from London to look up some specimens of Thrushes 

 in the Academy's collection, on which family he was then en- 

 gaged in writing a monograph. From ** Chris" Wood I got 

 some good data for a list of rare birds taken by him around 

 Philadelphia. This paper was sent to the Linnean Society of 

 New York and first published in "Forest and Stream," and 

 later in the " Nuttall Bulletin." It was all fine enthusiasm in 

 those days. 



At school, in the early seventies, I first met Will Collins, a 

 boon companion who, like myself, was just starting to make a 

 -collection of birds. I have his collection now at Swarthmore; 

 my collection went to Bryn Mawr. Collins made an honest 

 <;ollection ; the majority of the specimens were shot by him- 

 self around his home, on a farm near Frankford. Before ill 

 health forced him to give up, he had accumulated most of the 

 species of the smaller land birds of this district. The days 

 spent with Collins hunting birds over that country about his 

 farm are among the most delightful recollections of my youth. 

 We both became quite expert in the use of an implement, called 

 the "slap-jack," and a good many interesting birds fell into our 

 hands through this means, especially when pursuing birds in 

 more or less thickly-settled places. I remember one day in 

 October, 1876, Collins and I started for the Centennial Exhi- 

 bition in Fairmount Park. We got as far as Snyder's Woods, 

 a most attractive spot in those days and really quite wild, when 

 the sight of some shy migrant lured us from the path. Pres- 

 ently I heard Collins calling in a low voice, and when I reached 

 him he was standing under a small tree, on one of the lower 

 limbs of which sat a little Saw-whet Owl, at which he was pep- 



