32 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



the late Professor Edward D. Cope. His was a brilliant and 

 widely-ranging mind, of a vast acquirement of knowledge and 

 profound philosophy. He was a pioneer in the study of faunal 

 distribution, and his review of the zoogeographical regions in 

 the "Bulletin" of the U. S. National Museum published in 

 1875, contained much interesting matter relating to the ranges 

 of various birds. The copy which he presented to me, and 

 which I still have, opened a new field of interest and one to 

 which I have ever since been attracted. Cope edited a small 

 book, "Our Own Birds," written by William Lloyd Baily (an 

 uncle of our Wm. L. Baily). Among Cope's extensive collec- 

 tion of vertebrates was a small collection of bird skins, which 

 had been made by Bernard Hoopes, who like Cope, belonged 

 to the generation before us. I remember this collection as con- 

 taining several specimens of the Cape May Warbler and, rarest 

 of all, a Bachman's Warbler. This collection is now a part of 

 the Academy of Natural Science's collection. 



There must have been many other persons interested in orni- 

 thology during these years, but I did not have the good fortune 

 to meet them. That was in the days before The Club. To me, 

 the one great feature of the Club has been the bringing together 

 of men of like tastes and interests — pleasant companions to fore- 

 gather with at the meetings, where communications and discus- 

 sions enrich one's mind and fill the days that follow with much 

 fine thinking about birds and men and the background of the 

 world beyond the door-step — of deep woods and tangle-bordered 

 streams, of wind-swept beaches and lonely marshes, of the up- 

 lifting hills, and over all the light and dark of the brooding sky 

 — the highway of the bird. 



