DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 27 



■esting Warbler, Helminthophaga lawrencei, named by him in 

 honor of George N. Lawrence. He had also published a list of 

 the birds of Grand Manan. All this, however, concerns New 

 York and not Philadelphia. 



Armed with "Chris" Woods' address I soon found my way 

 to his shop and expended twenty-five cents on the skin of a 

 •Chestnut-sided Warbler. For many years after I was on in- 

 timate terms with the genial "Chris," a constant visitor to his 

 shop, which was always redolent of the smell of bird flesh, dried 

 skins and arsenic. Wood was really a wonderful collector and 

 a splendid field ornithologist, but he had no more idea of 

 scientific ornithology than a cat. He belonged to a race that 

 has become well-nigh extinct; a peculiar race of unlettered men, 

 but possessed of a marvelous instinct for finding birds and with 

 lots of information as to the habits and notes of various species. 

 I remember " Chris " once saying that, if you heard a Chipping 

 Sparrow's song in the woods, it was sure to be a Worm-eating 

 Warbler that was the performer, for a Chippy was not a dweller 

 in woodland, and the songs of the two birds had a certain re- 

 semblance. Woods' father and one or two of his brothers were 

 also good collectors. Charlie Wood was taxidermist in John 

 Krider's old gunshop at the N, E. corner of Second and Walnut 

 Streets at one time. John Krider himself belonged to this same 

 type, a quasi-scientific sportsman. Public sentiment against 

 killing song birds, the spread of suburbs over the near-by 

 countryside, the wilder woodlands thus becoming more and 

 more remote from the city, and the precarious livelihood de- 

 pendent upon taxidermy and commercial bird-collecting, were 

 factors in the extinction of this interesting race. 



The instinct to collect things is a kind of bower-bird trait that 

 develops in many normal individuals at a certain period of their 

 lives. Its particular nature may be predetermined by circum- 

 stance — a few books, running later to first editions (and in some 

 cases to book-plates), stamps and coins, clocks and china (I 

 even know a man, who at one time collected wish-bones, and 

 thought the wish-bone of a Bobolink his highest acquisition), 

 butterflies and birds' eggs. Out of it all may come an orderly 

 ^arrangement of the mind — a life-long pursuit, a master in some 



