In Days Before " The Club " 



Some Philadelphia Bird Collections and Collectors 



by spencer trotter 



This paper is reminiscent of youthful days spent in the de- 

 lightful pursuit of ornithological study. Very few persons that 

 I knew then seemed to care much about birds. A cousin in 

 New York, Newbold T. Lawrence, a nephew of the ornithologist 

 George N. Lawrence, early fired my zeal in the direction of form- 

 ing a collection. Newbold Lawrence had a fine collection of birds 

 stowed in a great case of drawers, over which I used to linger as 

 a boy when staying at his home in New York. It was he who 

 first instructed me in the art of making a bird-skin. That was 

 at his summer home near Far Rockaway, Long Island, back in 

 the early seventies. I have a vivid recollection of this first 

 bird-skin — it was a Least Tern. Lawrence had a very complete 

 collection of the water fowl, bay snipe, and plover of the Long 

 Island coast. I have spent many hours with him on the salt 

 marshes, lying in a "blind " on the border of the " Big Pond," 

 or some of the other shallow waters of these "flats," shooting 

 Yellowlegs, Dowitchers, Willets, and other species over the 

 " stools." One of the visits to his New York home was a red 

 letter experience. I took supper one evening with ' ' Cousin 

 George" (George N. Lawrence), who showed me his splendid 

 collection and told me of his early acquaintance with the great 

 Audubon, and also of a certain Philadelphia collector of birds, 

 one Christopher D. Wood, who had a shop on Market Street, 

 Philadelphia, somewhere between Thirty-fourth and Thirty- 

 Sixth Streets. On that visit I was presented with a copy of 

 Coues' "Key," 1st edition, by my uncle. On another visit I 

 met Harold Herrick, who later married one of my cousins, a 

 sister of Newbold. Herrick had recently described the inter- 



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