lieutenant's commission and a record of most efficient service at home. Small wonder, 

 then, that he is determined to fight something, if it be only army ants and bushmasters 

 in Colombia. Mr. van Rossem will collect for us abroad as opportunity offers. 



At the Annual Meeting of the Trustees, Mr. E. Raymond Driver, lately of River- 

 side, Illinois, and now of Santa Barbara, was elected a trustee of the M. C. O. Mr. 

 Driver conies of a well-known family, long neighbors of the Ripleys in Riverside. He 

 is a keen sportsman, familiar with every branch of outdoor life, and he has taken up 

 collecting from the sheer fascination of the game. The photograph of the Golden 

 Pileolated Warbler's nest, a very difficult .subject in its loose, dead leaf setting, shows 

 what a gem of a collector we have found. And Mrs. Driver is just as keen about it 

 as he is. That's where real Luck comes in. 



We are glad to see that the "Committee of Twenty-five" on the Revision of Prices 

 of Eggs of North American Birds, has organized and is functioning. This committee, 

 appointed by popular vote, as recorded in the columns of the veteran "Oologist" has 

 risen in response to a long-felt need. The old catalogs, Lattin's, Taylor's and the 

 rest, are obsolete. But some authoritative basis of values is absolutely necessary in 

 the maintenance of exchange relations, as necessary in its narrow field as is the dic- 

 tionary in its task of maintaining the purity of the English language. 



There was danger at the outset that the few collectors who buy eggs "cheap for 

 cash," and the few dealers in eggs, should control the situation to the ultimate 

 embarrassment of the entire craft. But, fortunately, more sober counsels prevailed 

 and the committee decided, almost unanimously, to prepare a strictly exchange medium, 

 and to leave the buyers and sellers to do their own dickering. This action does not 

 require to be construed as a rebuke to those who buy eggs, nor as a criticism of those 

 who sell; but it is a high-minded action which lifts the whole discussion above the 

 plane of commercialism, and which asserts that oological exchange is a business to be 

 conducted between gentlemen, and in order that science may be served. There are 

 those who protest that this is a mere camouflage of words, and that the two proposi- 

 tions, a net cash price, or a lofty exchange valuation, mean the same thing in the end. 

 But those who make this claim are the very ones who worked feverishly for the cash 

 catalog, and who find themselves embarrassed by the exchange arrangement. There 

 is evidently a difference. Enough said! 



Mr. R. Magoon Barnes, of Lacon, Illinois, deserves great credit for fathering this 

 committee enterprise, and especially for accepting the committee's conclusions which 

 were at variance with his own convictions, in a sportsmanlike spirit. Everybody 

 knows that Brother Barnes is accumulating an amazing quantity of eggs, and every- 

 body knows the magic of his golden wand. Our aim Ts not at all to embarrass the 

 operations of favored gentlemen such as he, but to prevent the monopoly (uninten- 

 tional, we are sure) of a field which belongs first to science rather than to finance. 



It is worth while to mention that no less a personage than A. C. Bent, Esa., author 

 of Life Histories of North American Birds, has accepted the position of Honorary 

 President of this Committee of Twenty-five. Dr. B. R. Bales, of Circleville, Ohio, is 

 the very efficient Chairman; and Rev. H. E. Wheeler, of Fayetteville, Arkansas, the 

 Honorary Secretary. Messrs. J. Hooper Bowles, F. C. Willard, and R. C. Harlow, have 

 been appointed a sub-committee on Final Values; and we are sure that the finished 

 product, the New Standard Catalog of American Birds' Eggs, will be a model of its 

 kind, authoritative, and as permanent as anything scientific may hope to be. 



While some of the gods of American ornithology are uncertain even yet whether 

 to laugh or to cry over the recrudescence of oology (and are, therefore, taking it out in 

 sniffing), it is refreshing to see the degree of seriousness with which our British con- 

 temporaries take their study of oology. Not to mention Hume's Nests and Eggs of 

 Indian Birds (written by an Englishman and published in London) as a piece of work 

 unexampled in America, because it is thirty years old, we have only to refer to the 

 latest issue of "The Ibis" for evidence of the kindling interest which Englishmen take 

 in the study of oology. The January "Ibis" contains a ten-page account of the Fifth 

 Annual Oological Dinner held at Pagani's Restaurant in London, and participated in 

 largely by well-known members of the British Ornithologists Union. Lord Roths- 

 cbild took the chair, and the mere enumeration of items in the feast of good things 

 oological over which he presided, is enough to turn an intelligent novice green with 

 envy. We can only mention one item, "A clutch of four Lapwing's eggs, of the very 

 rare cvanic form" exhibited by Mr. F. G Lupton. This set, we learn, was the only 

 one of its type culled from an examination of 450,000 Lapwing's eggs, an examination 

 carried out over a period of twenty-four years. The occasion was so enjoyable and 

 so profitable that the committee in charge decided to hold two such annual dinners and 

 exhibitions hereafter. 



We take pleasure in announcing the arrival of a contemporary, already esteemed, 

 "The Oologists Exchange and Mart," edited and published by Kenneth L. Skinner, Esq., 



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