JAMES HEPBURN, A LITTLE KNOWN 

 CALIFORNIAN ORNITHOLOGIST 



By HARRY S. SWARTH 



IN the course of some recent house cleaning in a storeroom in the Department of 

 Agriculture of the University of California, there were unearthed two old manu- 

 script note books pertaining to birds, which have since come into my hands. 

 Their rescue was effected by. Prof. T. F. Tavernetti, of the Department of Agricul- 

 ture, who turned the books over to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, where they 

 now are. The history of these note books is unknown ; there is no information as to 

 when or how they came into the possession of the University. 



One of the two books (8>^ inches by 5j/2 inches in size) is a catalogue of birds 

 collected, many of them in California, the specimens numbered serially from 1 to 

 1436, and covering the period from May 6, 1852, to January 17, 1868. The other 

 book (8 by 6% inches) contains a series of written accounts of various species of 

 birds and is evidently based upon the collection listed in the catalogue. In neither 

 volume is there any signature of the author, nor any other direct suggestion as to who 

 the writer could be. The names of many individuals are mentioned, mostly in 

 acknowledgment of aid in securing specimens, but it apparently never occurred to the 

 owner of the books to put his own name on record. Both volumes are in an excellent 

 state of preservation. They are strongly bound, the paper is white and unstained, 

 and for the most part the ink is clear and unfaded. 



It is, of course, a matter of considerable interest to us, working in present day 

 ornithology in California, to know who it was who was making extensive collections 

 of birds, with carefully written observations upon the species, in this state so long ago. 

 The most promising clue to the problem, next to the period at which the work had 

 been done, was to be found in the list of localities visited. These were all on the 

 Pacific Coast, ranging from Los Angeles to Sitka, and with the bulk of the collecting 

 centering about San Francisco and Victoria. The names of various old-time Cali- 

 fornian ornithologists suggested themselves, such as Cooper, Gambel, Heermann, and 

 others, but of all these men enough was known of their travels to be an assurance that 

 none of them had followed the itinerary covered in this notebook. 



In the original description of Leucosticte littoralis Baird (Trans. Chicago Acad. 

 Sci., I, i, 1869, p. 318), the bird then and since known as the Hepburn Rosy Finch, a 

 statement occurs that came into my mind as soon as I had glanced over the notebooks, 

 as perhaps supplying the solution of the question. This is a reference to the collector 

 of the specimen which was afterwards selected as the type of this form, taken at Fort 

 Simpson "by Mr. Hepburn, an eminent English naturalist, long time resident at San 

 Francisco and Victoria." 



