250 THE CONDOR Vol. XXVIII 



The next step was to consult certain old government publications which contained 

 lists of specimens of birds, and a pertinent entry was found in a "Catalogue of the 

 aquatic and fish-eating birds exhibited by the United States National Museum" [at 

 the Great International Fisheries Exhibition, London, 1883], by Robert Ridgway. 

 Under Aphriza virgata (p. 146) a specimen is listed as follows: "? juv. San Fran- 

 cisco, California, September 11, 1856; J. Hepburn." In the notebook, a specimen 

 of Surf-bird is listed under exactly corresponding data, and it is, furthermore, anno- 

 tated as "Sent S. I." This, in itself, seems conclusive evidence as to the author of 

 the notebooks. 



Through the assistance of Dr. Alexander Wetmore, Assistant Secretary of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, Dr. T. S. Palmer, of the Biological Survey, and Mr. J. H. 

 Riley, of the United States National Museum, I have been able to gather a little 

 information as to the relations of Hepburn to the Smithsonian Institution and to collect 

 further corroborative evidence regarding his ownership of the notebooks in question. 

 Hepburn was in correspondence with Baird, who was then Assistant Secretary of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, and he sent to Washington many specimens of birds. Mr. 

 Riley has supplied me with a list of birds received from Hepburn, compiled from the 

 records of the National Museum (the birds themselves in many cases are not to be 

 found; of some there is record of their disposal elsewhere), and for the most part the 

 data pertaining to these specimens agree so closely with corresponding entries in the 

 notebooks as to remove any possible doubt as to Hepburn being author of these records. 



Dr. Wetmore kindly sent me a letter written to Baird by Hepburn, from San 

 Francisco, September 19, 1859. This was a disappointing exhibit, in a way, for the 

 sprawling, careless writing of this epistle bears at first glance no resemblance to the 

 usually neat and closely written pages of the notebooks. However, careful inspection 

 of the latter discloses different types of writing in different places. The same letters, 

 or combinations of letters, are formed in widely different ways on different pages. 

 Altogether, I receive the impression that the writer is holding himself in and forcing 

 himself to write carefully. In places, especially in the book containing general ac- 

 counts of the species, there are lapses into an extremely hasty scrawl. I am no hand- 

 writing expert and can not give a positive statement that letter and notebooks were 

 written by the same hand. They are very unlike at first glance, but I believe may 

 have been the product of the same writer. At any rate, however the notebooks were 

 written, there can be no doubt that they pertain to the Hepburn collection. 



His system of numbering specimens is complicated by the fact that when a skin 

 left his hands the corresponding number in the notebook was then regarded as vacant, 

 to be filled by a later taken specimen. I was at first startled by an entry, doubtless 

 due to this system, of a Hammond Flycatcher on a page headed 1854, four years before 

 the species was discovered. 



The following scanty biographical notes concerning Hepburn were supplied me 

 by Dr. T. S. Palmer: "James Hepburn was born in Scotland in 1811 and died in 

 Victoria, B. C, April 16, 1869. He was educated as a barrister but emigrated to the 

 Pacific coast where he resided at San Francisco and Victoria. He collected seeds of 

 conifers for some English horticultural society and also, I believe, made collections of 

 shells and some other natural history specimens, including the type of the bird named 

 in his honor." 



I have been able to find but one published contribution from Hepburn's pen. In 

 the Ibis for 1869 (pp. 126-127), the same volume that contains a notice of his death, 

 there is a brief "communication" regarding the identity of a "booming swallow", 

 ascribed to North America by another writer. Editorial comment that instead of a 

 swallow the bird was probably a snipe, called forth Hepburn's statement (undoubtedly 



