Michigan Ornithological Club 3 



has often told me that when a boy his interest in Canadian birds 

 was stimulated by seeing some stuffed specimens in Scotland ; 

 one was a Belted Kingfisher, and one a Golden Winged Wood- 

 pecker. When he came to Hamilton to manage the gas works 

 he began to collect," and his spare time must have been largely 

 spent in this occupation, for it was less than seven years after his 

 arrival there when he read a paper on the birds of the district 

 before the Hamilton Association, which was published in the 

 Canadian Journal, and six years later there appeared in the pro- 

 ceedings of the Essex Institute a more extended list of the "Birds 

 of Hamilton, Canada West," which contained 24.T species. The 

 care with which this list was compiled is evidenced by the fact 

 that only two species appear in it with insufficient ground. There 

 are, of course, a few hypothetical species, such as "Nyctala albi- 

 frous, the White-Faced Owl," as the young of the Saw-whet was 

 then called, but the list as a whole is an admirable object lesson 

 of care and judgment. In this list are noted several items which 

 are of special interest to the student of to-day, for instance : 

 "Wild Turkeys, common along the western frontier, * 

 Wild Pigeons, have not been numerous for the last five or six 

 years. A few scattered flocks seen every spring." This note is 

 evidently from the pen of a man who had known the pigeon in 

 times of great abundance, as these flocks would doubtless, from 

 the writer's own recollection (in 1869, three years after the publi- 

 cation of Mr. Mcllwraith's list), have contained from 200 to 5000 

 birds apiece, and the larger number would be judged an enormous 

 number of any kind of birds today. Dr. Mcllwraith further says : 

 "He often used to lament the diminution in the numbers of birds 

 that he saw, especially the warblers and waders," doubtless a 

 theme for mournful retrospection with all the older ornithologists 

 whose good fortune it has been to live anywhere near the out- 

 skirts of settlement in their earlier days. 



After the two lists of the birds of Ontario, noted above, his 

 next published work was a volume of nearly 400 pages, entitled, 

 "The Birds of Ontario," which was mainlv the record of his own 

 personal experience, although in the preface he acknowledges as- 

 sistance from Dr. J. H. Garvier, of Lucknow, Geo. R. White, of 

 Ottawa, and other Canadian students. This was published in 

 1886 by the Hamilton Association, and was partly the result of 

 a paper entitled, "On Birds and Bird Matters," which he read be- 



