— - 
Sept., 1920 
Hill, Lastreto, Loomis, McLean, Mailliard, 
Storer, Swarth, and Wright; visitors, Mrs. 
Thomson, Miss Wythe, Mr. Bridges, and 
Douglass Aiken. 
The minutes of the July meeting were 
read and approved and minutes of May, June 
and July meetings of the Southern Division 
were read. Mr. Bruce Overington was elect- 
ed to membership, and the following names 
were proposed: Mrs. Edward Hohfeld, 754 
2rd Ave., San Francisco, by Mrs. E. C. Pitch- 
er; Mr. Arthur Frank, care of Western 
Washington Experiment Station, Puyallup, 
Washington, by Amelia S. Allen; and Miss 
Eleanor V. Bennet, 2904 Piedmont Ave., 
Berkeley, by Tracy I. Storer. Elections by 
the Southern Division in May, June and July 
were presented and approved. The recom- 
mendation presented at the July meeting 
that Mrs. Florence Merriam Bailey be elect- 
ed an Honorary Member of the Club was 
adopted by an unanimous vote, and the sec- 
retary was instructed to submit the proposal 
to the Southern Division for its considera- 
tion. 
The following communication was then 
read by the Secretary: 
To the Northern Division of the Cooper 
Ornithological Club, 
Mrs. Amelia S. Allen, Secretary; 
Ladies and Gentlemen: It has been brought 
to my knowledge that the Cooper Ornitho- 
logical Club has been subject to a certain 
amount of criticism on account of the con- 
tinued non-appearance of my projected work 
upon “The Birds of California’. This is a 
regrettable injustice, for such criticism has 
been in nowise deserved either on the part 
of the Cooper Club or of its leaders. It is 
my earnest desire, therefore, to remove at 
this time any grounds of misapprehension 
which may exist, both by means of a frank 
review of our previous relations, and by the 
elimination of a possible occasion of future 
misunderstanding. 
In the first place, it should be clearly un- 
derstood that the Cooper Ornithological Club 
has not now and never has had any slightest 
responsibility for the business management 
or the financing of “The Birds of Califor- 
nia” enterprise. In my conduct of the busi- 
ness canvass on behalf of this publishing 
venture, I have scrupulously observed this 
point, and any misapprehension on the part 
of the public has been due to unwarranted 
inference and lack of inquiry. So far as the 
relations of the Birds of California enter- 
prise and the Cooper Club are concerned, our 
agreement is vested in the resolutions passed 
at the November meetings of the Northern 
and the Southern Divisions of the C. O. C., in 
1910, and reported on pages 39 and 40 of the 
Condor, Vol. xiii, Jan., 1911. It is well to 
recall the exact language of these reports. 
The minutes of the Northern Division state: 
« ,.A motion was made by Mr. J. Mailliard, 
seconded by Mr. W. P. Taylor, that the 
Cooper Ornithological Club heartily endorse 
Mr. Dawson’s plans, and pledge its moral 
MINUTES OF COOPER CLUB MEETINGS 193 
support and cooperation in the task of pre- 
paring a work upon the Birds of California. 
Motion was carried. A motion was made by 
Mr. W. K. Fisher, seconded by Mr. H. C. Bry- 
ant, that Mr. W. Leon Dawson be granted 
permission to associate the name of the 
Cooper Ornithological Club with his own on 
the title page of the forthcoming work, after 
the following formula: ‘The Birds of Cali- 
fornia, by W. Leon Dawson with the cooper- 
ation of the Members of the Cooper Ornitho- 
logical Club’.”’ 
And the minutes of the Southern Division 
read: 
“On motion by Mr. Willett, seconded by 
Mr. Shepardson, and duly carried, the South- 
ern Division approved the action of the 
Northern Division in endorsing the proposal 
of Mr. W. L. Dawson; and also pledged its 
moral support and cooperation in the task of 
preparing a work on ‘The Birds of Califor- 
nia’. It also approved the decision that Mr. 
Dawson be permitted to associate the name 
of the Cooper Club with his own on the title 
page of the work.’”’ 
These generous resolutions are plainly 
concerned with the authorship and scientific 
sponsorship of the proposed work, and not at 
all with financing and administration. Ut 
have never made any other representations 
or cherished any other hopes. The Cooper 
Ornithological Club is in nowise responsible, 
therefore, for the regrettable delay which 
has attended the preparation of the MS of 
“The Birds of California’, for the speed of 
that preparation has always hinged squarely 
upon the financial support vouchsafed. That 
the MS has only just now been completed, 
after incredible difficulties and delays, is in 
nowise chargeable to the account of the 
Cooper Club. 
In this connection I wish to testify that 
the Cooper Club has done all that properly 
lay within its power or province to facilitate 
the preparation of “The Birds of Califor- 
nia’. Its generous solicitude for the success 
of the enterprise has been manifest at every 
turn and now upon the eve of the hopeful 
success of that enterprise I wish to record 
my sincerest gratitude for the use of materi- 
als and for privileges unnumbered that have 
been vouchsafed in generous fulfilment of the 
Club’s early promises. And if in any slight- 
est degree our relationship has failed of its 
earliest expectation of mutual helpfulness, 
the fault has been mine through inability to 
fully appropriate the help offered. (I make 
solitary exception of cooperative help in pic- 
ture-making; for when in the early spring of 
1917 I was ready, according to program long 
promised but regrettably deferred, to organ- 
ize a cooperative campaign of bird-photog- 
raphy, the use of the Condor columns was 
refused—upon what basis or authority lI 
never clearly understood. The occasion did 
prove inappropriate, for patriotic reasons, 
and I mention the circumstance here not by 
way of animadversion, but in the interest 
of exact justice.) 
Now in spite of the most explicit state- 
ments foregoing, I suspect that the ever un- 
discriminating public will still refuse to dis- 
sociate our responsibilities, and so to give 
the Cooper Ornithological Club the complete 
exoneration which is its due. In view of this 
prebability I respectfully propose that our 
official relationship be henceforth dissolved. 
