8 John E. Cooper 



he brought a scholar's attentions. Because of his deep involvement in 

 these pursuits he was an outspoken conservationist and advocate of 

 strong, well-enforced laws for the protection of game and other animals. 

 He characteristically led attempts to convince the legislature to end the 

 confusing array of local statutes which he saw as working to the disadvan- 

 tage of North Carolina's wildlife. It was not surprising, therefore, that he 

 and T. Gilbert Pearson, founder of the National Association of Audubon 

 Societies, were close, lifelong friends. The two met shortly after Brimley 

 became curator of the museum, when Pearson was just emerging as one 

 of America's pre-eminent ornithologists and conservationists. Judging 

 from their correspondence they took particular delight in treating each 

 other irreverently, and H.H. often sardonically addressed Pearson as 

 "My Dear Boy." 



In the early 1900s Pearson and the Brimleys collaborated on a major 

 project, compiling data for and writing one of the first state bird books 

 ever produced in the south — Birds of North Carolina. The first edition of 

 this pioneer work, printed and ready for binding in 1913, was destroyed 

 by fire in the printer's plant and the whole edition was lost before official 

 publication. It finally appeared, with additional notes, in April 1919, 

 published by the N.C. Geological and Economic Survey and profusely il- 

 lustrated by Rex Brasher, Robert Bruce Horsfall, and Roger Tory Peter- 

 son. A second edition, published by the State Museum in 1942, quickly 

 sold out. The third and final edition, revised by David L. Wray of the 

 department's entomology division, and Harry T. Davis, the museum's 

 second director, was published by the museum in 1959. 



H.H. Brimley retired as director of the State Museum in 1937. As his 

 replacement agriculture Commissioner W. Kerr Scott appointed Harry 

 T. Davis, who had joined the staff in July 1920 as assistant curator and 

 curator of geology. H.H. remained in the museum's employ as senior 

 curator of zoology and stayed active until his death. During this period he 

 did a great deal of work on the revised second edition of the bird book, 

 published several scientific papers, and made two of his finest fish mounts 

 (a 75-pound Channel bass and a 594-pound Blue marlin, then records for 

 the east). 



At the turn of the twentieth century, while exciting developments were 

 occurring in the museum, a significant project was slowly and laboriously 

 unfolding in another division of the Department of Agriculture. It added 

 the vast realm of invertebrates, especially insects, to the fauna under 

 study within the department, and involved C.S. Brimley nearly two 

 decades before he became a state employee. Franklin Sherman, Jr. joined 

 the Division of Entomology, and became North Carolina's first state en- 

 tomologist in 1900. In addition to his duties in economic or applied 



