112 
THE WILSON BULLETIN— June, 1922 
1911, when it became imperative that we should make some other pro- 
vision, as I was leaving for Europe the following month, to be gone all 
summer. I took the matter up with several interested persons and as a 
consequence received a generous offer from Mr. Ernest Harold Baynes, 
on behalf of the Meriden (N. H.) Bird Club, to take over the direction 
of the work and to raise the necessary funds; and at the same time a 
telegram from the Linnaean Society of New York City, stating that that 
society had appointed a committee to assume the responsibilities of the 
bird banding if desired. It was necessary for me to leave the decision 
in the hands of the Executive Committee, and it seemed best to them, 
because of location and for other reasons, to accept the offer of the Lin- 
naean Society. This offer was made largely through the interest and 
efforts of Mr. W. W. Grant, and it is indeed due in great measure to his 
generous assistance at this time that the work was prevented from com- 
ing to a standstill. The name and membership of the American Bird 
Banding Association were continued, but the income was greatly sup- 
plemented by assistance from the Linnaean Society and by private sub- 
scriptions obtained through the energetic efforts of Mr. Grant and of 
the new secretary, Mr. Howard H. Cleaves. At this point, then, my 
active participation in the Association ceased, and the history beyond 
that time is not mine to write. I may merely add a word to round out 
the story. Comparatively little had been accomplished in 1910, and owing 
to the lateness of the season when the transfer was made, and the diffi- 
culties encountered in procuring a supply of bands, the same was true 
for 1911. Thereafter the work was actively pushed under the direc- 
tion of Mr. Cleaves until, along with many other non-essential activities, 
it suffered another reverse during the war. 
The credit for the recent great revival of interest in bird-banding 
belongs to Mr. S. Prentiss Baldwin of Cleveland, for he first amply dem- 
onstrated the superiority of trapping birds for banding purposes over 
the haphazard banding of nestlings. The use of traps had appealed to 
us in the earlier stages of the work and I discussed the matter fully with 
Mr. Charles W. Miller, who was at that time director of the Worthington 
Society for the Study of Bird Life, at Shawnee-on-Delaware, Pa. Mr. 
Miller wrote under date of May 10, 1909: “The method of trapping cer- 
tain birds, tagging them and letting them go, and thus possibly trapping 
them again next season, it seems to me, is a very feasible plan and one 
in which I should be glad to cooperate with your committee in any way 
that I might be able.” Four days later he reported that he had trapped 
and banded eight Orioles and one Song Sparrow, and by tbe end of the 
season the list was of considerable size. The Orioles particularly were 
“ repeaters,” and were often trapped several times in a day. On May 9, 
1910, Mr. Miller wrote: “ The first of last years’ banded birds reported 
this afternoon in the shape of an adult male Baltimore Oriole, No. 3250. 
Banded May 15, ’09, and retrapped three times on the 17th of the same 
month and he adds, “ I should have liked to have been a speck on that 
band! What interesting things could be reported.” 
Arrangements were also made with Mr. C. W. Beebe for extensive 
trapping operations at the New York Zoological Park, but these were in- 
terrupted by the departure of Mr. Beebe on one of his extensive expedi- 
tions. 
