26 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XI 
then Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, and incorporated into the 
ninth volume of the Pacific Railroad Reports. Some additional notes were included 
in Volume X. 
The total number of species recorded for the first time from Colorado in the 
Pacific Railroad Reports was twenty-three, and these, together with the eleven 
species recorded by Say, or thirty-four species in all, constituted the entire check- 
list of Colorado, with the exception of one species added by Baird in 1870, at the 
time Dr. J. A. Allen visited the State in 1872, and to his untiring efforts while 
within our State we owe the first important step in the development of our ornitho- 
logical knowledge. The results of his observations, which were publislit in 1872 
as a Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology under the caption of “Notes 
of an Ornithological Reconnoissance of portions of Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming 
and Utah,” contained the first local list ever publislit of Colorado birds and added 
eighty-four species not before recorded for Colorado. 
Shortly after, and during the same year that Dr. Allen’s paper appeared, the 
vast amount of material and information which had been collected by Mr. C. E. 
Aiken during several years previous to 1872 were publisht as Proceedings of the 
Boston Society of Natural History under the title of “Notes on the Birds of Wy- 
oming and Colorado Territories,” by C. H. Holden, Jr., with additional memo- 
randa by C. E. Aiken. This paper was edited by Prof. T. M. Brewer, with the 
statement that Mr. Holden's notes were taken in northern Colorado and southern 
Wyoming, but as no precise localities are given in Mr. Holden’s notes they are not 
available as actual Colorado records. Mr. Aiken’s notes, however, treat of 142 
species, 59 of which are new records for Colorado. It is unfortunate that Mr. 
Aiken's notes were not publisht previous to those of Dr. Allen, as many of the 
species recorded for the first time by Allen were observed by Aiken before they 
were by Allen, thus depriving Aiken of the honor of their discovery, which, thru 
his unfailing efforts in the interest of ornithology, he so richly deserved. Mr. 
Aiken’s observations constitute the greatest amount of information gathered by 
any one man on this subject, and the paper just mentioned contains the first 
account of the winter movement of our birds. 
In 1873 Mr. Robert Ridgway publisht in the Bulletin of the Essex Institute 
the first list of Colorado birds. This list contains 243 species, of which 59 are 
recorded for the first time from Colorado. It is purely a compilation, based upon 
the field notes of various naturalists; the greater part of the list is based upon the 
notes of Mr. Aiken, while many of the species were included on the authority of 
Henshaw, whose work did not appear until two years later, and a few species were 
included upon the strength of their occurrence in the Maxwell Collection, altho a 
complete list of the birds in this famous collection was not publisht until 1877. 
In 1874 Dr. (then Capt.) Elliott Coues publisht (as a United States Geolog- 
ical Survey bulletin) “Birds of the Northwest,” which plays an important part in 
our subject, as it contains the only publisht account of the material collected by 
Stevenson on the trip made by Dr. Hayden’s party in 1869. This party started 
from Cheyenne, worked south as far as Denver, thence west across the range into 
Middle Park, and back to Denver and south along the edge of the foothills into 
New Mexico. “Birds of the Northwest” also contains the very complete notes of 
Mr. T. M. Trippe on the birds of Idaho Springs and vicinity. 
In 1873 Mr. H. W. Henshaw made prolonged visits at Denver and San Luis 
Valley, and in 1874 Mr. Aiken as his assistant made large collections in the vicin- 
ity of Colorado Springs, and Pueblo, and from there thru the San Luis Valley as 
far west as Pagosa Springs. The results of these investigations were publisht in 
