184 
I'lIE CONDOR 
Vol. XVI 
THE CONDOR 
A. Magazine of 
'Western Ornithology 
Published Bi-Monihly by the 
Cooper Ornithological Club 
J» GRINNELL. Editor, Berkeley, C&lifornia 
HARRY S. SWARTH, AssocisLte Editor 
J. EUGENE LAW 1 „ . 
W. LEE CHAMBERS / Managers 
Hollywood, California: Publisliod Juiy 25, 1914 
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EDITORIAL NOTES AND NEWS 
As the regular meetings of the two Divi- 
sions of the Cooper Ornithological Club are, 
with rare exceptions, held at the same 
places and at the same time, month after 
month, it seemed advisable to have a notice 
in each number of The Condor calling atten- 
tion to the fact. In this way out-of-town 
members who do not receive notices of the 
meetings, if occasionally in a position to at- 
tend, will have at hand the necessary in- 
formation. Accordingly there will be found 
in this issue and in succeeding numbers, a 
brief statement of the usual place and time 
of meetings of the two Divisions, together 
with instructions as to ways of reaching the 
places. See page 192. 
We wish to call attention to, and empha- 
size the importance of, careful note-taking 
on the part of all students of natural his- 
tory. Even the merest beginner in bird 
study should at once put into operation some 
adequate and lasting system of recording his 
field observations. Unfortunately, as point- 
ed out by Mr. A. Brazier Howell in his 
forceful “Plea”, in the present issue of The 
Condor, there are well-known ornithologists 
who have been lamentably careless in this 
duty. In certain instances much of the 
value of a life-time of gifted effort has been 
lost to our science because of failure to keep 
up, in permanent form, a daily record of ob- 
servations and inferences. 
The Oregon Sportsman for June, 1914, 
under the editorship of Mr. William L. Fin- 
ley, stigmatizes the common house cat as 
the “greatest enemy of the birds.” We 
heartily concur in this statement, and take 
the liberty of quoting the following aphor- 
isms from the same live exponent of conser- 
vation. The cat is the arch enemy of all 
song and game birds. Cats probably destroy 
more birds than all other animals combined. 
In one case a “family owned a cat which was 
well cared for and a particular pet. They 
watched it through one season and found 
that it killed fifty-eight birds, including the 
young in five nests,” The boy with the air 
gun is not in the same class with the cat. 
Why arrest a man for killing one bird and 
allow a cat to kill fifty? As a general rule 
a good cat is a dead cat. Always Mil the 
stray cat. 
The California Museum of Vertebrate 
Zoology has been represented in field work 
this season as follows: Mr. H. C. Bryant, 
with J. N. Kendall as assistant, put in the 
month from May 11 to June 11 in exploring 
the breeding grounds of ducks within the 
state of California from Merced County to 
the Oregon line. All sorts of information 
was gathered, and efforts were made to se- 
cure censuses of the various species in given 
areas. A special paper is in preparation by 
Bryant summarizing the results of his trip. 
Mr. Chase Littlejohn spent a like period in 
similar work in the vicinity of Eagle Lake, 
Lassen County. With the rapid settling up 
of the country, it has seemed highly desir- 
able that special efforts he expended in the 
directions above indicated. The Museum is 
fortunate in having been provided through 
private gift with the means enabling it to 
work along this line. One of the objects in 
view is the publication of a popular book on 
the game birds of California, to appear un- 
der the authorship of Grinnell and Bryant. 
At the Thirty-second Stated Meeting of 
the American Ornithologists’ Union, held in 
Washington, D. C., April 6 to 9, 1914, the fol- 
lowing committees (for the 1915 meeting in 
California) were appointed. Auditing: Jos- 
eph Mailliard, Louis A. Fuertes, Walter K. 
Fisher. Arrangements: Joseph Mailliard, 
Joseph Grinnell, Walter K. Fisher. Commu- 
nications: Walter K. Fisher, Joseph Grin- 
nell, Joseph Mailliard. 
Mr. Alfred C. Shelton was appointed in 
February last, field collector in the depart- 
ment of zoology of the University of Oregon. 
His duties consist in gathering birds and 
mammals for a departmental museum and 
in participating in the biological survey of 
Oregon now being conducted under the joint 
auspices of the University of Oregon, the 
