202 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XVI 
positive evidence as we have, points solely to the smaller rodents as their 
source of food supply. Unquestionably, they are an exceedingly beneficial 
raptor, though their rarity would, of course, impair their collective usefulness. 
As I hung there, studying at first hand the nest of a Spotted Owl, there 
came a last evidence of the bird’s mild stupidity. Suddenly the shadow of 
her broad, silent wings fell across me, and I instinctively cringed. While I 
still clung to the nesting ledge with one hand, and to her protesting young 
with the other, she swept in and alit within eighteen inches of my fingers. 
And yet, so little of menace was in her eye and pose, that I calmly left my 
bare hand within striking distance until we were ready to lower away. Surely 
the veriest dicky-bird of them all, — so despised of Mr. Dawson in a certain 
raptor eulogy, — would do more to avenge the supposed rape of her offspring 
than did this taloned bird of prey, sitting idly by without apparently the cour- 
age to protect its young by fight, or the common sense to protect herself by 
flight. 
One of the young was left in the nest in the confident hope that it would 
be safely reared there as soon as our tackle should be removed. The other 
and larger bird was taken, and is now in my collection. It proved to be a 
male, and furnishes a good example of the bird in the juvenal down. 
On our way out the next day, we were delighted to see the adult bird 
and her young sitting complacently side by side in the nest as we passed, the 
old bird content in the quiet possession of her home, the youngster still abob 
with undiminished curiosity. And thus we left them — to the undying disgust 
of the dyed-in-the-wool collector of the party — left them to their wilderness 
of pines and clouds, and wrinkled, fog-filled valleys, thousands of feet below. 
York Harbor, Maine, July 25, 1914. 
HENRY W. MARSDEN 
By LOUIS B. BISHOP 
O N FEBRUARY 26, 1914, at Pacific Grove, California, after a short ill- 
ness with pneumonia, there rested from his labors Henry Warden Mars- 
den. Known personally to but comparatively few ornithologists and 
even by name to not very many men out of California, the last fifteen years of 
his life were devoted almost exclusively to collecting birds ; and those of us who 
possess the results of his work have not only beautiful bird skins but a living 
memory of an earnest, loyal helper, who spared neither time nor effort that our 
collections might be enriched with what we needed for scientific study, and no 
more. For, like all truly interested in birds, he hated to take life needlessly. 
Writing me from Arizona some years ago he said of the Pyrrhuloxia: “They 
are too beautiful to kill ’ ’ ; and in his last letter from Pacific Grove, written 
only a few days before his death, I read : “I have skinned forty Cassin Auk- 
lets which I found dead along the shore. I don’t know what I shall do with 
them, but I hated to let them spoil. ’ ’ And this conscientiousness followed him 
through all his work. His chief fear, frequently expressed to me in letters, 
was that he would send us more than we needed of any species. 
Things of beauty, as I have said, his bird-skins were, and probably, all 
things considered, the finest ever made ; they could only have been the product 
of one with both rare talent and love for his work. And both of these he had, 
as well as interest in other branches of ornithology, though he wrote but little. 
