Key West, Fia, Jany 10th, 1396 
v i 
Prof. Win. Brewster, 145 Brattle St, Cambridge, Mass. 
Dear Sir ; 
I have no objection to giving you the information asked for in 
your letter of Dec 17th, which was reed in due course, but which I 
could not give proper attention till now. 
The birds for which Mr. Scott paid me last spring was not an out 
and out sale of skins to him by me. The case is this : I met Mr. 
Scott at Punta Rassa in 1885 s -r^&b . I had at that time just begun 
collecting, and I found him very interesting and liked him. From 
that time till 1892 I sent him him almost everything uncommon that I 
collected, principally for his own information, as he was working on 
Fla birds during the most of that time, and with the understanding 
that I should have them back on demand. Not one tenth of them ever 
came backto me. In 189$'I determined to sell my entire collection, and 
wrote him in December of that year to return my birds, and from that 
time until last April I continued in my efforts to have theta returned, 
resulting at last in an offer from him to pay me $75.00, which I 
accepted in preference to receiving nothing. 
You may judge of my confidence in him when I tell you that I kept 
no memoranda of a large part of the birds sent him, but I have looked 
up such memoranda as was kept, and enclose it herein. This list 
does not include other series of black whiskered vireos, a large 
series of KeyWest vire^;series of Maynards cuckoo, yellow bill do, 
white crowned pigeon, chuck-wills-widow, gray king-bird, nonpareils, 
prothonotary, worm-eating warbler, and numerous others which I do not 
now recall, for all of which I reed $75.00. 
Mr Scott once offered to sell my collection, and I think I sent 
him a list of my birds to be included in such a sale with those he 
had belonging to me, but I heard no more of it. To that extent only 
have I commissioned him to sell for me. 
While Mr. Scott has treated me very shabbily, still I do not 
want to injure him, and I desire you to treat this matter confidenti¬ 
ally, but you may show this letter to him if you so desire. 
I am very much obliged to you for your assurances of help in 
getting my skins when Scott’s work room in your museum is opened, and 
I hope you will find them there and take charge of them. If such 
proves to be the case kindly look them over and let me know if you 
can use them. 
Very truly your’s 
♦ 
