8 T.H EA U'DU-B ON) (BU DU EDs 
educated at Art Institute. His interest in bird painting dates from his 
tenth year when he amused himself during a convalescence from an ap- 
pendix operation by coloring the illustrations in Woods’ Natural History. 
Later he went to Warsaw, Indiana, for a visit, where he struck up a 
friendship with the sexton of a cemetery who introduced him to the riches 
of bird-hunting in a grave-yard. On sketching trips to Florida and Jamaica 
he became interested in painting tropical birds, in which he has specialized. 
The Chicago Natural History Museum exhibited his painting of a spix 
macaw at its exhibit of “Ornithological Illustration from 1555 to the 
Present,” held from April 26 to June 4 of this year to commemorate the 
160th anniversary of Audubon’s birth. 
Earl G. Wright, now director of the Neville Public Museum at Green 
Bay, Wisconsin, for about 15 years was associated with the Chicago 
Academy of Sciences. A number of his charming water colors are exhibited 
on the third floor of the Academy building. A little book called Homing 
with the Birds, now out of print, was written by Alfred M. Bailey and 
illustrated with Mr. Wright’s paintings. He is still painting in whatever 
spare time he can find, and he is teaching night classes in sculpture at 
Green Bay. 
William J. Beecher, former temporary assistant in the Department of 
Zoology, Chicago Natural History Museum, is a soldier who found time to 
study natural history in the midst of war. Although 10 out of 30 months 
in the Solomon Islands were spent in combat areas, Corporal Beecher 
managed to accumulate several hundred specimens of birds, mammals, and 
reptiles, most of which are new to the Museum collections. Shortly after 
the Munda airstrip was secured, he began painting the common animals 
and plants of the Solomons, especially the birds, since no popular literature 
for their identification existed. He painted some sixty species in twenty- 
four weeks during spare time amounting to about a day a week. The 
plates represent the first extensive attempt to paint the natural history 
of the Solomons and interpret it popularly. 
fg fi 
To an Oriole 
How falls it, oriole, thou hast come to fly 
In trome splendor through our northern sky? 
At some glad moment was it Nature’s choice 
To dower a scrap of sunset with a voice? 
Or did some orange tulip, flaked with black, 
In some forgotten garden, ages back, 
Yearning toward heaven until its wish was heard, 
Desire unspeakably to be a bird? 
—EDGAR FAWCETT 
