16 Teo Ee AU D:U; BiONe 7B Uhre ae aie 
Dr. Strong Honored by A.O.U. 
Dr. R. M. Strong, president of the Illinois Audubon Society, received 
probably the top honor ornithology has to bestow when he was made a fellow 
of the American Ornithologists’ Union during that organization’s annual 
meeting Oct. 10-14 in Buffulo, N.Y. Only 50 of the foremost ornithologists 
in the country are fellows in the A.O.U. 
The honor was bestowed on Dr. Strong in absentia (he was unable to 
leave Chicago at the time) in recognition of his long and active career of 
more than 40 years in ornithology, climaxed by the publication of his mon- 
umental bibliography on the literature of nearly every aspect of bird life. 
One of the founders and past president of the Wilson Ornithological club, 
and an early and active member of the Chicago Ornithological society, Dr. 
Strong is a research associate at the Chicago Natural History museum. He 
retired several years ago as dean of anatomy at Loyola university medical 
school. 
For more than 85 years he has been compiling his bibliography. Three 
volumes have been published. The first two, by authors, contain 937 pages, 
and the third, by subjects, has 528 pages. A fourth, consisting of a finding 
index of 200 more pages, is nearly ready. Those already in print include 
23,000 titles taken from 2,000 periodicals and a vast number of books in 20 
languages. Dr. Strong, who reads several languages himself, had assistants 
searching libraries all over the world for bird literature in the others. 
The entire field of ornithology excepting distribution and taxonomy is 
covered. A total of 167 major topics is included, each divided into sub-topics. 
The first two were published in 19387 and the subject volume in 1946. Dr. 
Strong has culled through thousands of additional books and articles since 
in order to bring his work up to date. This in itself is a major undertaking 
in view of the great amount of ornithological literature constantly being 
published. The whole project is the first and only one of its kind ever done 
on the subject. 
i fa fi 
The woodcock is the greatest bore: 
He perforates the forest floor 
With his long bill for worms and things 
And sometimes in the dusk he sings. 
He sings and soars and loops the loop 
In mist and darkness thick as soup. 
* * 
Say, have you ever seen a snipe, 
When redwings call and tree-toads pipe? 
It’s hard to see a snipe close by; 
In dead grass he escapes ‘the eye. 
When flushed the best of all his japes 
Is bleating “’scape” while he escapes. 
—E. R. Forp 
