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Jan., 1909 ' HISTORY OF COLORADO ORNITHOLOGY 27 1875 as United States Geological Survey reports. This work contains specific Col- orado records of 170 species of which 14 are recorded for the first time. In 1877 Robert Ridgway publisht the first complete list of the birds in the Maxwell collection at Boulder. This wonderful collection gathered and prepared by Mrs. Maxwell contained 234 species of birds, 21 of which were recorded for the first time for Colorado in Mr. Ridgway's list. In 1878 Coues' "Birds of the Colorado Valley". appeared, but it does not play an important part in our subject as most of the ornithological information con- tained in it is copied from the Henshaw report of 1875. Now, in looking back over the work done by these pioneer naturalists, we rec- ognize a steady and comparatively rapid development, which had its beginning in 1823. In this short space of fifty-four years the basis of our present knowledge of Colorado ornithology was firmly laid, and our pioneer ornithology really ends with 1877; for from that year up to date the 108 species which have been added to our list have been recorded separately or in very small numbers, with the exception of Cooke's "Birds of Colorado", publisht in 1897, which added nineteen new species to the check list. In fact during this period of twenty years no more than nine new species have been recorded for the State at any one time, this being a list by Horace G. Smith publisht in the Nidiologist in 1896, which with five new species recorded by him in 1886 makes a total of fourteen species recorded for the first time by him. Thus it will be seen at a glance that the basis of our present knowledge of this subject may be attributed to Thomas Say, Spencer F. Baird, J. A. Allen, C. E. Aiken, Robert Ridgway, H. W. Henshaw, Horace G. Smith and W. W. Cooke, a group of names of which not only Colorado but indeed North America at large may well be proud. Up to this point our attention has been focused almost entirely upon the development of the subject thru the addition of new species to our check-list, and as a matter of fact, up to this time, these additions have been the matter of prime importance; but from now on, with the great bulk of native species known and recorded, the addition of new species assumes its proper place as simply an inci- dental phase of the subject; and the more intricate and important phase of orni- thology, the life histories of the birds, takes its place. The' stupendous task of working out the breeding range, seasonal movements, migration, food habits, economic value, and subspecific nomenclature had its beginning as far back as our first information on ornithology dates; but these first efforts were very unimportant as compared with the work which has been done since. Not until the time of Aiken and Allen in the early seventies was any systematic work done along these lines; and it is a notable fact that the observations of some of the pioneer natural- ists are, even up to the present time, considered the standard works along these lines. Two notable instances of this fact are the field notes of C. E. Aiken and T. M. Trippe. But with this new branch of the subject come many new names; and instead of a few authorities publishing a few pretentious and more or less comprehensive works, we find a larger number of authorities recording valuable additions to our information on the subject as magazine articles, or in similar ways. Thus from 1877 to 1897 a great deal of data was publisht by a number of naturalists, much of it being of a purely local nature; but from the fact that it was local it was doubly valuable, in that the sum total of this local work made possible the very comprehensive resume of the subject that was publisht by Cooke in 1897.