132 THE CONDOR Vol. XVII THE CONDOR ?restern Ornithology- Published Bi-Monthly by the Cooper Omitholo#ieM Club J. GRINNELL. Editor. Berkeley. Cediforni? HARRY S. SWARTH. Assoeie?te Editor J. EUGENE LAW ) Business Me?nagers W. LEE CHAMBEKS Hollywood, Califernia: Published May 15, 1915 SUBSCI?IPTION RATES One Dollar and Fifty Cents per Year in the United States, Canada, Mexico and U.S. Colonies, payable iu advance Thifiy Cents the single copy. One Dollar and Seventy-five Cents per Year in all other countries in the International Postal Union. COOPER CLUB DUES Two Dollars per year for members residling in the United States. Two Dollars and Twenty-five Cents in all other countries. Claims for missing or imperfect numbers should be made within thirty days of date of issue. Subscriptions and Exchanges should be sent to the Business Manager. Mu. nuscripts for publication. and Books and P?pers for r?vlew. should be sent to the Editor. Advelqislng Rates on application. EDITORIAL NOTES AND NEWS The annual Cooper Club roster published in this issue shows a present membership of 6 honorary, 4 life, and 535 active mem- bers, considerably more than for any previ- ous year. It is requested that any errors in the roster be promptly reported to one or the other of the Club secretaries. At least two active ornithologists are directing their attention to Alaska this year. Mr. F. Seymour Hersey, of Taunton, Massa- chusetts, has left Seattle for St. Michael, on Behring Sea, to collect specimens, and espe- cially to take photographs, during the sum- mer, in the interests of Bent's "Life Histo- ries of North American Birds". Mr. Hersey will thus be working from the same base that Nelson did thirty-five years ago. Mr. George Willerr has left California to spend another summer on Forrester Island, south- eastern Alaska, where a very great deal doubtless yet remains to be learned con- cerning the hordes of water birds which re- sort to that isolated'locality for the nest- ing season. We hope that he succeeds in finding the eggs of the long-sought-for Mar- bled Murrelet! Those of us who have the museum instinct well developed are often pained to read in a collector's narrative that some rare speci- men has been thrown away as being "too far gone to skin". There is increasing need for osteological material, and it is a shame that any perfectly good specimens for such purposes should be destroyed. It is a very simple matter to remove the major portion of the soft parts from a dead bird, wrap in the feet and head with a little thread or twine, and hang it up to dry; or else to roll it in dry cornmeal, which will retarff decay, and ship it at once to some museum. Of course a tag should be affixed, giving the sex, as ascertained by dissection, exact local- ity, date, and name of collector. Bodies of skinned birds might well be saved in similar fashion. As previously stated in these col- umns, it is becoming more and more incum- bent upon the collector of birds to justify the privilege he enjoys, by making the greatest possible use of the material he gathers. On another page of this issue Mr. A. C. Bent does American ornithology an excel- lent service by correcting an important error in identification, by reason of which error a record of occurrence far beyond the normal range of the species in question has stood in our literature for many years. We can see no reason for attempting to defend the perpetrator of any erroneous record, where such has been made without exhaust- ing every reasonable means of verification. As Mr. Bent says, it is lamentably difficult to eliminate a faulty record from our litera- ture. It is vastly better to make every pos- sible effort toward accurate determination of both the circumstances of capture and the identity of the species before venturing into print. In this day of many museums, and with willing experts whose services may be elicited in making comparisons of speci- mens, it looks as though we ought to be able to escape such blunders.
It is with the deepest regret that we an-
nounce the death of an active Cooper Club man, F. E. Newbury. This took place at his home in San Francisco on March 16, 1915. Mr. Newbury came .to California from the East in 1903, and located in San Francisco as an optician, in which profession he was very successful. We learn through Mr. Harry S. Hathaway of Providence, R. I., a long-time friend of Newbury, that the latter was a man of quiet, unassuming manner, who loved his friends, home and family above all else. He was an agreeable com- panion and a hard worker in the field. He studied birds and collected birds' eggs, chiefly for recreation, and had gathered a not large, but decidedly choice series of personally collected sets. Harry K. Pomeroy, an active member of the Cooper Ornithological Club died at his home in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on January 27, 1915. Pomeroy was born in Lockport,
