?an., 1916 PHILADELPHIA TO THE COAST IN EARLY DAYS This completes the summary of actual ornithological discovery on the coast prior to 1800. We must, however, remember that various species of west coast birds, or geographic races which were at that time and for half a century later regarded as identical with them, were already known from the eastern United States, Hudson's Bay, or Mexico. When the western races of these birds were first found on the coast the discovery caused little or no comment as the early explorers thought they were the same as those of the east and often failed to preserve specimens. It is therefore difficult to say just when they were' actually discovered. Up to the time of the publication of Wilson's Ornithology, 1808-12, no less than 80 species of Californian land birds were thus known from identical or closely related races in the east although only one or two had. been actually identified from the coast. While Wilson's great work was in progress the first of the transcontinental expeditions was organized mainly through the efforts of Thomas Jefferson, then president of the United States. Philadelphia has no direct claim upon this expedition which was under the leadership of two Virginians, Meriweather Lewis, Jefferson's private secretary, and Capt. Wil- liam Clarke. From the fact, however, that the few birds which they brought back were deposited in Peale's "Philadelphia Museum", while the manu- scripts of the expedition are still among the treasures of the American Philo- sophical Society in Philadelphia, the enterprise seems in a measure identified with our city. Had a naturalist been included in the Lewis and Clarke party there is no telling what discoveries would have ensued, but as it was, specimens of only three new species were brought back, which were named, figured and described by Wilson as Clarke's Crow, Lewis' Woodpecker, and the Louisiana Tanager. Twenty-six other land birds as well as a number of water birds are mentioned in the painstaking diaries that were kept by the explorers, but these were mostly either well known eastern species or so vaguely described as not to be clearly recognizable. The Sharp-tailed and Franklin's Grouse, the Sage Hen, and the Magpie are easily identified, as also the Whistling Swan which was named by Ord from Lewis and Clarke's description. This expedition rendezvoused at the mouth of Wood River in Illinois oppo- site the Missouri and consisted, besides the commanders who were then 30 and 34 years of age respectively, of nine young men from Kentucky, fourteen vol- unteers from the U.S. Army, two French watermen, an interpreter and hunter, and Capt. Clarke's negro servant, twenty-nine in all, with a detail of seven sol- diers and nine watermen to escort them up the Missouri as far as the Mandan Nation (now Bismark, North Dakota). They set out on May 14, 1804, reached Fort Clatsop (Vancouver, Washington) December, 1805, and returning March 23, 1806, reached the Mississippi September 23. The discovery of Clarke's Crow or Nutcracker, is thus described in Clarke's original journal under date of August 22, 1805, from western Montana. "I saw today ?a] Bird of the woodpecker kind which fed on Pine burs its Bill and tail white the wings black every other part of a light brown, and about the Size of a robin"*. The identification of this bird as a woodpecker gives us some idea of the extent of his ornithological knowledge. The Lewis's Wood- pecker was encountered on July 20 and in Lewis's diary is the following: "We encamped on the Lar d side [of the river] near a spring on a high
- ?hwait's Original Journal of the Lewis and Clarke Expedition, vol. III, p. 17, 1905.
