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Mar., 1918 IN MEMORIAM: LYMAN BELDING 59 "My love of adventure as well as my admiration of birds was responsible for the most of my wanderings. Bird songs always had a great attraction for me and I copied many songs that had regular intervals and could be expressed by our musical system. I think our meadow lark is more prolific of such songs than any of our species." Belding's chief interest and pleasure in ornithology undoubtedly centered around live birds. It was the pursuit and observation of birds in their own homes that appealed especially to him. In his way, he must have been ani- mated by much the same zeal that fired Audubon. He found writing rather tedious, and for the effort expended not so profitable to him as more congenial out-of-door occupations. For this reason his published writings are not at all commensurate with the actual amount of work that he accomplished. His first long paper, published in 1879---"A Partial List of the Birds of Central California "--was the outcome of a very active period of collecting and observation begun in 1876. The collections were made at Stockton and Marys- ville, in the valley; at Murphy's on the lower edge of the pine region of the Sierras (upper edge of the Upper Sonoran zone); at Calaveras Big Trees (Tran- sition .Zone); at Summit Station on the Central Pacific I?ailroad, and at Soda Springs, ten miles south (Canadian and Hudsonian Zones). In this paper 220 species are listed. In a footnote Mr. I?idgway states that collections received from Mr. Belding up to that time amounted to about 180 species (not includ- ing races) and 600 specimens. In 1883, three papers appeared as the result of his collecting trips along the west coast of Lower California and in the Cape region; and a short paper recorded the birds found at Guaymas, Mexico. In the two articles concerned with the Cape avifauna, 187 species are recorded, all but 21 being represented by specimens. The Big Tree'Thrush, Turdus sequoiensis, was described in 1889, from specimens taken at Big Trees. Later in the same year appeared an account of "The Small Thrushes of California," published, like the first, in the Proceed- ings of the California Academy of Sciences. Mr. Belding's best known and longest work, "The Land Birds of the Pa- cific District", appeared in 1890 as one of the series of Occasional Papers of the California Academy of Sciences. When the American Ornithologists' Union was organized in 1883, Mr. Belding was appointed to superintend the collection of information concerning the migration and distribution of the birds of the "Pacific District," which comprised California, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada, an area of about 434,000 square miles. The "Land Birds" grew oat of this work. Although data from many observers are recorded, a very sub- stantial portion of the book is contributed by Mr. Belding himself. His own work covered principally central California, or "the part of the state between ?he northern parts of Stanislaus and Tuolumne counties and the northern part of Butte, southwestern Plumas and Sierra counties." "I have made observations," he says in the preface, "at many localities in this part of the state, in the tule swamps, river bottoms, plains, foot-hills and coniferous forests of the Sierra Nevada Mountains at all altitudes, kept a rec- ord of the birds, but have not thought it necessary to burden my notes with a long list of localities. * * * "I am quite confident that ?ew if any species have escaped my notice in Central California except a few which probably visit the high Sierra Nevada in