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July, 1919 EDITORIAL NOTES AND NEWS 175 ander Wetmore is reported to have dropped into camp for the first week of June. That is an unusual concentration of keen ornith- ologists, so let us watch now for new rec- ords from Arizona! Mr. and Mrs. A. Brazier Howell and daugh- ter are touring northern California and Ore- gon this summer, visiting the type localities of certain desirable birds and mammals. An ingeniously and compactly equipped "Buick" contributes wonderfully to bringing the de- sired results. Halsted G. White and Richard M. Hunt are spending the summer in field work in the Santa Lucia Mountains of southern Mon- terey County, California--this in the inter- ests of the California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. Mr. Laurence Huey is doing field work with the birds of the northern Sierra Neva- da in the interests of Mr. Donald R. Dickey of Pasadena. Photographs of nesting birds constitute an important portion of the out- put. Mr. F. C. Lincoln, Curator of the depart- ment of ornithology of the Colorado Museum of Natural History, is now mustered out of the amy, in which he served in the pigeon section of the Signal Corps. He has lately given a number of lectures in Denver on "The Military Use of the Homing Pigeon" and has in preparation an article on the same subject, to appear in due time in some natural history journal. Addition to Military Service Record: PAR- MENTEE, Henry E., Commander, U.S. Navy, Retired, Twelfth Naval District, San Fran- cisco, California. Assistant Commandant of District since May, 1917. Leo Wiley, a member of the Cooper Or- nithological Club since 1915, died at Shan- don, California, October 31, 1918, a victim of the influenza epidemic. He was born at Silverton, Colorado, September 20, 1890, and was the only son of A. P. Wiley, who now resides at Palo Verde, Imperial County, Cal- ifornia. It was at this place, in 1910, that Leo Wiley got in touch with some visiting ornithologists, and thereafter his interest in birds led to a number of brief but valuable contributions to the columns of THE CoN- DO?. Many specimens taken by him have come into the possession of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology; and now, through gift from his father, the balance of his collection of birds has gone to the same institution. As bearing further upon the problem of ducks versus rice in the Sacramento Valley, California (see page 89 of our March issue), it is proper to state that the United States Department of Agriculture will now, upon application, issue a blanket permit allowing growers, members of their immediate fami- lies, and bona fide employees to "herd" ducks from the rice fields between Septem- ber 15 and October 15 and to utilize for food any birds killed in the process. Such birds may also be shipped to charitable institu- tions if properly marked. After the season opened last fall permits were granted to rice growers to herd at night so as to allow pro- tection of the harvested rice during moon- light nights. As might have been expected, the demand for an earlier opening of the season and promiscuous hunting came from huntere in the towns, and not from the rice growers themselves, who in reality oppose open shooting. Retrieving ducks in growing rice would cause greater damage than the ducks cause. It is obvious that here, as with so many other economic problems aris- ing in the course of adjustment of natural conditions to human settlement, the first need is for the careful ascertainment of the facts. There often prove to be no valid grounds for conflict of interests; when there are real grounds, then some fair solution is likely to present itself to the persons who study the situation disinterestedly. The coming harvest season should find all inter- ests well cared for, thanks to the attention given the matter by our Government through the Bureau of Biological Survey, Department of Agriculture. The Museum of Vertebrate ?oology of the University of California ?as again under- taken field work in Alaska, and a party to work in that region left the Museum on May 14, to be gone until October 1. The route for the present season lies in southeastern Alaska in the vicinity of Wrangell. It fol- lows up the Stikine River from the sea east- wardly into the interior to the vicinity of Telegraph Creek, British Columbia. The purpose of the work is to gather specimens and all sorts of natural history information concerning the birds and mammals of the ' section traversed, particularly i?i order to learn how the fauna of the relatively arid interior differs from that of the humid coast belt; also as to what happens where the two faunas meet. Several seasons of work in the same general region have brought to- gether large collections from adjacent sec- tions and these have already,been reported upon in a series of papers published from the University of California Press; so that the new material will be gathered and inter- preted upon a more advantageous basis than would otherwise be possible. The present year's field wol*k is in charge of Mr. Harry S. Swarth, Curator of Birds in the Museum, and he will be assisted by Mr. Joseph Dixon, Economic Mammalogist, as also by local hunters. This opportunity of the Museum Of Vertebrate Zoology to resume its field