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208 THE CONDOR VoL X?II collecting and during those years gathered a sufficient number of the eggs of the Wilson Snipe to lead me to consider them as not extremely rare? So it was that when the eggs I have spoken of as having been given to Pemberton were collected, in 1894, there was little incentive to take them even after they had been discovered; and had it not been for a peculiar, to me at least, circumstance I should probably not have bothered with them. At that time I had an uncle living on a ranch to the eastward of San Ber- nardino, and a portion of this land was swampy. Knowing of my interest in birds he told me one day of a bird that he saw about dusk each evening sailing around high over the-swamp, that according to him would mount several hun- dred feet in the air and then, partially closing ?ts wings, would swoop almost straight downward to within a few feet of the earth, the dive being accompan- ied t,y a loud whirring noise that ended in a sharp report. At first I thought that instead of a bird he had seen a large bat the name of which I did n9t know, but which I had been told had a somewhat similar habit. But he insisted that it was a bird, and at last I proposed that we go to the swamp to- gether so that I might ascertain for myself just what it was that he had seen. The trip was made a few evenings later and I not only discovered that the bird was a Wilson Snipe but also by watching it discovered the eggs, and as I was not able to shoot the bird then, I took the eggs to furnish proof of what I then thought was something new in the habits of snipe. I subsequently ascer- tained that the .habit was one that other observers already knew about and so thought no more of the eggs although I had already blow? them and placed them in a cabinet. When I afterwards disposed of the greater portion of my egg collection I did not include that particular set for the reason that I had filled out no data blank, and in my hurry in packing the other eggs I did not care to take the time to look up my notes and thus obtain the necessary data. Since learning from Pemberton that the records showed no such southerly nesting, although I had noticed that Grinnell's "List" of recent date was also lacking on that point, I have inquired of some of the old-time collectors of this locality, among them 1?. B. Herron, one of the oldest and most successful col- lectore of this section and a man known to most of us at least by the many ref- erences made to him in Davie's "Nests and Eggs of North America". He in- forms me that he never considered the eggs of the bird in question as being particularly rare in this section. Harry Lelande of Los Angeles also informed me that he always thought that the Wilson Snipe nested in the southern end of the state, for although he had never taken a set himself he had killed very young birds that had undoubtedly been hatched in this section. I was somewhat surprised when I looked over Grinnell's latest list to note that he ommitted any extreme southerly records, for I felt certain that he knew 'of the eggs having been taken in southern California, but attributed the omission to an oversight. Since Pemberton has expressed so much sUrprise in the occurrence I have taken the trouble to look up my copies of letters to Dr. Grinnell when he lived at Pasadena and found that at least on one occasion I had listed among the eggs that I would be willing to exchange with him a set of the Wilson Snipe. I have exchanged several sets with other collectors, but have not taken the trouble to look up my records sufficiently to ascertain just who the eggs went to. In any event I still feel certain that there can be no possibility of such records being any cause for astonishment, and am writing this not because I think it is a new record but because Mr. Pemberton, and