MAY 13 Ans’d
C. W. CRUM County Superintendent Madison, Nebraska Madison, Nebr., May 9, 1904.
Lawrence Bruner, Lincoln, Nebr.
My Dear Sir,
I have been trying to catch time for several months to write you and thank you for the few suggestions and pointers you and Dr. Wolcott gave me a year ago the first of last Jan. with respect to birds and insects. Acting on your advice I commenced making notes Jan. 8th, ’03, and have kept it up pretty regularly since. I had herded for several years when a boy and thought my living with the birds had made me well acquainted with all we have in Northease Nebraska. I started by making a list of all the birds I could identify by common names and found I had 61, and besides these were about 20 that I recognized when I saw them but did not know their names. Secured Goss and other reference books and worked out the names of many of the twenty. At the end of the year I found that I had positively identified thirteen different species that I never remembered having seen before. Thus far this year I have added four more to the list. My list of birds that I can positively identify now numbers ninety eight. Besides there are some twelve or more that I am not certain of. This has been done without taking any time from my work whatever, and the observations I have made have largely been between my office and residence and when driving over the county. Also at your suggestion I secured the Holland Butterfly Book, and commenced the study of those formes, chiefly for the benefit of my children. We made a glass case in which we developed caterpillars, and every Sunday took a walk and made collections. The children and my wife became most intensely interested in the study, My boy, not seven years old, would take the cyanide jar and net and bring in new species, get the book and have them identified when I returned.

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