and also in other parts. That however is a section in which the study will have to run for at least a year. It will have to be done sometime, but whether it will be in my day I don’t know.
I was working this past summer on grasshoppers in the Joaquin Valley. My report is just finished and will be printed about the first of the year. I will send you a copy as soon as it is out.
I have already written more than I had intended so will close, with best wishes for the holiday season.
Very truly yours
J. S. Hunter

 

 

 

 

DEC 9 Rec’d

Berkeley, Dec. 4th 1904

My dear Professor:-
Your letter in colaboration with Swenk’s just received, and as I have more time just at present than I will have for some time I will answer at once. I was very glad to hear from you. It has been so long since any of the Nebr. bird people have written that I began to think that I had been ostracized. Wolcott is so busy with his card catalogue that as far as getting an answer is concerned one might as well address a letter to the moon.
Your joke about bird-killing was not taken as seriously as you think. I can still appreciate a joke even it is on myself. Bird people are rather active in this section. We have several good meetings during the year. On the first Tuesday of the month the Section of Ornithology of the Academy of Sciences meets. At those meetings we sometimes have the pleasure of hearing some of the more prominent ornithologists speak. At the last Mr. Mel[illegible], the authority on Mexican birds, gave a talk

 

 

 

 

Dr. Merriam of the Biological Survey was also Dr. Means & Professor Henshaw one of the founders of the A. O. U. were at recent meetings. So you see that even if we are in an out of the way corner of the U. S. we get some of the cream. The meetings of the Cooper Club are held bi-monthly, they are more like the meetings we used to enjoy so much in Lincoln, being held at the homes of the members, either in Oakland, San Francisco, Palo Alto or somewhere around the bay. The next meeting will be the annual dinner at a cafe in San F. about the middle of January. Many of the standbys of California Ornithology are present Walter Fisher, Joe Grinnell, W. O. Emerson and others. Then there are local Audubon societies that have monthly meetings that are very well attended, one in Berkeley was organized about two months ago and already has a hundred members. We have also the best collection of water birds in the U.S. if not in the world, at the Academy. Many species not found in the British Museum are represented in it. The value of the collection is over $50,000, and it is constantly being added to So when you size things up you will see

 

 

 

 

t we are not ornithologicaly dead out here I wish that it were possible, as you suggest, to get some new blood into the N. O. U. There seems to have been no one to take the place of Crawford, Cory, W. H. and others. If yourself and Wolcott would drop out I see where the N. O. U. would be suspended. Have you ever considered the feasibility of running a quarterly publication insead of the annual? It would seem to me that there ought to be room for such in the Middle West. Do not confine papers and other matter to the state, but include all the states between the Rockies and the Mississippi. The Condor covers all the western part of the U.S.; that is west of the Rockies. I would like to see an organization of all the ornithologists in that section and I do not think it would be difficult to accomplish. If I were in Nebraska I would see if something of that sort could be done. My work in economic ornithology is hanging fine, on account of the stomach examinations going on so slow. The results are going to be very interesting. Sometime in the future, if I am still in the state I want to undertake some of the same sort of work in the San Joaquin Valley