12 THE CONDOR Vol. XVIII calls Promerops; a new Mergulus like alle but entirely distinct, with others that need examining. He has the most beautiful specimens of well-known birds and others not so well known, as Sitta pygmea, Tyrannula saya? Tyrannula
l?igricans, Sialia occidentalis, etc. Decidedly the gem of his collection is a most
superb specimen of 1)eptostoma longicauda a beautiful Cuckoo-like bird which walks on the ground, but I have not time really to tell you about it. His Lophortyx gambelii is splendid and I can find no description of it in books to which I have access." The crested titmouse was the Plain Titmouse, the other one "like Seto- phaga" was the Wren-tit, and the Mergulus was Cassin's Auklet. On April 5, 1849, Gambel left on another expedition to California, joining a company with Isaac J. Wistar? then a young man of twenty-one, later gen- eral in the Civil War and president both of the Philadelphia Academy and of the American Philosophical Society. General Wistar has told me the few de- tails of the trip up to a point where the party divided, Gambel going with those who followed Hudspith's trail which crossed the Sierra near the head of the Sacramento Valley. They suffered great hardships being caught by the snows in the mountains, and Gambel and a few others were the only ones to reach California. He almost immediately contracted typhoid and died on December 13, 1849. He was buried on a sunny hillside on the Feather l?iver. HIS death terminated a career that would probably have yielded results of the utmost value to ornithology; for in the short space of eight years Gambel dem- onstrated that he was possessed of. remarkable ability both as an explorer and field naturalist and as ? student of natural history. Immediately after the acquisition of California by the United States at the close of the Mexican War, John G. Bell, the famous taxidermist of New York, who had accompanied Audubon up the ?//_issouri in 1843, made a trip to the coast, crossing through? Central America as did so many of those who rushed westward in search of gold. Bell returned April 17, 1850, having got- ten a number of interesting novelties which were described by Cassin and pur- chased for the Philadelphia Academy; among these were Bell's Sparrow, Law- rence's Goldfinch, Williamsoh's Sapsucker, and White-headed Woodpecker. Of the last, Bell says: "I shot this bird in Oregon Cation near Georgetown about 12 miles from Sutter's ]YIill. It seemed to prefer the tall pine trees and generally kept very high". Baird was about to describe the same bird some years later from a speci- men which had been obtained by some other collector for the Smithsonian Institution, and we find in Cassin's letters the following amusing sentence: ' ' I guess you had better not describe that new woodpecker black with a white head--it is not so very new--compare it with Melanerpes albolarvatus Cassin Jour. A. N. S. last number published--perhaps you had better not describe any of them. Send them this way!" He was constantly arguing or joking with Baird about the new birds that were discovered and was jealous of any one else publishing the novelties. Baird seems to have good-naturedly sent him most of the Pacific l?ailroad material, and of course with the birds and books to which Cassin then had access at Philadelphia he could determine what was new better than any one else. One lot sent for his opinion some years later contained a fine new species of Purple Finch, which he considered the best thing in the collection, adding as a suggestion to Baird, name it Cassini, which, by the way, he did. Regard- ing Hutton's Vireo, Cassin writes: "Calling that Vireo after your
