In four days a total of forty-four trips were timed. The average for each one of these trips was five minutes and fifty-six seconds. The young birds left the nest on the 28th.

I was greatly surprised to see a pair of Carolina Wrens within fifty yards of the spot where the Winter Wrens had their nest.

Albert D. McGrew.

New Bird Law.

The Ac of Congress of July 3, 1918, known as "Migratory Bird Treaty Act" vitally affects many, if not all, of the subscribers to the Oologist. I therefore submit a statement of the law and the regulations of the Secretary of Agriculture thereunder, so far as they affect the collection and possession of migratory birds and their rests and eggs for scientific purposes. If you see fit to do so, you may publish this latter in the Oologist.

The Treaty with Great Britian, for the enforcement of which the Migratory Bird Treaty Act was enacted by Congress, defines migratory birds as follows:

1. Migratory Game Birds:

(a) Anatidae or waterfowl, including brant, wild ducks, geese,

swans.

and

(b) Gruidae or cranes, including little brown, gandhill, and whooping

cranes.

(c) Rallidae or rails, including coots, gallinules and sora and other rails.

(d) Limicolae or shorebirds, including avocets, curlew, dowitchers, godwits, knots, oystercatchers, phalaropes, plovers, sandpipers, snipe, stilts, surf birds, turnstones, willet, woodcock, and yellowlegs.

(e) Columbidae or pigeons, including doves and wild pigeons.

2. Migratory Insectivorous Birds:

Bobolinks, catbirds, chickadees, cuckoos, flickers, flycatchers, grosbeaks, hummingbirds, kinglets, martins, meadowlarks, nighthawks or bull bats, nut-hatches, orioles, robins, shrikes, swallows, swifts, tanagers, titmice, thrushes, vireos, warblers, waxwings, whippoorwills, woodpeckers, and wrens, and all other perching birds which feed entirely or chiefly on insects.

3. Other Migratory Non-game Birds: Auks, auklets, bitterns, fulmars, gannets, grebes, guillemots. gulls, herons, jaegers, loons, murres, petrels, puffins, shearwaters, and terns.

Section 2 of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act prohibits the hunting, capture, killing, possession, sale, purchase, shipment, transportation, or carrying, by any means whatever, of any migratory bird included in the Treaty with Great Britian, or any nest or egg of any migratory bird, unless and except as permitted by the regulations of the Secretary of Agriculture.

Section 3 of the Act authorizes the Secretary of Agriculture to adopt regulations permitting and governing hunting, taking, capture, killing, possession, sale, purchase, shipment, transportation and carriage of migra tory birds and their nests, which regulations become effective when approved by the Fresident. On July 13, 1918, the President approved and proclaimed the regulations adopted by the Secretary of Agriculture.

Regulation 9 authorizes the issuance of permits to collect migratory birds and their nests and eggs for scientific purposes, under the following conditions and restrictions:

1. Application for a permit must be addressed to the Secretary of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., and must contain the name and address of the applicant and the name of the State

cr Territory in which specimens are proposed to be taken, and the purpose for which they are intended. Each application for a permit must be accompanied by certificates from two well known ornithologists that the aplicant is a fit person to be entrusted with a permit.

2. Permits will be valid only dur ing the calendar year in which issued, are not transferable, and are revocable in the discretion of the Secretary of Agriculture.

3. Every permittee must report to the Secretary of Agriculture on or before January 10 following the expiration of his permit, the number of skins, nests, or eggs of each species collected, bought, sold, or transported.

4. Every package in which migratory birds or their nests or eggs are transported must be marked clearly and conspicuously on the outside thereof with the name and address of the sender, the number of permit, the Lame and address of the consignee, and a statement that it contains specimens of birds, their nests, or eggs for scientific purposes. Any package transported or offered for transportation from Canada into the United States or from the United States into Canada, must also bear an accurate statement of the contents.

5. Every permittee must carry his permit on his person when he is collecting specimens thereunder, and must exhibit the permit to any person requesting to see the same.

6. A permit will authorize the holder to possess, buy, sell, and transport, in any manner and at any time, migratory birds and their nests and eggs for scientific purposes under the conditions above stated.

Public museums, zoological parks and socieies, and public scientific and educational institutions may possess, buy, sell, and transport migratory

birds and their nests and eggs for scientific purposes without a permit, but they cannot kill or collect them without a permit.

Section 4 of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act applies to all birds, whether migratory or not. This section prohibits the shipment, transportation, or carriage, by any means whatever, from one State, Territory, or District to or through another State, Territory, or District, or to or through a foreign county, of any bird or the nest or egg thereof, captured, killed, or taken, or from which it was shipped, transported, or carried. This section also prohibits the importation of any bird or the nest or egg thereof, captured, killed, taken, shipped, transported, or carried contrary to the laws of any province of Canada in which the same was captured, killed, or taken, or from which it was shipped, transported, or carried.

Section 6 of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act makes the violation of the Act a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not more than $500, or by imprisonment not more than six months, or both.

Very truly yours,

Robert W. Williams.

Technical Names

The value of much of the present day ornithology literature is very much lessened in the hands of many people by the disposition of certain class ornithologists to always hide what they have to write under some Latin or alleged scientific name which is unintelligible to about 90% of these who read or see the article. this fact is at least being noticed is evidenced by a reference to page 497 of the October Auk, wherein the editor of that journal takes Dr. Oberholser to task because in his "Second Bird Survey at Washington, D. C., pub

That

lished in the Wilson Journal, XXX No. 2 1918 only technical names are used and therefore, "A number of them are meaningless to the general readers."

When we stop to think that 745 members of the A. O. U. are "associates" and people who are compelled to make a living in this business world and have no time to delve into the intricacies and mysteries of super-scientific ornithology and latinized bird names, we begin to think that a large percentage of the pages in the publication the support of which these associates are the back bone so far as finances are concerned get little comfort because of the disposition to adhere strictly to "Only Technical Names."

The last issue of the Auk is a fair example of this tendency. There are 122 birds referred to in that issue by their common name and 177 by their Latin name only. The result would be that at least 50% of these 745 A. O. U. associates would get little or no information from the notes relating to the last half of this total of 299 birds. Would it not be better in writing bird notes for publishers to use both the scientific and common name and thereby give everybody a chance to know what was being talked about?

-Ed.

It may be of interest for readers of The Oologist to know that on March 20th of the present year, 1918, a wild Mallard had completed her set of fifteen eggs near Tacoma. Here in the northwest the Mallards have their sets completed about three weeks ahead of all the other birds, Horned Owls excepted.

Yours very truly,

J. H. Bowles, The Woodstock.

Frank H. Lattin.

Friend Eddy who has printed The Oologist ever since it was started, sends us the following good news about its former editor:

"You will be glad to learn that Dr. Lattin was yesterday elected to the Assembly for the third term by a majority of about 3,000 where the majorities of the other candidates run about half that. And this in spite of the fact that his party organization did everything to defeat him. This district has not returned a man for the third term in a great many years. Almost never, and usually they get but one term before the bosses order up a new man."

We offer our congratulations to the Hon. F. H. and hope he will continue to succeed in politics.

-Editor.

"Dear Mr. Barnes: What do you think of the advisability and possibility of getting up a revised Egg Catalogue? It has been some 14 years since Taylor's "Catalogue" was issued, and it seems to me that it would be a good thing to make a careful census of the opinions of the present-day Oologists, and issue the results of their work. In thinking over the matter I had in mind to begin a rather active correspondence with this in view, and publish the results serially in the "Oologists." Later it occurred to me that after a revision of these articles, the "catalogue" might be issued in attractive form together with chapters by leading collectors on various subjects of interest. Among these "chapter" I had some such subjects as these in contemplation:

On Collecting Eggs.

The Preparation of Specimens. Famous Nesting Localities. Worthy Collections and Famous Specimens.

Some Old Time Collectors, and Their Work.

Eggs with a History.

Curious and Interesting Discoveries. Photographing Nests and Eggs. On Building up an Oological Collection.

Each one of these subjects should be assigned to the person best qualified to handle it, and these chapters might also be published serially in the Oologist.

I have this conviction that a con

census of ideas would go far to supplementing the work already done by the older cataloguers, and perhaps arrive at some approximate value for specimens heretofore left unpriced. I should think that a selection of some 20 or 25 leading collectors would be sufficient for this purpose; surely that many would be glad to render their opinion and help in the working out of a new list.

I think no catalogue has appeared which has been satisfactory from a typographical point, and there are several suggestions to be made in the make up of a catalogue which would make it of much value to the collector.

As this is a preliminary matter I wait your opinion, not having, as yet, conferred with any one else on the subject. I should count it a labor of love to carry through the correspondence necessary to complete the work, if I could get some assurance that it would be published, and that such a list would be desired."

The American Crow By H. H. Johnson, Pittsfield, Maine Recently when reading an old copy of The Oologist in which the question was asked if birds fight until death overtakes one or both of the combatants it brought to my mind an occurrence of that nature which but for my intervention I have no doubt that death would have been the fate of two Crows. It was in the spring of 1914, March 20th to be exact. The first Crows arrive here commonly the first week of that month. One or two the first day, but soon in numbers, depending on the weather. If it be warm and pleasant the numbers increase fast, otherwise they come in less numbers. The first of March is the time when the snow is melting fast and the first bare knolls begin to show on the higher land and the swamps

and