John C. Phillips

A Years' Collecting in the State of Tamaulipas, Mexico

On the first of August, 1908, the well-known collector, Mr. Frank B. Armstrong, began work in the State of Tamaulipas, Mexico, collecting the series of birds which is listed below. The work was continued for one year. The localities visited ranged from Matamoros, at the northeast extremity of the State, to Altamira in the extreme south. Most of the time, however, was spent in the hill region west and north of Ciudad Victoria in the valleys of the Sierra Madre mountains, which here form the western boundary of the State of Tamaulipas, and along the river valleys east of the mountains. It may be well to mention here the general character of the stations represented by the collection, beginning with Matamoros. The country about Matamoros is the level valley bottom of the Rio Grande, where the general vegetation is chaparal, bunch cactus and mesquite, at a level of only eighty feet above the sea. San Fernando, some seventy miles south on the River Presos,

A Reconsideration of the American Black Ducks with Special Reference to Certain Variations

was evolved, a bird larger than the Savannah Sparrow of the main land, and of a gray or sandy, rather than a black and brown color, so that when it squatted in terror on the sand the sailing Hawk was more apt to pass it by. It seems to me, therefore, that the evolution of the Ipswich Sparrow is comparatively recent, and that the age of this species may be counted by the paltry fifty thousand years or so that have elapsed since the last glacial period.

Fluctuation in Numbers of the Eastern Brant Goose

IT is not often that a shooting club keeps records which are of any particular interest from the ornithologists viewpoint. However, the Monomoy Brant Club of Chatham, Massachusetts, has proved an exception for it has kept a faithful log from 1863 until the present time. This log is a mine of information on the habits of sea fowl, the psychology of sportsmen and all that pertains to that windy neck of sand. I doubt if it can be duplicated anywhere. A few years ago the five neat volumes of these records were loaned to me by the present Secretary of the Club, Mr. G. C. Porter, and I read them through with real delight. The father of the Club was Mr. Warren Hapgood of Boston, at one time the very active President of the Massachusetts Fish and Game Association. From 1863 to and including 1909 all of the shooting was done in the spring, and practically the whole bag consisted of the American or Eastern Brant (Branta bernicla hrota). After that time spring shooting was abolished by law in Massachusetts. I feel that some summary of this log should be available. At the present time when so many of our sportsmen and others are worried over the wildfowl situation, the extraordinary natural fluctuation in numbers of Brant gives us food for thought and demonstrates the remarkable power of recuperation in one species, at least. The Brant cannot, of course, be compared directly with any other of our wildfowl in this respect, for this species occupies a most peculiar niche in relation to its natural and human environment. In the first place it is strictly limited in winter to ice-free waters in the southern extension of the range of the eel grass (Zo8tera marina). North of Cape Cod the winters are too severe and south of Pamlico and Core Sounds in North Carolina eel grass does not grow. Indeed it is noticeably dwarfed in this southern limit of its

John Eliot Thayer. 1862-1933

LANCASTER, in Massachusetts, has been identified with the Thayer family for nearly a century and a half. It stands there today, an aristocrat among towns, solidly planted near the west bank of the Nashua River some thirty-five miles from Boston. Its comfortable homes, well-kept lawns and shrubbery, above all its splendid shade trees, bear mute testimony to the loving care of a generation of Thayers now unhappily gone. And among these none will be longer remembered than John Eliot Thayer. In a part of the world where rural centers long ago lost their cultured leaders and much of the old social tradition, John Thayer stands out as the finest example of what a New England country gentleman ought to be. Indeed I can think of no other alive today who is filling quite the same niche that he did. People of means now identify themselves almost wholly with city life and city interests, migrating to the country for short summer seasons, but John fixed upon Lancaster and his bird collections as almost his sole interests. In Lancaster he could be