Notes and News [stub]

1913 The AUK: A Quarterly Journal of Ornithology  
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more » ... ntent at http://about.jstor.org/participate--jstor/individuals/early-journal--content. JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not--for--profit organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Voi XXX] Notes and News. 157 offenders, and freeing the others from the stigma of guilt is a benefit to the useful species. Moreover it advances the cause of bird protection as a whole. If the protection of birds is to rest upon an economic basis the .truth must be learned and told or the whole movement receive a setback. If bird protection, on the other hand, is to be based upon aesthetic principles, the writer will agree and support the cause, if only the pleading be on that basis. But in the scientific study of economic values, utilitarianism must prevail, and the rule of the greatest good to the greatest number be uncompromisingly applied. NOTES AND NEWS. 'THE AuK' is indebted to Mr. Louis Agassiz Fuertes for the admirable drawing of the Great Auk which with the present issue replaces the cover design that has done service for the past thirty years. While it may be true that our familiarity with living Great Auks has not increased in this period, it is equally true that in that time an artist has been developed, whose ability in depicting bird life, has enabled him to make what is unquestionably a far closer approximation to the actual appearance of this famous bird, than was possible for any of our bird-artists of a quatter of a century ago. Mr. Fuertes has moreover had the benefit of suggestions from Mr. while the rocky islet upon which his birds are shown, is based upon a photogiaph of Funk Island, where Dr. Lucas in 1887 procured a large collection of Great Auk bones. In the first number of 'The Auk' January, 1884, Dr. Elliott Coues in commenting upon criticisms of the name of the journal, hoped that instead of becoming extinct like its namesake, 'The Auk' might long flourish, and that in it the bird might live again -or as he put it "in pennis ALCA rediviva." In the 28 years of Dr. Allen's guidance this hope has been amply fulfilled, so far as the text is concerned; and we can now say the same thing of our cover, or following Dr. Coues -"in pennis Fuertesi ALCA rediviva! BRADFORD TORREY, a Member of the American Ornithologists' Union and widely known as a writer of outdoor sketches, died at Santa Barbara, Cal., October 7, 1912, after a short illness. He was born at Weymouth, Mass., October 9, 1843, a son of Samuel and Sophronia (Dyer) Torrey, and was educated in the public schools of his native town. After completing his school course at the age of eighteen, he worked for a short time in a shoe factory, taught school for a year or two, then, after occupying positions with two business houses in Boston, entered the office of the [Auk 158 Notes and News. [Jan. Treasurer of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in that city, where he remained about sixteen years. In 1886 he found more congenial occupation as one of the editors of the 'Youth's Companion,' but he resigned this position in 1901 to devote himself exclusively to his own literary work. After leaving Weymouth he lived successively in Boston, Melrose Highlands, and Wellesley Hills, Mass., but since the winter of 1907 he had been at Santa Barbara,-whether as a mere visitor or as a permanent resident his friends were unable to learn. As a boy and young man Bradford Torrey, though a great reader (eschewing fiction, however), was fond of walking in the woods and fields, but it was not till some time after he had left the country to make his home in Boston that he became especially interested in birds or in any form of outdoor study. He has told the story of his introduction to ornithology in a sketch entitled 'Scraping Acquaintance' included in the first of his books. This was not his earliest literary venture, however. He had written a paper on the birds of Boston Common, which, at the instance of friends who had heard him read it, he had sent to the 'Atlantic Monthly,' which printed it in February, 1883. Encouraged by this success, which had been quite unlooked for by him, he embarked on what finally became his life work as a writer of discursive essays on birds, flowers, and the world out of doors. Many of his essays made their first appearance in the 'Atlantic.'
doi:10.2307/4071947 fatcat:soelpcervvcnri3nplclzgkymu