Transcribing the field notes of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

Collector: Grinnell-1925 Location: San Diego Date: June 17, 1925 Page Number: 2456

11 a.m. - Went to dinner last evening with the Griffing Bancrofts - Mr. and Mrs., and his son Griffing. All are ardent collectors of birds eggs, and, being well-to-do, their collection is large and growing amazingly. Mr. Bancroft collects, and hires collectors, and buys eggs. He showed me two each of Bald Eagle taken this year on Catalina and San Clemente islands, several sets of Golden Eagle, etc., etc. He has bought the balance of the Walter E. Bryant eggs from H. F. Duprey, with some Guadalupe Island things among them; the old collection of "Parkhurst" of San Jose, containing White Tailed Kites, etc., etc. I regret to say that Bancroft is very unscientific in all his methods: He fails to put any sort of numbers on the eggs - of the same or of different sets - he merely puts a "floating" number (tagged on a slip of paper) on the cotton drawer-lining at the side of each set - the number referring to an entry in a catalog where presumably all the data is kept. His identifications are dubious in some cases - he looks for differences in the eggs of related subspecies - and identifies subspecies by the eggs (a la Dawson!). As I said, he buys wholesale, often from boys and from fishermen, identifying the eggs by appearance - and he doesn't know the birds themselves. But he has great energy and ingenuity in ransacking the country for rarities - quantity, too, he wants. I doubt if he respects 'limits' of his permits! I wish his objectives could be modified a bit.