Page:DenisGale annotated notebook complete2.pdf/12

 I INTRODUCTION.

In the note books of Denis Gale occurs a great deal of matter of no special importance, such as systematic lists of birds, etc., apparently copied into the books merely for his own convenience to avoid constant reference to manuals. Such matter I have omitted from this transcript, generally indicating the omission in some way. Ann Annotations appear either in footnotes or in parentheses and are signed "J.H." I have taken the liberty to insert punctuation marks in many places, after careful consideration, where it would make the notes more easily readable, and have corrected orthography and grammar in many instances, though note always, by any means. The transcript has been written as rapidly as I could manipulate the keys and proof^-read very hastily. In the early part of the transcript I omitted the check list numbers, but inserted them in all the pages after page 120. In nomencla- ture he followed Ridgeway's "Nomenclature of North American Birds," Bull. 21, U. S. Nat. Mus., 1881, but in the notes for 1898 he adds the A.O.U. numbers also. The notes are all written with ink, and probably written at home, though quite likely transcribed from some kind of a field memorandum book. At least one of the books was altogether too large to con-veniently carry into the field, and they do not bear the us-ual marks of rough usage in the field in all kinds of weather. In places the notes bear internal evidence of not having been written on the dates they bear. This is particularly true of the large book, No. 6. Most of the localities mentioned