100 Years Ago in the American Ornithologists' Union

The 36th meeting of the AOU took place on Monday, November 11, 1918, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Public sessions were canceled for the first time in the annual meeting’s history, because of the worldwide influenza epidemic. This meant that the meeting consisted only of the Council and Fellows and Members who could attend. The meeting also coincided with the celebration of Armistice Day, ending World War I, that was occurring in the streets of New York that day. The meeting of Fellows was called to order at 8:05 P.M. by President John H. Sage. New bylaws were adopted, setting the fee for a Patron at $1,000. The meeting of Fellows and Members was called to order at 8:20 P.M., with 13 Fellows and 4 Members present. Following the reading of the members in military and naval service, the Secretary reported that the AOU’s membership had grown to 953: Fellows, 50; Retired Fellows, 2; Honorary Fellows, 15; Corresponding Fellows, 56; Members, 80; and Associates, 750. During the year, the AOU had lost 14 members to death: one Retired Fellow, one Honorary Fellow, one Corresponding Fellow, and 11 Associates, three of whom were killed in war action in France: Eric Brooke Dunlop (1887–1917), Walter Freeman McMahon (1889–1918), and Douglas Clifford Mabbott (1893–1918). Lyman Belding (1829–1917) was a Retired Fellow who was the oldest member of the AOU at the time of his death; as mentioned in the last column, he was also considered the oldest ornithologist in the United States. His research was mostly on birds in California and he was a stalwart of the Cooper Ornithological Society, being made an Honorary Member in 1896. In his memorial, A. K. Fisher referred to him as the ‘‘Nestor of California ornithologists.’’ Friedrich Hermann Otto Finsch (1839– 1917) was a German naturalist and explorer and was an Honorary Fellow in the AOU. He held a number of curator appointments early in his career and late in his career, sandwiched between extensive foreign travels. He spent considerable time in the Pacific Southwest on behalf of the German government and was successful in establishing the German protectorate of German New Guinea in 1884, the capital of the colony being named Finschhaven in his honor. His major ornithological publication was on parrots of the world (Die Papageien, 1867), and several parrot species are named after him (Figure 1). His book was criticized for its new taxonomy, which many viewed as Finsch’s attempt to get authorship of many parrot taxa. Cornel William Vincent Legge (1841–1918) was a Corresponding Fellow in the AOU and an Australian soldier with an interest in ornithology. He was born in Tasmania and spent his career in the Royal Regiment of Artillery in the British Army. He had the good fortune of being stationed in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) from 1869 to 1877, which led to the publication of History of the Birds of Ceylon, published in three parts between 1878 and 1880 in London, comprising two quarto-sized volumes, with colored plates by Johannes Gerardus Keulemans (1842– 1912), the famous Dutch bird illustrator. Legge helped start the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union in 1901 and was its first president. Among the members that died were Jonathan Young Stanton (1834–1918), who was a professor of Greek and Latin at Bates College, known as ‘‘Uncle Johnny.’’ He also taught a course in ornithology, starting in the summer of 1874; ‘‘Baird’’ was listed as the text, possibly referring to the updated edition of The Birds of North America (Baird 1870). Since there was no such thing as an elective at that time, ornithology was a requirement for sophomores from 1874 to 1898 and for freshmen from 1898 to 1918, when ornithology was dropped from the curriculum following Stanton’s death. Lynds Jones is generally credited with teaching the first course in ornithology at an American college, in 1895 at Oberlin College (Taylor 1938), but Stanton’s course preceded that one by 20 years. The Stanton Bird Club in Lewiston, Maine, was named after Professor Stanton in 1919 and will be celebrating its centennial next year. David Ernest Lantz (1855–1918) died during the influenza epidemic, succumbing within a week after contracting the disease. He spent about 25 years in Kansas, starting in 1878 as an educator, and published about 35 papers and notes on birds in Kansas. His most famous work was ‘‘A Review of Kansas Ornithology’’ (Lantz 1898). He accepted a position with the Bureau of Biological