In Memoriam: Theodore Sherman Palmer

ADMITTED to the American Ornithologists' Union at its fifth meeting, in 1888, and elected Fellow in 1901, Doctor Palmer was member or chairman of the Committee on Biography from 1915, and Secretary of the Union for twenty years (1917-1937). He was born at Oakland, California, January 26, 1868, his father being Henry Austin, and his mother Jane Olivia Day, Palmer. In 1886 they moved to Pomona, California, where the father started a bank. He desired that his firstborn follow a business career, which Theodore did in vacations and immediately after graduation from college, but other interests soon prevailed. Among boyhood hobbies were the collecting of stamps and of the eggs and skins of birds. His natural history collections, upon his departure from the state, went to the California Academy of Sciences, where they were destroyed in the catastrophe of 1906. Stamp collecting was continued throughout life and his accumulations of 54,000 varieties, with duplicates and associated materials, were presented to the United States National Museum.