Abstract
To the student of distribution what happens in course of time comes to loom as of almost as great importance for one's understanding as what happens in space. Indeed, facts of time-change and of space-change are impossible to dissociate without injury to the significance of each category; we simply must delve into history as well as into geography in order to get the fullest possible picture of species-behavior before us. These common-place but important considerations have led me of late to search back through certain easily accessible records for such indications as they might afford as to condition of the bird life in California prior to the time when relatively accounts began to be put on record, in the early 1850's. Needless to say, the accounts of most non-scientific travellers when they touch upon natural history at all prove well-nigh useless: they are vague, inexact, often rather obviously manufactured to fill out a literarily full narrative. It is gratifying, therefore, to find an account, of relatively early date, that was written by a man of, for that day, high scientific training, a man of attested veracity. Even though the records he left us as regards bird life are fragmentary, since his prime interest was in another field, we can take what he does say with confidence in its truth.
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