Clippings (Books, newspapers, etc.)

Content Description

This collection consists of field notes regarding bird observations in diary format, handwritten in ink on unlined paper and grouped by year from 1896 to 1910. Most volumes are originally bound with string, though the 1899 volume is bound into a notebook with an embossed suede cover. The volumes include newspaper clippers pertaining to ornithology and climate.

Content Description The heath hen (Tympanuchus cupido cupido) is a now extinct subspecies of the greater prairie chicken. While at one point extremely common, the birds became locally extinct on the mainland and only existed on Martha's Vineyard by the late 1800s. The continuing decline was noticed by ornithologist Alfred Otto Gross, who reported his observations to the Federation of the Bird Clubs of New England in 1925. The Federation then took immediate action to try to preserve the remaining birds through...

Content Description This scrapbook, signed at the front by Herbert E. Valentine, begins in 1883 with pencil, watercolor, and other illustrations of insects and plant life, including both close up studies and scenes. Photographs (both matted and not) and microscope cards with closer examination are added partway through. Labels for all images, drawn or not, are hand written. Some items in the scrapbook have dates and attribution but most do not. The scrapbook ends with pasted in diagrams of different types of...