Alamed, CA, Henry Reed Taylor, 1894-1897. 8vo (24.8 x 17.0 cm). Two title pages and indexes. 436 pp. [II: 174; III: 150; IV: 112]. Numerous illustrations (mostly photographic). Uniform dark blue buckram; red leather label with gilt lines and title on the spines. Olive green endpapers. Original printed wrappers bound in.

An illustrated monthly magazine on ornithology, edited and published the ornithologist Henry Reed Taylor (1866-1917). Profusely illustrated. This set is complete except for the first volume. Neatly bound, with all the original front wrappers. The volumes run from September through to August of the next year, except the fourth and last volume, which ended with the May 1897 issue. “Henry Reed Taylor, well known as the founder of the Nidiologist, died at Agnewo, Calif., Sept. 23, 1917. He was the son of Bishop William Taylor of the Methodist Episcopal Church and Isabella A. (Kimberlin) Taylor, both of whom were born in Virginia. Harry R. Taylor as he was generally known was born at Capetown, South Africa, Oct. 6, 1866, but spent most of his life at Alameda, Calif. He was an enthusiastic oologist and published many articles on nests and eggs of western birds, especially raptors and hummingbirds. During the period of his ornithological activity, from 1884 to 1906, his fieldwork was confined to California and included chiefly the counties of Alameda, Monterey, Placer, San Benito and Santa Clara, and the Farallone Islands. His contributions were published chiefly in the Young Oologist, Ornithologist and Oologist, Nidiologist and Condor. From 1893 to 1897 he edited the Nidiologist, which was then the organ of the Cooper Ornithological Club. One of his latest publications, issued in 1904, was his Standard American Egg Catalogue, which included an appendix containing a directory of oologists. Shortly after the great earthquake of 1906 he became a patient in a sanatorium where he passed the last eleven years of his life. Taylor was one of the founders and vice president of the California Ornithological Club in 1889, and vice president in 1894 and president in 1895 of the Cooper Ornithological Club. Although he never joined the American Ornithologists' Union, he was known to a number of the members, attended the Washington meeting in 1895, and published the first group photograph of the Union ( Nidiologist, III, p. 41, Dec. 1895). He was active, energetic, always enthusiastic in any matter pertaining to oology, and was one of the most prominent of the little group of California collectors of the eighties" (from: The Auk). As noted by Underwood, the superfluous i in Nidiologist was deleted starting with Vol. 3(4-5). A very good, well-bound set. Rare, especially with all the wrappers present. Underwood, M. H. (1954) Bibliography of North American Minor Natural History Serials in The University of Michigan Libraries, pp. 128-129. Not in Cat. BM(NH).