Birds of Kansas.—Probably the first attempt to make a scientific classification of Kansas birds was in 1871, when the Kansas Educational journal published a catalogue prepared by Prof. Francis H. Snow of the University of Kansas, which catalogue was "based upon the personal observations of the author during a residence of six years in Kansas."

Prof. Snow's list contained the names of 239 birds, including 20 members of the vulture species, 9 varieties of owls, 25 varieties of geese, ducks and swans, 34 kinds of finches and sparrows, 4 kinds of crows, 11 varieties of flycatchers, 12 of blackbirds, 22 of snipes, 17 of warblers, and 8 of woodpeckers. Other species mentioned in his catalogue were the cranes, herons, plovers, swallows, thrushes, shrikes, grouse and mocking birds. He expressed the opinion that the Carolina parrot was once numerous in the woods of eastern Kansas, and stated that it was still to be found in sparsely settled districts. Prof. Snow observed that during their migrations the pelican and cormorant were sometimes found in Kansas, as were the gulls and terns, the loon, the horned grebe and the Carolina grebe, the last named sometimes making its nest and hatching its young in the state. A large number of specimens were gathered by Prof. Snow and mounted for the university museum.

In 1872 Prof. J. A. Allen of the museum of comparative zoölogy at Cambridge, Mass., published a report of an "Ornithological Reconnoissance" made in May, 1871, by himself and Prof. S. F. Baird of the Smithsonian Institution, in the vicinity of Leavenworth and Topeka. This report added to the list of Prof. Snow some 40 additional species of birds, including the kite, merlin, whippoorwill, night-hawk, several wrens, the long-spur, the black-headed grosbeak, etc.

A short time before his death in 1891 Nathaniel S. Goss (q. v.) published a "History of the Birds of Kansas," a volume of nearly 700 pages in which 529 birds were illustrated. The large collection of birds which Mr. Goss spent several years in gathering together and mounting is now in the state capitol at Topeka. Vernon Kellogg has also written a work on the "Birds of Kansas."