In the preparation of plumage descriptions, the attempt to derive them from local collections was partially abandoned because of the meagerness of the materials offered. If the work had been purely British Columbian, the excellent collection of the Provincial Museum at Victoria would have been nearly sufficient; but there is crying need of a large, well-kept, central collection of skins and mounted birds here in Washington. A creditable showing is being made at Pullman under the energetic leadership of Professor W. T. Shaw, and the State College will always require a representative working collection. The University of Washington, however, is the natural repository for West-side specimens, and perhaps for the official collection of the State, and it is to be devoutly hoped that its present ill-assorted and ill-housed accumulations may early give place to a worthy and complete display of Washington birds. Among private collections that of Mr. J. M. Edson, of Bellingham, is the most notable, representing, as it does, the patient occupation of extra hours for the past eighteen years. I am under obligation to Mr. Edson for a check-list of his collection (comprising entirely local species), as also for a list of the birds of the Museum of the Bellingham Normal School. The small but well-selected assortment of bird-skins belonging to Messrs. C. W. and J. H. Bowles rests in the Ferry Museum in Tacoma. Here also Mr. Geo. C. Cantwell has left his bird-skins, partly local and partly Alaskan, on view. Fortunately the task of redescribing the plumage of Washington birds has been rendered less necessary for a work of such scope as ours, thru the appearance of the Fifth Edition of Coues Key,[2] embodying, as it does the ripened conclusions of a uniquely gifted ornithological writer, and above all, by the great definitive work from the hand of Professor Ridgway,[3] now more than half completed. These final works by the masters of our craft render the careful repetition of such effort superfluous, and I have no hesitation in admitting that we are almost as much indebted to them as to local collections, altho a not inconsiderable part of the author’s original work upon plumage description in “The Birds of Ohio” has been utilized, or re-worked, wherever applicable. In compiling the General Ranges, we wish to acknowledge indebtedness both to the A. O. U. Check-List (2nd Edition) and to the summaries of Ridgway and Coues in the works already mentioned. In the Range in Washington, we have tried to take account of all published records, but have been obliged in most instances to rely upon personal experience, and to express judgments which must vary in accuracy with each individual case.