Manuscript journal titled Memoranda ornithologica, with entries dated from 1850-1881, documenting bird sightings, bird collecting, and bird people in and about Boston, Massachusetts in the mid-1800s. It cites conversations with Henry David Thoreau while birding along the Concord River, and includes many notes on bird observations and birds collected in eastern Massachusetts, including passenger pigeons. With the journal are two letters. One is from physician and ornithologist Elliott Coues, on stationery with letterhead of the Smithsonian Institution, to an unknown recipient (dated May 12, 1886), about the possibility of an animal or a person being revived after a period of apparent death or suspended animation. The other is a printed acknowledgment letter on Harvard University letterhead, filled in in manuscript (dated July 15, 1851) and signed by President Jared Sparks, acknowledging the gift of the Omnium gatherum for July, September, and October 1810 to Harvard College from Francis C. Brown, "Senior Sophister."