a short list of the species he had shot, with some comments on their habits but without descriptions. On my way home through Europe I secured a good book of Egyptian ornithology by a Captain Shelley. Both books enu5 merated and commented on several species of chats the Old World chats, of course, which have nothing in common with our queer warbler of the same name. Two of these chats were common along the edges of the desert. One species was a boldly pied black and white bird, the other 10 was colored above much like the desert sand, so that when it crouched it was hard to see. I found that the strikingly conspicuous chat never tried to hide, was very much on the alert, and was sure to attract attention when a long way off; whereas the chat whose upper color harmonized 15 with its surroundings usually sought to escape observation by crouching motionless. These facts were obvious even to a dull-sighted, not particularly observant boy; they were essential features in the comparison between and in the study of the life histories of the two birds. Yet neither 20 of the two books in my possession so much as hinted at them.

I think it was my observation of these, and a few similar facts, which prevented my yielding to the craze that fifteen or twenty years ago became an obsession with 25 certain otherwise good men the belief that all animals were protectively colored when in their natural surroundings. That this simply wasn't true was shown by a moment's thought of these two chats; no rational man could doubt that one was revealingly and the other conceal30ingly colored; and each was an example of what was true in thousands of other cases. Moreover, the incident showed the only, and very mild, merit which I ever de

veloped as a "faunal naturalist." I never grew to have keen powers of observation. But whatever I did see I saw truly, and I was fairly apt to understand what it meant. In other words, I saw what was sufficiently obvious, and in such case did not usually misinterpret what I had seen. 5 Certainly this does not entitle me to any particular credit, but the outstanding thing is that it does entitle me to some, even although of a negative kind; for the great majority of observers seem quite unable to see, to record, or to understand facts so obvious that they leap to the eye. My 10 two ornithologists offered a case in point as regards the chats; and I shall shortly speak of one or two other cases, as, for example, the cougar and the saddle-backed lechwi. After returning to this country and until I was halfway through college, I continued to observe and collect in the 15 fashion of the ordinary boy who is interested in natural history. I made copious and valueless notes. As I said above, I did not see and observe very keenly; later it interested and rather chagrined me to find out how much more C. Hart Merriam and John Burroughs saw when 20 I went out with them near Washington or in the Yellowstone Park; or how much more George K. Cherrie and Leo E. Miller and Edmund Heller° and Edgar A. Mearns and my own son Kermit saw in Africa and South America, on the trips I took to the Nyanza lakes and across the 25 Brazilian hinterland.

During the years when as a boy I “collected specimens" at Oyster Bay or in the north woods, my contributions to original research were of minimum worth-they were limited to occasional records of such birds as the dominica 30 warbler at Oyster Bay, or to seeing a duck hawk work havoc in a loose gang of night herons, or to noting the

bloodthirsty conduct of a captive mole shrew-I think I sent an account of the last incident to C. Hart Merriam. I occasionally sent to some small ornithological publication a local list of Adirondack birds or something of the 5 sort; and then proudly kept reprinted copies of the list on my desk until they grew dog-eared and then disappeared. I lived in a region zoölogically so well known that the obvious facts had all been set forth already, and as I lacked the power to find out the things that were not obvious, my 10 work merely paralleled the similar work of hundreds of other young collectors who had a very good time but who made no particular addition to the sum of human knowledge.

Among my boy friends who cared for ornithology was a fine and manly young fellow, Fred Osborn, the brother of 15 Henry Fairfield Osborn. He was drowned, in his gallant youth, forty years ago; but he comes as vividly before my eyes now as if he were still alive. One cold and snowy winter I spent a day with him at his father's house at Garrison-on-the-Hudson. Numerous northern birds, 20 which in our eyes were notable rarities, had come down with the hard weather, I spied a flock of crossbills in a pine, fired, and excitedly rushed forward. A twig caught my spectacles and snapped them I knew not where. But dim though my vision was, I could still make out the red 25 birds lying on the snow; and to me they were treasures of such importance that I abandoned all thought of my glasses and began a nearsighted hunt for my quarry. By the time I had picked up the last crossbill I found that I had lost all trace of my glasses; my day's sport-or scien30 tific endeavor, whatever you choose to call it came to an abrupt end; and as a result of the lesson I never again in my life went out shooting, whether after sparrows or

elephants, without a spare pair of spectacles in my pocket. After some ranch experiences I had my spectacle cases made of steel; and it was one of these steel spectacle cases which saved my life in after years when a man shot into me in Milwaukee.°

While in Harvard I was among those who joined in forming the Nuttall Club, which I believe afterward became one of the parent sources of the American Ornithologists' Union.

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The Harvard of that day was passing through a phase of 10 biological study which was shaped by the belief that German university methods were the only ones worthy of copy, and also by the proper admiration for the younger Agassiz, whose interest was mainly in the lower forms of marine life. Accordingly it was the accepted doctrine 15 that a biologist-the word "naturalist" was eschewed as archaic was to work toward the ideal of becoming a section cutter of tissue, who spent his time studying this tissue, and low marine organisms, under the microscope. Such work was excellent; but it covered a very small part 20 of the biological field; and not only was there no encouragement for the work of the field naturalist, the faunal naturalist, but this work was positively discouraged, and was treated as of negligible value. The effect of this attitude, common at that time to all our colleges, was detri- 25 mental to one very important side of natural history research. The admirable work of the microscopist had no attraction for me, nor was I fitted for it; I grew even more interested in other forms of work than in the work of a faunal naturalist; and I abandoned all thought of making 30 the study of my science my life interest.

But I never lost a real interest in natural history; and

I very keenly regret that at certain times I did not display this interest in more practical fashion. Thus, for the dozen years beginning with 1883, I spent much of my time on the Little Missouri, where big game was then 5 plentiful. Most big game hunters never learn anything about the game except how to kill it; and most naturalists never observe it at all. Therefore a large amount of important and rather obvious facts remains unobserved or inaccurately observed until the species becomes ex10 tinct. What is most needed is not the ability to see what very few people can see, but to see what almost anybody can see, but nobody takes the trouble to look at. But I vaguely supposed that the obvious facts were known; and I let most of the opportunities pass by. Even so, 15 many of my observations on the life histories of the bighorns, white goats, prongbucks, deer, and wapiti, and occasional observations on some of the other beasts, such as black-footed ferrets, were of value; indeed as regards some of the big game beasts, the accounts in" Hunting 20 Trips of a Ranchman,' Ranch Life and the Hunting Trial," and The Wilderness Hunter " gave a good deal of information which, as far as I know, is not to be found elsewhere.

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To illustrate what I mean as "obvious" facts which 25 nevertheless are of real value I shall instance the cougar. In the winter of 1910 I made a cougar hunt with hounds, spending about five weeks in the mountains of northwestern Colorado. At that time the cougar had been seemingly well known to hunters, settlers, naturalists, and 30 novelists for more than a century; and yet it was actually impossible to get trustworthy testimony on such elementary points as, for instance, whether the male and female