168 MIGRATION AND DISTRIBUTION 



I think we don't know enough about the routes of 

 birds, if routes there be, to say which are the best stations 

 for observing them, and these can only be found out by 

 continuous series of observations. 



We want a score or so of Gatkes begotten and perched 

 on a score or so of lighted-up islands and lightships all 

 round ; then one might do something more than guess 

 warily ; but even thus the " personal equation " has to 

 be taken into consideration. I think there is as little 

 chance of there being another Gatke born as there is of 

 another Gilbert White, Shakespeare, or Robert Burns ! 



I hope that Clarke's Redpoll studies will not send him 

 into a Lunatic Asylum ; mine nearly did so with me, 

 but fortunately I had Dresser to share the trouble, and 

 we continued to keep ourselves sane at least apparently 

 so. I think Redpolls are like the Apocalypse, their 

 study finds a man mad (like poor Coues for instance), or 

 makes him so. For this reason I wish X would 

 take them up, and then peradventure he might be finally 

 interned in Colney Hatch and cease to do evil ; that he 

 should learn to do well I think impossible. But I am 

 growing tolerant in my old age, and look upon sub- 

 speciefiers as Mohammedans look upon Franks ; un- 

 comfortable creations that Allah for some purpose of 

 his own permits to exist, an old but apt simile.* 



He had the greatest admiration for Herr Gatke, of 

 whom he wrote that, " through his watchfulness Heligo- 

 land has attained celebrity as a post of observation quite 

 beyond any other in the world, so that ornithologists 

 may at times wonder whether the man made the station 

 or the station the man so fitted have they been for one 

 another." The two men very frequently corresponded, 

 but they only met once, when Newton was taken to 

 Heligoland on board a friend's yacht. At the end of 

 his stay, when he was stepping into the dinghy to take 

 him on board again, Newton had the misfortune to slip 



: Letter to J. A. Harvie-Brown, January 9, 1906. 



