LIFE IN WASHINGTON 241 



sence of trays on which he could arrange a series of birds 

 or mammals, or perhaps, the skulls or some portion of 

 the skeletons of these small creatures, he would take 

 down the pictures from the wall in the room assigned to 

 him in the house where he was boarding or visiting (if 

 on a visit long enough to give him leisure to go on with 

 his work), and turning them face down, arrange on the 

 back of the frames the objects of his study in the order 

 in which he wished to study them. 



"My father's interest in natural history and ornithol- 

 ogy, with the allied matters of the National Museum, 

 and later, of the Fish Commission, took precedence of 

 other scientific studies. Indeed, he could hardly be said 

 to have pursued studies in any other line after he left 

 Carlisle. During his early life he read and studied in 

 many branches and when a professor in Dickinson College 

 had charge of classes in physics, and in various directions 

 which were foreign to his later work. These earlier pur- 

 suits, however, gave him an extensive ground-work on 

 topics in which he never considered himself an expert, 

 and in which he was, of course, never a specialist. He, 

 however, always continued to feel an interest in every- 

 thing pertaining to these subjects, and it is safe to say 

 that there was no branch of science as it then was of 

 which he had not a good general knowledge, sufficient 

 to appreciate intelligently the progress of specialists; 

 indeed, I have heard a very eminent specialist in lines 

 utterly foreign to my father's work express his amaze- 

 ment at the extent of his knowledge in such branches 

 outside of his own especial line of work. He kept up 

 with everything which was published in general science, 

 not to the extent of reading extensively on all these 

 subjects, but enough to know what was being done. I 



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