18 Naturalist at Large 



alone for hours, completely entranced. I had been often to 

 the natural history museums in New York and Washing- 

 ton, but here was something entirely different, and I soon 

 discovered that this was essentially a museum for the edi- 

 fication of naturalists rather than for the great urban public 

 which the museum in New York had to cater to. 



I spotted some specimens which I thought were wrongly 

 labeled — and as a matter of fact they were. I wrote with 

 all the dignity of my thirteen years to Dr. Woodworth, 

 then Acting Custodian of the Museum, who was rather in- 

 furiated by my temerity. As I look back on it, I don't 

 blame him. I suspect that my letter was as fresh as green 

 paint. I made up my mind that very day that if I lived I 

 would be Director of the Museum. I had to wait until 1927. 

 Mr. Lowell wanted me to take office earlier, but I begged 

 him not to push matters. I was perfectly willing to wait 

 out of consideration for my predecessor. No consideration 

 was ever more completely wasted, or more ill-conceived, 

 for my predecessor left the Museum in a huff and never 

 entered it again or spoke to me as long as he lived — and 

 he lived to the ripe old age of ninety-one. 



I came to college as complete a social misfit as ever 

 breathed. I was abnormally shy, suffered from a bad in- 

 feriority complex, was tall and gangling. But fortune fa- 

 vored me. I had spent the summer of 1 90 1 at a boys' camp 

 near Bridgewater, New Hampshire. There I had a won- 

 derful time puttering with a tiny museum of natural history 

 and writing a list of the reptiles of New Hampshire and 

 something of their habits. Dr. Glover M. Allen had been a 

 counselor in this camp the year before, and in some way I 



