TRAVELS OF WATERFOWL 

 to the city and went there for another meal. As I approached the building 

 I could but vaguely recall its gross details; then, as I stepped within the 

 door, I was suddenly in a familiar place. This was not a new or strange 

 room ; I had been there before. As my eyes wandered, many details I could 

 not have remembered a moment before were now familiar. The position of 

 the kitchen door, the rack of glasses, the mirror behind the pies were hardly 

 different in arrangement and pattern from those in many other restaurants 

 I have visited or in thousands I had never seen. Yet this room I experienced 

 briefly seven years ago was a familiar place. 



As a lad of eight I spent a day at Estes Park where I caught my first trout. 

 My next trip there was thirty-two years later; and, while I could recall only 

 a few details of the place, I was able to find at once the very bend in the 

 stream where I had taken my first fish. On the road to Amaranth, Manitoba, 

 there is a whitewashed log cabin which is important to me only once a year. 

 On the first day of Prairie Chicken hunting, it is suddenly remembered be- 

 cause when it comes to view the next turn is to the favorite hunting grounds. 

 How vastly important is this continuity of personal history! Although mem- 

 ory cannot serve to bring all our life story to awareness, there is a retentive- 

 ness by which continuity is maintained, with the present always built on the 

 past, each new instant modified by earlier experiences. 



Many trips might be taken over the same route until it is known "by 

 heart," the impressions deepened till more and more of the landscape is sub- 

 ject to conscious recollection. The point is, however, that one trip over a 

 trail is sufficient to render it familiar, even though memory does not func- 

 tion to recall the details to mind after the trip is completed. Nor, despite 

 the depth of impression resulting from many trips, will memory of the whole 

 route ever be at the call of the will. Few can remember all the details of 

 the route between the dining room table and the refrigerator in their own 



