CHAPTER XI 



AN IMPRESSION OF AXE EDGE 



Some lucky ornithologists — Compensations that go with limited 

 opportunities — Axe Edge — Mean farms — The people of 

 the Peak — Spring on Axe Edge. 



THE ornithologists of to-day are a somewhat 

 numerous tribe, including persons of varied 

 tastes, habits, ambitions, and, above every- 

 thing, means. Among them are a few fortunate in- 

 dividuals whose object in life is to seek out the least 

 familiar species, the rarest in the land or the most 

 local in their distribution, or most difficult to get at 

 and observe closely. Many of us would like to do 

 our birding in that way, but few are free to take the 

 whole year for a holiday, to travel long distances, 

 to spend days, weeks, months in the quest — just to 

 see and study some bird in its haunts — a pine forest 

 in Rothiemurchus or some such "vast contiguity of 

 shade," or a beetling cliff on the coast of Connemara, 

 or a boggy moor or marsh in the Shetlands or Orkneys, 

 or in "utmost Kilda's lonely isle." They must be 

 young, or, at all events, physically tough, and unless 

 they can make it pay by procuring specimens for 

 their numerous friends (dealers and collectors all) 

 they must have money enough to exist without work. 

 These being the conditions, it is not strange that this 



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