AN IMPRESSION OF AXE EDGE 117 



wide-wandering, perpetual-holiday band should, if we 

 exclude the suspects, be a small one and as enthusi- 

 astic in their pursuit as other open-air men are apt 

 to be about hunting the fox, golfing, fishing, cricket- 

 ing, shooting, motoring, and other forms of sport. 



Call them sportsmen, ornithologists, or bird-lovers 

 pure and simple, I envy them their magnificent 

 freedom and could ask for no happier life than theirs. 

 It is like that of the person whose delight is in an- 

 thropology in passing from land to land, seeing 

 many and various races of men, visiting remote dis- 

 tricts whose inhabitants through long centuries of 

 isolation have preserved the features and mental 

 characteristics of their remote progenitors. To pursue 

 wild birds in that way — to follow knowledge like a 

 sinking star, to be and to know much until I became 

 a name for always wandering with a hungry heart 

 — that was my one desire; but alas! it was never 

 in my power. Compared with the disencumbered 

 ones I am like an ordinary man, walking on the 

 earth, to men of lighter bodies and nimbler minds 

 who have found out how to fly and are like birds 

 chasing birds. 



Nevertheless there are compensations. The very 

 restraints which annoy us may not be without their 

 advantages. The rare experience of finding myself 

 at last in the presence of some long-wished-for bird, 

 comparing it with its imaginary mental portrait and 

 with the mental images of its nearest relations, and 

 finally of being able to add this one new portrait to 

 the gallery existing in the mind — my best possession 



