32 THE STORY OF A BIRD LOVER 



After about six weeks spent here I joined my 

 mother at Old Orchard Beach on the Maine coast. 

 On the edge of the ocean were countless sand- 

 pipers, gulls, and other water-birds never seen 

 before and unknown to me, and I formed the 

 acquaintance of that cosmopolite, the sanderling. 



Walking up the beach one day, I found the 

 half-rotted carcass of a fish that had been thrown 

 ashore. It was a monster over six feet long, so 

 far disintegrated that the skeleton was the chief 

 part left. Fishermen told me it was a "horse 

 mackerel." Notwithstanding that the bones were 

 full of oil and grease, and that it was disagreeable 

 and malodorous and not particularly pleasing in 

 appearance, it was too great a treasure to leave 

 behind. I brought back most of the vertebrae 

 and the skull and many of the small bones in a 

 bundle, much to the distress of my mother, both 

 during our stay at the hotel and on the return 

 journey home. 



My taste must have become now so definitely 

 apparent that my parents remarked it, for my 

 mother stopped with me in Boston on our way 

 back from Old Orchard Beach to consult with Dr. 

 Wilder there as to my future. Whatever consul- 

 tation she had with him resulted in her deter- 

 mination that I should have the best opportunity 

 obtainable for the kind of study that appealed to 

 me. The same fall she leased a house in Cam- 



