40 THE STORY OF A BIRD LOVER 



pigeon, once a remarkable member of the bird life 

 of eastern North America, still bred in small 

 numbers in the pine woods. Jays and flickers 

 roamed through the orchard almost the entire 

 year. 



One day in the fall, I had just killed a blue jay 

 from a tree in the orchard, when I saw a young 

 man coming toward me, who hailed me. He, too, 

 had a gun. We had some conversation, and I 

 perceived directly that we had mutual tastes. I 

 told him my name, and he said at once, " You 

 are the boy who applied for the permit ; we were 

 wondering who it was." Then I learned that he 

 was Henry W. Henshaw, and that he lived in Grant- 

 ville. He also told me that a friend of his, 

 William Brewster of Cambridge, another young 

 man, had a very considerable collection of birds, 

 and invited me to go with him to see it. We 

 made an appointment to do this at an early day. 



One afternoon we called on Brewster, and our 

 meetings after that were frequent. The group 

 was soon joined by Ruthven Deane, who lived a 

 little way from Brewster. After a w^hile we set 

 apart a certain night in the week when we met, 

 sometimes at this one's house, again at that one's, 

 to discuss birds, and this went on all through the 

 year, until toward the close of it we began to speak 

 of ourselves as the " Bird Club." The next fall 

 our numbers were augmented by Henry A. Purdie 



