FIRST PROFESSIONAL WORK 75 



hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty 

 birds per day. Sometimes the number exceeded 

 this ; it depended largely on the amount of 

 material brought in. The dull-colored birds, such 

 as some of the sparrows and thrushes, were not 

 particularly desirable as adornments for hats, fash- 

 ion not seeming to appreciate the beautiful shades 

 of brown that nature had given them. As a final 

 touch, which was thought greatly to enhance their 

 beauty, feathers from bright-colored birds of any 

 kind, orioles, scarlet tanagers, and various foreign 

 species from South America were introduced and 

 fastened among the feathers of the bird to be 

 decorated. Song-sparrows and thrushes were 

 often graced with scarlet crowns and blue patches 

 on the rumps, and it needs only a little imagina- 

 tion on the part of the reader to conceive the 

 grotesque results. 



Two points seem to be worthy of emphasis 

 before leaving this part of the subject. One is 

 the value of manual training. Here was a young 

 man apparently furnished with all the intellectual 

 resources of a good field-naturalist, who was 

 seemingly unable to find a market for that which 

 had been acquired by a long and expensive training. 

 As an incident to the intellectual attainment a 

 handicraft was essential, for a naturalist must 

 know how to preserve and handle the material he 

 collects. Just in the beginning this seemed to be 



