Q see — soft with agnosticism. To his indoors instruction, Bray 

 had added the outdoors — not difficult in young Wherry's in- 

 stance, who had brought the taste for it from India. Thus he 

 came to make long excursions into what was still a deserted 

 Westside. What he did on these tramps was look. 



Testimony of what he saw appears in an old ledger of whicfr 

 he had possessed himself. Ominously marked "Private!" in 

 huge letters, it opens at once, both front and back. The back 

 carries a date: "River Forest, 111 June 14, 1893." (Wherry 

 had just passed his eighteenth birthday!) There follow many 

 carefully written paragraphs marginally noted as "No 1," 

 "No 2," etc. Their content? They concern "Ampelis cedro- 

 rum, Coccygus americanus, Vireo olivaceous, Dolichonyx 

 oryzivorous juv <?," etc. Really, they are the titles of expedi- 

 tions started at the above date but continued, as we shall see, 

 into 1 894, 1895, 1896. This is an excerpt from under the Coc- 

 cygus title: 



Upper part of body and head olive gray with bronze reflec- 

 tions, below pure white. The primary remiges and the primary 

 coverts, cinnamon colored except at tips which are like the 

 back . . . bill black above, the lower edge of upper mandible 

 and lower mandible yellow, eyes brown; feet lead colored; tar- 

 sus scutellate and feathered like a hawks. 11.75 X 16. length 

 of wing 7. length of tail 5.50. shot it out of a flock of three, 

 which were feeding in some oak trees on the bank of the Des- 

 plaines River. 



On another day he noted: 



I went to the woods this morning at 5 A M and wandered 

 around all morning without getting a decent shot, partly 

 because the weather was cloudy and partly because a calf fol- 

 lowed me around making a great noise in the underbrush. I 

 shot and spoiled, a young male Black and White creeping 

 warbler (Mniotilta varia) and a Wood Thrush (Turdus mus- 

 tilenus) . Spoiled them by having too large shot. 



July 21, 1894, he recorded: 



Went out at 5 A M and walked north through the wheat fields 

 which were nearly ripe and noticed that the bob-o'-links were 

 flocking in the fields. These were large flocks of females with 



