JUNE 



VERY field ornithologist has more 

 or less of an ambition to beat his 

 own record (and everyone's else), 

 in the number of species he has 

 found in a given time or in a certain locality. 

 It is quite useless to ridicule or ignore this im- 

 pulse, which is sometimes violent enough to be 

 properly called a distemper. It is involved in 

 his system as constitutionally as ever measles or 

 mumps were imbedded in his body — with the 

 difference, however, that having once ''broken 

 out," it is extremely doubtful whether he ever 

 fully recovers from it. However one may smile 

 at the sometimes childish aspect of such an am- 

 bition, he will do well to avoid a too contempt- 

 uous tone in speaking of it, for the same trait, 

 in some one of its thousand manifestations, is 

 discernible in every mind, and is essentially 

 that propensity to which the world is chiefly 

 indebted for all its advancement in the arts and 

 sciences. 



171 



