if A COLLECTING TRIP 
Give my best love to each and every one and 
remember me as 
Your affectionate son 
Tom. 
Shelbourne Hotel. 
Dublin, October 10, 1906. 
Dear Mother and Father : 
Here we are, quite safe and sound. The bad 
weather delayed the Ivernia and instead of arriving 
at six o’clock yesterday evening (Tuesday) she 
reached Queenstown this morning about three o’clock. 
We went to the Queen’s Hotel, for there was no 
sleeper to Dublin because we had no mails. We slept 
until about ten o’clock, then had breakfast and took a 
short drive about Queenstown, which is really very 
pretty. The day was beautiful and the harbor looked 
very gay with a squadron of warships and the Ma- 
jestic landing her passengers. At 11.55 we took the 
train for Dublin, where we arrived at about 6.30. I 
telegraphed from Queenstown and had lunch baskets 
put on at Mallow and we had a nice little lunch. The 
day has been a pleasant one and the train ride, which 
was so peaceful that it seemed more like a carriage 
drive, very enjoyable. I never saw so many shore 
birds as along the river back of Queenstown. There 
were curlews in flocks of several hundred as well as 
plovers of several sorts and cormorants and oyster 
catchers and turnstones and gulls of several sorts. 
They were very tame and hardly budged as the train. 
ran by. We passed a number of large rookeries with 
many rooks about and saw the jackdaws flying to 
their nests in the towers of Queenstown cathedral. 
