3-^G 



THE AMERICAN MUSEi'M JOURNAL 



young fellow, Fred shorn, the hrother 

 of Henry Fairfielcl Oshorn. He was 

 drowned, in his gallant youth, forty 

 years ago; but he comes as vividly be- 

 fore my eyes now as if he were still 

 alive. One cold and snowy winter I 

 spent a day with him at his father's 

 house at Garrison-on-the-Hudson. Nu- 

 merous northern birds, which in our 

 eyes were notable rarities, had come 

 down with the hard weather. I spied a 

 flock of crossbills in a pine, fired, and 

 excitedly rushed forward. A twig 

 caught my spectacles and snapped them 

 I knew not where. But dim though my 

 vision was, I could still make out the 

 red birds lying on the snow ; and to me 

 they were treasures of such importance 

 that I abandoned all thought of my 

 glasses and began a nearsighted hunt 

 for my quarry. By the time I had 

 picked up the last crossbill I found that 

 I had lost all trace of my glasses; my 

 day's sport — or scientific endeavor, 

 whatever you choose to call it — came to 

 an abrupt end; and as a result of the 

 lesson I never again in my life went out 

 shooting, whether after sparrows or 

 elepliants, without a spare pair of spec- 



tacles in my pocket. After some ranch 

 experiences I had my spectacle cases 

 made of steel; and it was one of these 

 steel spectacle cases which saved my life 

 in after years when a man shot into me 

 in Milwaukee. 



While in Harvard I was among those 

 who joined in forming the Nuttall 

 Club, which I believe afterward became 

 one of the parent sources of the Amer- 

 ican Ornithologists' Union. 



The Harvard of that day was passing 

 through a phase of biological study 

 which was shaped by the belief that 

 German university methods were the 

 only ones worthy of copy, and also by 

 the proper admiration for the younger 

 Agassiz, whose interest was mainly in 

 the lower forms of marine life. Ac- 

 cordingly it was the accepted doctrine 

 that a biologist — the word "naturalist" 

 was eschewed as archaic — was to work 

 toward the ideal of becoming a section- 

 cutter of tissue, who spent his time 

 studying this tissue, and low marine 

 organisms, under the microscope. Such 

 work M'as excellent; but it covered a 

 very small part of the biological field; 

 and not onlv was there no encourage- 





Courtesy of Charles Scribner's Sons 

 A small handsome river antelope, the saddle-backed or Nile lechwi {Onotragiis megaceras), col- 

 lected at Lake No, White Nile, that at the left an abnormal adult male, lacking white saddle.— Many 

 species of mammals have been collected and their skins and skeletons studied, and yet not one thing is 

 known of their habits ; whereas it is emphatically true that habits and life histories, as well as structure, 

 may show true blood relationship. Through studying the habits ^ of this small antelope, for instance, it was 

 possible to point out its nearest of kin, the lechwi of the Zambezi — and on examination of its structure 

 the discovery was corroborated. The species has been well known for fifty years but confused with the 

 water bucks and kobs 



1 See Roosevelt and Heller's Life Histories of African Game Animals, Charles Scribner's Sons, Vol. 

 II, pp. 519-527. 



