° 1920 J Henshaw, In Memoriam: William Brewster. 21 



Thus he sent the well known collector, Frank Stephens, to 

 California and Arizona in 1881 and 1884. In May and June of 

 1S83 George Ower Welsh made a collecting trip for him to New- 

 foundland. 



In 1883, 1884 and 1885, R. R. McCleod collected for him in 

 Chihuahua, Mexico. 



In 1887 he sent Mr. Abbott Frazer to the peninsula of Lower 

 California. 



In January and June of the same year Mr. John C. Cahoon 

 visited Arizona and Sonora, Mexico, and made extensive collections. 



In many respects Brewster was unusually well equipped as a 

 naturalist and a student of birds. 



He did some excellent systematic work. He possessed a keen 

 eye for distinctive differences and described many new species of 

 American birds. So sound and conservative was his judgment in 

 proposing new forms that practically all the birds named by him 

 have proved valid. 



Nevertheless by preference he was not a closet student but was 

 an outdoor man, to whom the dried skin was merely a symbol and 

 the living creature of infinitely more interest and importance. 

 Naturally deliberate and slow of movement, he was a good and 

 untiring walker in his youth, and possessed excellent eyesight for 

 outdoor work. Indeed his eyesight improved as he grew older, 

 and he was never compelled to have recourse to distance glasses, 

 even during the last years of his life. His hearing was extraordi- 

 narily acute, and his ability to recognize the notes of birds at a 

 distance and amid other and confusing sounds was little less than 

 marvelous, and far exceeded that of any one I ever knew. Along 

 with his phenomenal hearing went a good memory for bird notes 

 and songs, the study and analysis of which always greatly interested 

 him. Indeed he was attracted by the notes and calls of all living 

 creatures, and deemed no time wasted that was spent in tracing 

 them to their sources. 



Here I cannot refrain from a short quotation from his 'Voices 

 from a New England Marsh,' one of many similar paragraphs in 

 his happiest vein, which illustrates his interest in the voices of his 

 humble friends and the emotions they awakened in his soul. After 

 speaking of the songs of the Rusties and of those of the Song and 

 Tree Sparrows he adds: 



