34 Fisher, In Memoriam: Lyman Belding. [j an 



In the past decade we have met almost yearly for a friendly visit 

 and an interchange of ideas and opinions. Formerly, while still 

 able to travel with comparative comfort, he would come to some 

 mutually convenient point, but during the last five years of his life, 

 owing to increasing infirmities, all meetings were held at his Stockton 

 home. On various occasions he talked of his early travels and 

 adventures, and told of many interesting things which had occurred 

 in his experiences from whaling in the Arctic to trout fishing in the 

 Sierras. Realizing that much of this necessarily disconnected 

 narrative was of permanent value, he was induced after some 

 effort to prepare an autobiographical sketch for the entertainment 

 of the writer. 



Fortunately this sketch, comprising nearly fifty typewritten 

 pages of legal cap, was completed a couple of years before his 

 death and before eye weakness forbade any literary effort. Notes 

 from this sketch are the basis of this paper and of one prepared 

 by Dr. Walter K. Fisher and published in 'The Condor' for March, 

 1918. There is little doubt that the stimulative effect of preparing 

 this autobiography, with the necessary delving into the past, was 

 a pleasing diversion for, with the exception of a daily game of 

 whist with a coterie of old friends and an occasional visit to a 

 moving picture theater, there was little to break the monotony of 

 his daily routine, which was of the simplest kind. 



Lyman Belding, son of Joshua Belding and Rosetta (Cooley) 

 Belding, was born June 12, 1829, at West Farms, Massachusetts, 

 on the west bank of the Connecticut River, not far from Northamp- 

 ton. From the windows of his home he had a plain view of Amherst 

 College, Mount Tom, Mount Holyoke, and other interesting points. 

 The hcmely chaims of the New England landscape made a deep 

 and lasting impression upon his youthful mind, as shown in later 

 years by comparisons which he liked to draw between them and 

 those of distant lands. 



When he was about seven years old, his family moved to Kings- 

 ton, Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania. Here, amid mountains and 

 valleys well timbered with deciduous trees, he developed his fond- 

 ness for hunting, which with him as with many of us, proved to 

 be the forerunner of his ornithological career. The following are 

 his words: "My happiest days were in autumn. The Passenger 



