450 Notes and News. [^ 



Graduating from the English High School of Boston in 1898, he decided 

 to go into business, rather than to put his family to the additional expense 

 of sending him through college; and on January 1, 1899, went to work in 

 Yamanaka's Japanese store in Boston. 



Becoming dissatisfied with the somewhat narrow possibilities and un- 

 congenial atmosphere of his position, he decided that he would like to 

 study landscape architecture, and entered my office as a student. 



Quiet and careful, with no end of energy, he became a firstclass draughts- 

 man. While he never pretended to be a botanist, he acquired an all-round 

 working knowledge of the trees and shrubs of Northeastern North America, 

 and of the garden varieties of herbaceous perennials. Superintending a 

 good deal of planting and other outdoor work, he became an expert in the 

 handling, planting and pruning of nursery stock, as well as in the building 

 of roads, grading, etc. and in the handling of men. 



Besides having a sharp eye, McKechnie was a very careful and reliable 

 observer, and his ornithological records were remarkable for their neatness 

 and scientific accuracy; his personally taken collection of New England 

 eggs was beautifully kept; and the skins which he prepared were always 

 particularly well made. He was also a photographer of no mean ability. 



He collected a library of books on birds and mammals, and had an almost 

 uncanny ability for unearthing rare old volumes and papers, which, with 

 an innate Yankee propensity for trading, he usually acquired with prompt- 

 ness and dispatch. 



He was not always successful in his quests, however, for I remember how 

 after the death of Joseph M. Wade, McKechnie, who had known him well, 

 spent weeks in rescuing priceless old books and papers, Wilsoniana and 

 Auduboniana, from piles and barrels en route to the dump, to which they 

 had been consigned by an over-efficient housekeeper, only to find that these 

 treasures, which he had been led to believe had been left to him by Mr. 

 A\ "ade, belonged by rights to some heirs who were fighting in the courts 

 over his estate. McKechnie wisely placed these papers in a safety-deposit 

 vault, refusing to give them up to any of the unappreciative litigants, till 

 the courts should have decided to whom they properly belonged ; and then, 

 as he could not afford to buy them himself, made arrangements whereby, 

 through the generosity of Mr. John E. Thayer, the papers went to the 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, where they could be safely 

 kept for posterity. 



McKechnie had fine taste in a lot of things, and was particularly happy 

 in his choice of friends, of whom he had many. One of the squarest men 

 I ever met in all the years in which we worked or played together, there 

 was never an unkind or hasty word or even thought; and I never knew 

 him to say or do an unkind thing. No matter what he might be asked to 

 do in the exigencies of a busy season, he did it gladly and to the best of 

 his ability. 



In the Spring of 1911, he first showed signs of breakdown, and went on a 

 trip with A. C. Bent to Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, in the hope that 



