° 1912 J Brewster, In Mernoriam: Henry Augustus Purdie. 3 



recalled them only dimly in after years, although he often spoke 

 of them in general terms, and occasionally the fragrance of an iris 

 or the sound of a rushing brook would prompt him to exclaim, 

 "This reminds me of Adalia." His mother taught him his letters 

 there. After leaving Adalia he and his brother were for some 

 months at a school kept by an American lady in Bonabat near 

 Smyrna, and later Henry was sent to a higher grade English school 

 in the same village. 



In 1852 Henry Purdie came again to Boston with his mother. 

 The next year the family, with the exception of the father, who 

 remained at Adalia, were living in West Newton, where Henry 

 attended the Model School. In 1854 he was one of the first pupils 

 at the English and Classical School, conducted by the late Nathaniel 

 T. Allen. After lea\'ing the latter school he went to one kept by a 

 Mr. Tower in the basement of Park Street Church. During the 

 period just referred to, he and his brother Alfred spent much of 

 their leisure time in boating or swimming in Charles River — a 

 lonely stream in those days, in tracing brooks to their sources, 

 in climbing hills, and in wandering through remote woodlands. 

 They made the usual boys' collections of minerals, shells and other 

 "curios," among which was a huge hornet's nest, secured by rising 

 at three o'clock one summer morning and walking over Weston 

 Bridge to the foot of Doublet Hill where the prize was found in 

 some scrub growth and its rightful owners smoked out with fumes 

 of sulphur. 



As a boy, Henry was not unlike other lads of his own age, except 

 that he was more gentle than most, never indulging in wanton or 

 thoughtless cruelty to any living creature. He was fond of pets, 

 but had little opportunity to indulge his love for them. When 

 about fourteen years of age, he l)egan a series of chemical experi- 

 ments in connection with which he had advice from his cousin, 

 the late Professor J. P. Cook. Apparently- his taste for them was 

 soon replaced by the deeper and more lasting interest which so 

 dominated his after life, viz., that in ornithology, for by 1858, as 

 his brother Alfred is fortunately able to remember definitely, he 

 had already begun to devote himself to it and to collect the nests 

 and eggs of Massachusetts birds. 



Henry's first venture for a living, after some preliminary w'ork 



