150 BoLLES, Notes on Whip-poor-wills and Owls. LApril 



NOTES ON WHIP-POOR-WILLS AND OWLS. 



BY FRANK BOLLES. 



With a Foreword by William Brewster. 



Eighteen years have come and gone since Frank Bolles died. 

 It was fittingly said at the time of his death: "Harvard College 

 may get another Secretary but not another Frank Bolles. ' ' Equally 

 evident then as now was the fact that precisely the place he filled 

 and the service he rendered as a nature student and writer could 

 never again be made good. For he possessed qualities which in 

 combination — if not severally — were well nigh unique. Although 

 romantic by temperament and gifted with rich imagination he was 

 exceptionally accurate of observation and no less careful of state- 

 ment, seeing things exactly as they were and afterwards describing 

 them exactly as he had seen them, in language admirably terse, 

 yet so vivid and so picturesque that one could not help wondering 

 at its beauty and effectiveness. Moreover he had it ever at com- 

 mand and was so able to concentrate his thought that some of 

 his most charming and perfectly finished essays were written 

 within the space of an hour or so, in the family sitting room, 

 with half a dozen people close about him talking — he himself 

 perhaps contributing more or less to the general conversation. 

 Unlike most men who have won distinction as field naturalists 

 he took no conscious interest in nature during early boyhood 

 but in 1876, when nineteen years of age and at Dean Academy, 

 Franklin, Massachusetts, he wrote in some notes which Mrs. 

 Bolles still possesses that he was "thoroughly fascinated" with 

 the study of "bird habits and peculiarities." It does not seem 

 to have engaged his serious or at least continued attention, how- 

 ever, until 1884 or 1885 when he set about it with characteristic 

 energy and intelligence, thereafter devoting to it most of the time 

 not required for the performance of professional or family duties. 

 By night as well as by day, at all seasons and in every kind of 

 weather, he was afield in the region about Cambridge or in that 

 accessible from his summer home at Chocorua, New Hampshire — 

 while occasional trips were undertaken to remoter places such as 



