ABOVE THE BIRDS 47 



in Greenland or among the Kocky Mountains. 

 How such wanderers come, and why, are among 

 the things that no man knoweth. Enough that 

 they are known to come. And who could tell 

 but one might have come for me ? Here, at all 

 events, was my golden opportunity. Let me not 

 miss it. If by chance, therefore, the lady herself 

 stepped inside for a minute or two, I hastened to 

 take her place. Tourists by the dozen might be 

 watching me curiously, or even derisively, my 

 equanimity was undisturbed. Science is a shield. 

 Vial in hand (my vade-mecum I called it, Latin 

 being in the air), I walked along the platform, 

 with my eyes upon the glass and the paint, and 

 woe to the unlucky insect that was there taking 

 the sun. The yawning mouth of a bottle was 

 clapped over him, the world swam before his 

 eyes, and long before he knew it he was on his 

 way to be a specimen. Strange things happen to 

 insects, though they are not the only ones who 

 have found perdition in a bottle. 



Sometimes I climbed the stairs to the upper 

 floors of the observatory. No matter how high I 

 went, the higher the better. In the warm hours 

 of the day the air at the very top was almost a 

 cloud of tiny wings. " Excelsior " is the insects' 

 watchword. Once, in the upper room, I bottled 

 carelessly a small black-and-white moth. Its 



