CHAPTER III 



MY DESULTORY EDUCATION 



THIS account of the fighting propensities of the people of Ken- 

 tucky began with the story of my training in arms in my child- 

 hood and afterward. I now return to the process of my better 

 education as a lad passing from childhood to youth. 



At about ten years of age I began to be interested in animals. 

 Rather oddly, this interest was at first awakened by spiders. It 

 is likely that, being of a solitary humor, these lonely creatures 

 aroused my sympathies. I quickly came to know the familiar 

 species and their habits. I remember getting a number of 

 large glass jars from my grandfather, a dozen or more, in each 

 of which I kept some one kind, feeding them and watching their 

 web-making and other habits. I also got into the way of col- 

 lecting and hatching cocoons of various insects. Thence I went 

 to studying ants, of which there were a half a dozen species. 

 I remember, also, a great interest in the common beetles. These 

 fancies were original, for there was no one about me with the 

 least interest in these creatures. My father, though much given 

 to minerals, paid no attention to the wild life except when they 

 menaced his roses or other plants, and as a child I had no in- 

 terest whatever in plants. 



After a year or two of a rather wild devotion to "bugs," 

 which was the subject of much ridicule, I transferred my af- 

 fections to birds. I fancy that the change was due to the fact 

 that when I was about eleven years old there were sundry 

 extensive " flights" of the passenger pigeon, already becoming 

 much reduced in number, but by some change in their migrat- 

 ing movements for a time a very conspicuous feature. For 

 days at a time the sky would be flecked by these birds in end- 

 less flocks, moving this way or that in search of feeding or 



