as 

 naturalist 



18883 Theodore Roosevelt 



question, I took the Canal Zone and left Congress 

 TO DEBATE me!" — the last phrase being spoken 

 an octave higher than the others, which gave a 

 humorous twist indicating that the remark, after- 

 ward much criticized, was only half-serious. 



As naturalists we always met on common ground. Roose-Mt 

 For Natural History was Roosevelt's first love as 

 well as his last enthusiasm. Entering Harvard at 

 the age of eighteen, he had hoped to devote his life 

 to it; but defective eyes do not connect well with 

 microscopes. His ambition was therefore thwarted 

 by teachers who limited animal study to the micro- 

 scopic field, overlooking the fact that besides pri- 

 mordial slime and determinant chromosomes, there 

 are also in this varied world grizzly bears, tigers, 

 elephants, and trout, as well as songbirds and rattle- 

 snakes — all of them profoundly interesting and all 

 alike worthy of serious study. "When you ask us 

 why we study what we call nature," said an ancient 

 Persian sage, "we stammer and are silent. We feel 

 as the Creator might feel if asked why he made all 

 these things." 



Discouraged as to his original choice, Roosevelt 

 turned to Political Science and then presented his 

 private collection of bird skins to Baird, who later 

 gave them to me, as the Smithsonian already pos- 

 sessed full series of every species. I transferred 

 them in turn to the University of Indiana, and they 

 now rest in Owen Hall in an elegant case, each skin 

 nicely prepared and correctly labeled in the crude, 

 boyish handwriting which the distinguished collector 

 never outgrew. 



At the White House I once had occasion to re- 

 mark: "They spoiled a good naturalist in making 



L 307 :] 



