sponsibilities and threatened to 

 take more of his time he formally 

 resigned and gave himself up to 

 birds completely. "Gave" is the 

 proper word. Although he found 

 professional ornithologists only too 

 lad to accept his services in sorting 

 out bird skins at the museum, there 

 are no computable profits in or- 

 nithology to distribute among the 

 shareholders. It was partly luck 

 that brought Chapman a museum 

 appointment as Dr. J. A. Allen's 

 assistant in 1888. But he was the 

 man for the job. Now the name 

 Chapman is synonymous with birds 

 to thousands of plodding bird lov- 

 ;rs in this country. 



Possibly it is lacking in propor- 

 tion to devote so much of a review 

 to the early years of Dr. Chapman's 

 career. In the forty years since 

 then his experiences have been 

 varied as one of the museum's bird 

 emissaries. He has searched the 

 West Indies, Central America and 

 most of South America for birds 

 and knowledge of birds. In the 

 company of Louis Agassiz Fuertes, 

 who was one of the great ones, he 

 has crossed the Andes and camped 

 in strange places. He has lectured 

 before the world's elect and walked 

 with the late Lord Grey. Once, 

 while he was working at the Brit- 

 ish Museum. W. H. Hudson, "tall, 

 slender, reserved," came to pay his 

 respects. It would be exhilarating 



to learn more about the greatest 

 literary genius that bird watching 

 has yielded, but Dr. Chapman has 

 only a slight paragraph for him 

 among the dinners and lectures of 

 that busy time. 



The life of the world distracts a 

 bird lover from the things he values 

 as true. In the last chapter, describ- 

 ing Fuertes House on Barro Colo- 

 rado Island in the Canal Zone, Dr. 

 Chapman gets back to experiences 

 that lie close to an ornithologist's 

 heart. For Fuertes House is a one 

 room cottage in the jungle with 

 openings cut to the water's edge, 

 and there Dr. Chapman goes alont 

 to watch and to listen and to glidt 

 silently along the shore in a canoe. 

 He has a deep affection for that re- 

 treat; he is ripe for the peace it 

 provides: 



Here, with no other human ele- 

 ment intervening, one can come 

 as close to nature as one's own 

 nature will permit. Whatever 

 there may be for me in the mel- 

 low fluting of the tinamous and 

 strange medley of the wood quails 

 I am free to receive. It would 

 indeed be a rare companion with 

 whom one could share these 

 pleasures. Nor can one enter into 

 close communion when the Demon 

 of Time is behind him. Here one 

 may live wholly in the present 

 without mortgaging the morrow. 

 In the world, every hour is a 

 hostage to the next. Here one 

 may think of the future with 

 some, assurance that it will be a 

 lineal descendant of the present. 



