CHAPTER XI 



An Impression of Axe Edge 



The ornithologists of to-day are a somewhat numerous 

 tribe, including persons of varied tastes, habits, am- 

 bitions, and, above everything, means. Among them 

 are a few fortunate individuals whose object in life is 

 to seek out the least familiar species, the rarest in 

 the land or the most local in their distribution, or 

 most difficult to get at and observe closely. Many 

 of us would like to do our birding in that way, but few 

 are free to take the whole year for a holiday, to travel 

 long distances, to spend days, weeks, months in the 

 quest — just to see and study some bird in its haunts 

 — a pine forest in Rothiemurchus or some such " vast 

 contiguity of shade," or a beetling cliff on the coast 

 of Connemara, or a boggy moor or marsh in the Shet- 

 lands or Orkneys, or in " utmost Kilda's lonely isle." 

 They must be young, or, at all events, physically 

 tough, and unless they can make it pay by procuring 

 specimens for their numerous friends (dealers and 

 collectors all) they must have money enough to exist 

 without work. These being the conditions, it is 

 not strange that this wide-wandering, perpetual- 

 holiday band should, if we exclude the suspects, be 



117 



