68 BOYS' MUSEUMS 



in fact, that while still in my second year of studentship the 

 curatorship falling vacant, I was asked to undertake the 

 office. Here I was in my glory, and although later on the 

 more practical work of the surgical profession had its attrac- 

 tions also, attractions which at one time nearly carried me off 

 into the stream of London hospital practice, I finally returned 

 to the old love, and through a succession of fortunate incidents, 

 the museum under my care, instead of the one little box 

 with which I began, is now the largest, most complete, and 

 magnificently housed in the world. 



I need hardly say that in all my subsequent career I 

 have always looked back at my early attempts at curatorial 

 work with especial satisfaction. The educational power of all 

 work done when young can never be overestimated. The 

 sooner knowledge is acquired the more valuable it is. You 

 have it so much longer and it becomes so much more a part 

 of yourself. One of the first specimens I possessed was a 

 little stuffed bird with a brown back and white underneath, 

 and a very short tail. I saw it in the window of a pawn- 

 broker's shop in my native town, Stratford-on-Avon. I often 

 passed the shop, and looked at it with wonder and admiration. 

 At last I summoned up courage to ask its price. " Three 

 pence," was the answer. This was a serious consideration ; 

 but the financial difficulty being overcome, I carried the bird 

 home in triumph. Having access to a copy of Bewick's 

 British Birds, I identified it as the dipper or water ousel, and 

 even learnt its scientific name, Cinclus ayuaticus. It was 

 wretchedly stuffed. Though more than fifty years have 

 passed since I saw it last, for during an absence at school, it, 

 with many other treasures, fell into places where " moth and 

 rust do corrupt," its appearance is still fixed in my mind's 

 eye, with its hollow back and crooked legs sticking out of 

 impossible parts of its body ; but I was not then so critical 

 as I have since become. My only reason for mentioning it is 

 because that bird became part of my permanent stock of 

 ornithological knowledge, and ever since, whether by a 

 mountain stream in the Highlands of Scotland, or a rocky 

 river in the Harz or Thuringian Forests in Germany, when 

 I see a dipper flitting over the rushing water or diving 



