BOSTON PUBLIC GARDEN 13 



present which he might search for widely in 

 the country and not find. A little brown 

 creeper introduced him to the company of 

 the afternoon and was the first bird of the 

 hosts which since then have marshaled 

 themselves before him. The rarer birds 

 seen on this first visit were a Lincoln's 

 sparrow and a yellow-breasted chat. 

 There were present four or five olive-backed 

 thrushes, a northern water-thrush, a brown 

 thrasher, a ruby-crowned kinglet, an oven- 

 bird, a female towhee, a catbird, more than 

 a dozen white-throated sparrows, and nine 

 other species of birds, making the number 

 identified twenty species. 



So fruitful in spite of the weather was 

 this first visit that it was naturally deter- 

 mined to make daily visits. Thus the prac- 

 tice of making careful observation and 

 taking the census of the birds present each 

 day was begun. The observations and re- 

 cords have now covered nine years. Each 

 subsequent year's observations have begun 

 with the opening of the season in March 

 and continued to almost or quite the end of 



