AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 173 



The thrifty young house-wife decorates her boudoir and sanctifies her 

 "company" china with burnt offerings of sacred ibises and Cat-birds. 



Some of us old-fashioned ones who occasionally venture afield just 

 because we love the look and the smell of the wild, feel richly compen- 

 sated if a day's tramp through the snow yields one little Brown Creeper 

 screwing his way up a tupelo, or a Nuthatch ventriloquist trying to palm 

 himself off as the ghost of a Crow, or a bunch of Juncos flirting saucily 

 their white bound tails. I glean from the public prints that it now is 

 no sort of a stunt to sit on one's back-yard fence in winter and photo- 

 graph Cardinal Grosbeaks, Ruby Kinglets, Bald Eagles, etc., galore.. 

 (?Ed.) 



It was my good fortune not long since to attend a lecture at a New 

 York school. The learned speaker told the story of the wilderness as 

 revealed to him through years of intimate association. He explained 

 at the offset that people less fortunate in their opportunities for nature- 

 contact might have some slight difficulty in digesting the narrative of 

 his experience. I feel impelled to remark that this was a conservative 

 statement. 



Of the many weird and wonderful things he told, two stick out Con- 

 spicuously in my memory. First, it is all foolishness to think that an 

 Osprey eats fish because he likes fish. It is a mere matter of habit — 

 just as some of us like pie and others prefer corned beef, etc. Second, 

 the great mystery of bird migration is no mystery at all, when you 

 know it (as he did). The birds simply follow the crowd. I couldn't 

 help asking him what the crowd followed, but, very properly, he froze 

 me with a stony stare. 



I bought a book once that purported to have been written by a man 

 named Burroughs. It taught me a few little things that somehow made 

 me love the writer, God bless him! It wasn't that the book said so 

 much as that it seemed to sort of coax the reader to get out in the open 

 and do a little seeing and thinking for himself. But that is a good 

 while back. We live in a more progressive age. Drop a nickel in a 

 slot — any old slot — and get a magazine with an authentic account of 

 the Nocturnal Impressions of a Humming Bird who Nested on the North 

 Pole, or the Autobiography of a Retired Woodcock Surgeon, or the 

 Memoirs of a Disgusted Toad, who threw up his opera box because he 

 he couldn't stomach city singing. If you dont see what you want ask 

 for it. 



Who says the "new nature study" isn't a howling success? 



Frank E. Vaughah. 



