LIFE IN WASHINGTON 241 
sence of trays on which he could arrange a series of birds 
or mammals, or perhaps, the skulls or some portion of 
the skeletons of these small creatures, he would take 
down the pictures from the wall in the room assigned to 
him in the house where he was boarding or visiting (if 
on a visit long enough to give him leisure to go on with 
his work), and turning them face down, arrange on the 
back of the frames the objects of his study in the order 
in which he wished to study them. 
“My father’s interest in natural history and ornithol- 
ogy, with the allied matters of the National Museum, 
and later, of the Fish Commission, took precedence of 
other scientific studies. Indeed, he could hardly be said 
to have pursued studies in any other line after he left 
Carlisle. During his early life he read and studied in 
many branches and when a professor in Dickinson College 
had charge of classes in physics, and in various directions 
which were foreign to his later work. These earlier pur- 
suits, however, gave him an extensive ground-work on 
topics in which he never considered himself an expert, 
and in which he was, of course, never a specialist. He, 
however, always continued to feel an interest in every- 
thing pertaining to these subjects, and it is safe to say 
that there was no branch of science as it then was of 
which he had not a good general knowledge, sufficient 
to appreciate intelligently the progress of specialists; 
indeed, I have heard a very eminent specialist in lines 
utterly foreign to my father’s work express his amaze- 
ment at the extent of his knowledge in such branches 
outside of his own especial line of work. He kept up 
with everything which was published in general science, 
not to the extent of reading extensively on all these 
subjects, but enough to know what was being done. I 
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