46 NEW HAMPSHIRE 



stone quickly, fastened an eagle eye upon the 

 exposed hollow, and if a dark object, no matter 

 how smaU or how large, was seen to be scurry- 

 ing to its burrow, I thrust my fingers into the 

 dirt in frantic efforts to seize it. I knew not 

 which were common and which rare ; my only 

 course was to let none escape. But many were 

 too swift for me, with all my efforts, and of 

 all that I captured in this manner I am not 

 sure that one was " worth mounting." I quote 

 those last two words partly by way of emphasis. 

 They stood for the lowest round in the ladder of 

 my entomological ambition. What I most of all 

 desired was to discover a new species ; next I 

 coveted a species new to New England; after 

 that a species new to Mount Washington ; and 

 last of all a specimen worth saving, or, as my 

 employer said, "worth mounting" — in short, 

 worth a pin. 



My most productive field, like her own, was 

 about the front of the hotel itselE. In warm 

 afternoons flies, beetles, moths and what not are 

 known to drop out of the iavisible, from nobody 

 can teU where, upon the windows or the white 

 clapboards of the house. Here, not once, but 

 with something like regularity, insects have been 

 captured, the like of which have never been seen 

 elsewhere except in the West Indies or Mexico, 



