104 THE CONDOR Vol. XXI 
any books of natural history, so far as I know, but she had a keen apprecia- 
tion of literary excellence, and was familiar with the best in English literature. 
She was a strong admirer of Thoreau’s writings, which, among many other 
good books, she recommended to me while still a lad. 
To her I owe such advantages as attach to a New England training, for 
when my father received an advantageous offer to enter into the book business 
in Chicago, and was inclined to the change, she dissuaded him on the ground 
that no pecuniary advantage, however great, could compensate for the loss to 
the children of an education amid New England surroundings. 
An older brother, who fell in the civil war, had made a small mineralogical 
collection, though probably with no very definite purpose in view, and more 
than once she suggested to me the desirability of making that my own and of 
adding to it. But if I had any interest in minerals, which I doubt, it was not 
sufficient to impel me to study or collect them, though I well remember the - 
little cabinet in which they were stored. 
The Charles River marshes were only a few moments walk from our house, 
and its banks, ponds and ditches were the delight of my boyhood. In its waters 
I learned to swim, and its mud banks and clam beds proved an inexhaustible 
source of pleasure to myself and the other boys of the neighborhood. Many an 
afternoon we spent on its banks ‘‘playing Indian’’, the essential features of the 
game being a camp fire of drift wood and a goodly supply of clams dug from 
the mud flats at low tide for roasting or boiling after the supposed methods of 
the red man, who long before us had utilized the very same locality, as the beds 
of clam-shells testified. 
In the Charles River marshes, too, I learned to shoot long before I owned a 
gun of my own, and, indeed, before my parents knew anything of my ambitions 
in that direction. This was when I was about ten or twelve years old, and was 
made possible because a chum, somewhat older than I, had been presented with — 
a single-barrelled shot gun. It must have been made of good stuff, for when 
our shot gave out we used anything we could lay our hands on for projectiles, 
but found marbles particularly good. Having assured themselves of my com- 
petence to use a gun without endangering my own life or the lives of others, I _ 
was formally commissioned as the sportsman of the family. My principai 
game was the diminutive peeps, with ‘‘grass birds’’ in the late fall, and an oe- 
casional yellow-legs or plover, and, though the game was small and my bags 
smaller still, my enjoyment was immeasurable. 
Like many other boys I was a lover of snakes, and frequently carried them 
home to show to my mother or anyone else whose interest could be counted on. 
They were chiefly green or garter snakes, which in those days frequented a bit 
of woodland on the banks of the river known as Pine Grove. This locality — 
‘later became the site of the Alvin Clarke observatory where Clarke made the — 
big lenses which in turn made his fame known to the uttermost parts of the 
earth. Here, too, was the summer home of certain of our common birds, includ- — 
ing the pine-creeping warbler and the purple finch, with other common specieg : 
which became well known to me even before I fee their names.  é 
On one occasion I learned that not every one was as tolerant of the pres- 
ence of snakes as my mother. On my way home with a couple of snakes in my 
pocket I was accosted by a lady as to the whereabouts of a certain near-by 
street. While I was directing her she suddenly gave a loud shriek, grasped hes 
skirts with frantic haste, and fled as one who had seen a vision. And in a way 
