THE CONDOR  \! 
“po MU 
A Bi-Monthly Magazine of Ss! BY 
Western Ornithology 
Volume XXI November-December, 1919 Number 6 
[Issued November 29, 1919| 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
By HENRY WETHERBEE HENSHAW 
(Continued from page 1871) 
EQUIPMENT OF THE NATURALIST 
Y equipment as naturalist was simple enough. A pair of roomy saddle- 
bags enabled me to carry a few bottles for the reception of small speci- 
mens, especially insects, and a supply of cartridges, cotton, matches, and 
other trifles of like nature. I also carried an insect net attached somewhere 
about my person, while a good doubled-barreled shot-gun, slung on the horn of 
the saddle, completed my everyday outfit. Thus equipped and clad in rough 
but serviceable clothing, I have reason to believe that my personal appearance 
was more striking than ornamental. More than once, when I chanced to meet 
a solitary horseman on the lonesome trail I saw him slip a hand furtively be- 
hind to make sure that his gun was ready. Unquestionably my appearance was 
quite out of the ordinary, even in a wild country, where the old saw ‘‘clothes 
make the man’’ is lightly regarded, or not regarded at all, and was, perhaps. 
equally suggestive to the chance traveller of an escaped lunatie or a highway- 
man. The insect net particularly excited curiosity, but when I explained I was 
a ‘‘bug hunter from the Smithsonian’’ I was at once accepted as harmless. 
Two stout boxes, one for supplies as powder, shot, arsenic, cotton, and the 
like, and the other fitted with trays in which to dry and earry bird and mam- 
mal skins, a copper tank of alcohol, enclosed for prudential reasons in a stout 
locked box, and a plant press, were also part of the naturalist’s impedimenta. 
My skinning table was improvised by placing one collecting box on top of the 
other, and a folding stool enabled me to sit down and to skin birds with rea- 
sonable comfort, although several hours work usually developed a number of 
different sorts of backache. 
