THE GUIDE TO NATURE 
1 16 
swamp, but saved His auditors from 
death by heart failure by the timely 
climax that he “woke up” and that it 
was but a bad dream. 
T. Gilbert Pearson, president of the 
National Association of Audubon So- 
cieties, though a “bird man,” is an en- 
thusiastic and well beloved member of 
the Reptile Study Society and, as al- 
ways when speaking at the society’s 
dinners, charmed and fascinated his 
listeners with his stories, wit and 
humor and obvious bonhommie. Mr. 
Pearson is rated one hundred per cent 
for veracity as a snake hunter for he 
told in detail how for years he has been 
hunting rattlesnakes in Florida, the 
Carolinas, Texas and even New Jersey 
and has never yet succeeded in catch- 
ing a glimpse of one, which is some- 
what different from Mr. Gillam’s record 
of bagging an average of three a day 
for one hundred days in Florida. 
Mr. Williams sketched the society’s 
origin, development and program and 
won a lot of space in next day’s New- 
ark daily newspapers by predicting that 
within ten years Newark would cover 
the Hackensack meadows and mi ght 
even absorb Jersey City and Hoboken, 
and that Newark’s opportunity for a 
great contribution to natural science 
would be the erection of a municipal 
reptile house with an auxiliary snake 
park, after the lines of Dr. Vital, 
Brazil’s world famous institution at 
Butantan, Sao Paulo. Brazil, with the 
assurance that as a publicity generator 
it would get Newark in the newspapers 
and magazines of the whole civilized 
world. 
An evidence of a member's enthusi- 
astic interest was the arrival of Amer- 
ica’s noted surgeon, Dr. Howard A. 
Kelly of Baltimore, usually y-clept in 
the newspapers “The Radium King,” 
who came on a flying trip just to eat 
and hobnob with his fellow reptile 
students. 
The Reptile Study Society was or- 
ganized May i, 1916, has six hundred 
members, with one or more in every 
state of the U. S. A., and is rapidly 
growing. Its next annual dinner will 
be late in February, 1922, at some Man- 
hattan hotel, and its next yearly spring 
snake hunt, Sunday, May 7, 1922. start- 
ing from Great Notch, New Jersev.— - 
A. S. W. 
Helping the Boys Get Started. 
BY THEODORE H. COOPER, BATAVIA, N. Y. 
There are days when a person wants 
something to do, when things become 
dull around home and he longs to get 
out and have new adventures and ex- 
periences. 
Few boys care for the wishy-washy 
kind of “nature study,” but if the 
reader resembles me he will like to go 
out to the woods in his neighborhood 
and climb the biggest tree he can find, 
and imagine himself a monkey or an 
Indian, or go through the woods like 
a pirate looking for loot to take home. 
Is your eye as sharp as an eagle’s? 
Can you detect a crow’s nest among the 
branches, or a branch itself which is 
worth noting because it is so sinfully 
crooked or unusual in some other way? 
W ould you make a good detective ; can 
you ferret out insects hidden under 
loose bark, or see the squirrels, birds, 
etc., before they see you? Supposing 
you had to live in the woods where 
there are wild animals, are you cunning 
enough and strong enough to climb a 
tree quickly? Do you know the best 
roosting places in the trees of your lo- 
cality? Is there a cave where you could 
get in out of the rain as the cave men 
used to do? 
The other day, when I was in the 
woods, I saw an owl and a large turtle, 
although such things are not plentiful 
around here because the woods have 
been cut off considerably. 
Almost everybody has a collection of 
something or other. Some collect 
stamps and old coins ; others, Indian 
relics, old guns, etc. ; still others have 
curious stones, birds’ eggs, sea shells, 
or they trade samples of these for 
strange and interesting things from 
other parts of the world. I have col- 
lections of all these things, and have 
obtained some by exchanging. 
What I want to do is to help boys 
get started in collecting the things that 
interest them most. It doesn’t matter 
where you live, or in what circum- 
stances you are at present, write to me, 
telling me what you are especially in- 
terested in and what vou have to trade, 
if anything, and I will help you to get 
what you want, if I can. Perhaps you 
are interested in astronomy, micro- 
scopy, chemistry, or some other de- 
partment of science. If you are at all 
interested, please correspond. 
