64 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XV 
ment and guidance. Tn this instance the son received from his father, although 
liimself not a naturalist, inspiration for a passionate and lasting love for the out- 
of-doors and for all that it includes. The religious influence of the mother de- 
veloped in the child a hopeful courage and exuberant cheerfulness, conducive to 
ambitious effort, regardless of obstacles. The love for the open in general soon 
had a more definite objective in a collection of birds’ eggs, started in emulation 
of a young friend. ‘Tt was in northern Illinois in 1883 that I flushed a Prairie 
Hen from a nest of fifteen eggs. ‘Roy Sears collects birds' eggs; why not I? 
Just one’. (And the memory of those fourteen wasted eggs has haunted me 
ever since!)” Among still more youthful recollections he speaks of several in- 
cidents connected with bird life, which stand out in vivid remembrance — at four 
of being lifted up to see the eggs in a Brown Thrasher’s nest; at five of being 
lowered over a sandbank on a rope, to investigate Bank Swallows’ nests ; and of 
his excitement the next fall at the sight of a migrating host of hawks, which filled 
the nearby trees at nightfall. 
The accumulation of eggs soon led to a desire to learn more of the birds 
’"bemselvcs. Wood’s “Natural Plistory” and a ‘‘Library of Universal Knowl- 
edge” did but poorly appease this hunger for knowledge, although the scanty in- 
formation relating to American birds contained in these books was eagerly 
gleaned from the mass of other matter. Not until he was eighteen did the young- 
student acf[uire a real bird book. Cones’ “Key” (fourth edition), the possession 
of which marked the beginning of a new era in his development. At sixteen he 
had begun systematically to keep written record of his ornithological observa- 
tions. This journal he has continued uninterruptedly ever since its inception, 
and this careful elaboration of observations has done much toward ensuring ac- 
curacy, as well as variety and exactness of expression ; while perhaps the great- 
est value to the mature student is the record of the changing view points of the 
growing youth. 
It was while a student at the University of Washington, working under 
Professor O. B. Johnson, himself somewhat interested in ornithology, that Daw- 
son first conceived the hope of perhaps some day writing a work upon the birds 
of the state. A little later, as a freshman at Oberlin College, he came in contact 
with an older student, Lynds Jones, and it was to Jones that he owed, as he puts 
it, “the unstopping of the ears”. 
“It is marvellous in retrospect”, he says, “to think how dependent I was 
upon a single faculty, that of vision, in endeavoring to learn the life of the birds. 
It was as though I had no ears until Jones pointed out the beauty and variety of 
bird music. Now I take as much pride in recognizing a bird by its faintest chirp 
or twitter as by its color-pattern or fashion of flight. Indeed, in the appreciation 
of birds I should sooner sacrifice eyesight than hearing.” 
The friendship between Dawson and Jones was lasting, and the two men 
did much work together. A paper entitled ‘‘A Summer Reconnoissaiice in the 
West” appeared in the Wilson Bulletin (no. 33, 1900) giving “horizons” of the 
birds seen on an extensive, western trip undertaken by the two companions. 
Although from his earliest years so deeply interested in birds, Dawson had 
only the ministry in mind as his life’s work, and in pursuance of this career he 
entered the theological seminary at Oberlin in 1894, instead of completing his 
college course. On May i, 1895, he was married to IMiss Etta Ackerman, also a 
student at Oberlin, and the following year was spent as a home missionary and 
Sunday school worker in Okanogan County, Washington, a parish then larger 
than the state of New Jersey! In this exceedingly attractive ornithological field 
