Mar., 1913 
WILLIAM LEON DAWSON— A BIOGRAPHY 
6.5 
the birds secured somewhat more than their due share of attention, and various 
short papers were published as some of the results of the year’s observations. 
Probably the most important of these was “A Preliminary List of the Birds of 
Okanogan County, Washington”, recording 145 species, which appeared in The 
Auk for April, 1897. 
His constantly augmenting interest in ornithology bred a desire to abandon 
the ministry for science, and Dawson returned to Oberlin once more to take his 
senior 3-ear in college, securing a position in the college museum. The dissec- 
tion of cats in a college laboratory, however, proved much less interesting than 
the study of birds in a virgin field such as he had just left, and the evangelical 
interest gained strength once more ; so that the following year found him en- 
rolled as middler in the theological seminary. He graduated from the institution 
with highest honors, gaining the greatest financial prize awarded for the year. 
Fig. 16. The Studio, Los Codibris 
Following his graduation Dawson returned to Washington, but after a year 
in Yakima County, in charge of a moribund country church and an equally dis- 
couraging country academy, he accepted a call to a vigorous city church in Co- 
lumbus, Ohio. Here the burden of clearing a big church debt developed an un- 
suspected talent for "raising money”, a most useful faculty in the work to come 
in later years. The labor involved in this added obligation, however, together 
with the somewhat uncongenial exactions of a large city parish, caused a physical 
breakdown which finally decided Mr. Dawson to definitely abandon the ministry, 
and devote himself entirely to ornithology. 
Prominent among his parishioners, and a close personal friend, was an ex- 
perienced book-man, and the two together planned the publication of “The Birds 
of Ohio”. This was published in the winter of 1903-04, and the work itself met 
with instant approval, an edition of 5,000 copies being quickly sold out. But the 
