407 
ch. xiv] FIELD NATURALISTS 
standing where we had left them in the morning, with 
the white cow herons flying and walking around and 
over them. Heller and Cuninghame at once went out 
to camp by the skin and take care of it, and to bring 
back the skeleton. We had been out about eleven 
hours without food ; we were very dirty from the ashes 
on the burnt ground ; we had triumphed ; and we were 
thoroughly happy as we took our baths and ate our 
hearty dinner. 
It was amusing to look at our three naturalists and 
compare them with the conventional pictures of men of 
science and learning—especially men of science and 
learning in the wilderness—drawn by the novelists a 
century ago. Nowadays the field naturalist—who is 
usually at all points superior to the mere closet 
naturalist—follows a profession as full of hazard and 
interest as that of the explorer or of the big-game 
hunter in the remote wilderness. He penetrates to all 
the out-of-the-way nooks and corners of the earth; he 
is schooled to the performance of very hard work, to 
the endurance of fatigue and hardship, to encountering 
all kinds of risks, and to grappling with every conceivable 
emergency. In consequence he is exceedingly competent, 
resourceful, and self-reliant, and the man of all others to 
trust in a tight place. 
Around this camp there were no ravens or crows ; 
but multitudes of kites, almost as tame as sparrows, 
circled among the tents, uttering their wailing cries, 
and lit on the little trees near by or waddled about on 
the ground near the cook fires. Numerous vultures, 
many marabou storks, and a single fish eagle, came to 
the carcasses set for them outside the camp by Loring; 
and he took pictures of them. The handsome fish eagle 
looked altogether out of place among the foul carrion- 
