£0 Walter Goodfellow—Some Reminiscences of a Collector


SOME REMINISCENCES OF A COLLECTOR



By Walter Goodfellow


(Continued from page 220)


Apart from the difficulties of catching birds, collectors have many

other trials to put up with, not the least being from inquisitive people

who have no particular interest in birds and only come out of idle

curiosity to pass the time away both on shore and more especially at

sea. These people ply one with senseless questions and are generally

in the way even when they must see you are up to your eyes in work.

I am always only too delighted to show my birds to those who really

appreciate them, but the others often at times drive me to desperation.

I wonder how many times in one part of South America or another, when

I have been feeding by hand young birds, or even cleaning out and

feeding the others, onlookers have exclaimed “ Que paciencia ! ”

So by now I always know what is coming. Once, when going up the

Ecuadorian coast, terribly worried by the inconvenient location for the

cages and trying wind, and hurrying to get finished before the sudden

tropical darkness overtook me, several ladies were plying me with

question after question as to the name of this bird and that, till at last

I asked them if they were not ashamed to ask me, a foreigner, the names

of the birds of their own country. I added that almost any intelligent

schoolboy in mine could have told them. Perhaps not strictly true,

and less I think now than I did at the time, because lately I have hardly

once been to the Zoo without being struck by the ignorance displayed

by the general public on matters of natural history ; adults as well as

children. The remarks one overhears and the myths perpetuated one

thought long dead!


The railway station for Quito is quite outside the city, and it had

been a great work to get the cages and baggage down to it through

all the steep cobble-paved streets from where I lived, when I moved

to the coast. When at last they were all safely deposited on the platform

quite a crowd of well-dressed people rushed them under my very nose

and began tearing off the covers, which had all been so carefully tacked

down, and even turning the cages on their backs the better to see their

contents. Asiatic coolies are equally aggravating when handling live-



