May, 1909 A PROBLEM IN INDETERMINATES 87 directed to me. Perhaps you know what it means to be a markt man in your community--your hobby is your brand, so to speak. Well, I was branded, and so the stranger soon rounded me up; and in our first talk~rest we arranged to get afield, for the stranger actually wanted to get some pictures of nests of western birds. Strange, isn't it, how peculiarly his dementia ran, poor man ?--wanted to get pictures of birds' nests. At any rate it turned out that I could accommo- date him; peculiar, wasn't it, that a poor demented fellow who wanted to photo- graph birds' nests should straightaway find some one who could tell him where the nests were ? To be candid I must say that I had been out over the prairie the day before, and had chanced on a nest of Lark Bunting just ripe for photographing, so I was sure of that for him anyway. Moreover I had aroused a male Curlew into swoop- ing angrily at me, and I knew what that meant. You understand, then, that when NEST AND EGGS OF LONG-BILLED CURLEW I told my new-found frie nd I could show him something to photograph, I felt sure of delivering the goods. So we went afield. My friend didn't know much about birds, for his hobby was pictures. A nest of the Lark Bunting was to him as great a prize as a nest of the Curlew. Not so with me, however, and on our way across the bench I explained to him what great opportunity had befallen him; for it is an opportunity to photograph a nest of the Curlew, if one has just dropt into Montana and never even saw a Curlew. In fact, it is not often that a tenderfoot is granted an opportunity to gaze upon one of the greatest treasures of our great Treasure State, a nest of the Curlew; such an experience is reserved only for the initiated?it is one of the rites of the thirty- third degree of bird nesting, so to speak. All this I explained in fullest detail to my fellow-hobbyist, and be it said to his credit that he appeared to grasp the value of the opportunity. My first objective point was a solitary fence-post, marking the stalking ground
