168 ' THE CONDOR Vol. XXI nithologist by his skill with the pencil. He showed me a good many drawings of birds made in his early days, and I particularly remember a spirited pencil sketch of Audubon which hung on the wall of the parlor. This, he said, Audu- bon, years before, pronounced the best likeness of himself extant, and, taking a pencil in hand, made a few strokes which he thought improved it. This sketch was made in 1842, and was reproduced in volume II, p. 84, of "Audubon and his Journals", which appeared in 1897. I find it referred to also in Herrick's "Audubon the Naturalist", vol. II, being no. 16 on the author's list of "au- thentic likenesses" When I met Mr. Sprague he was making drawings of plants for Doctor Asa Gray to illustrate his "Manual" and other botanical works. Gray, who highly valued his mork, pronounced him the foremost of living botanical art- ists. Though Mr. Sprague had long ceased the active study of birds, he was still much interested in them, and occasionally accompanied me in short tramps through the woods adjoining his house. He had never chanced to see a Prairie Warbler, and was greatly pleased when I took him to a nest I had found, when he heard for the first time the song of the bird. Though he had ceased to draw birds, he subsequently made a study of a quail for Mr. Brewster and of a ruffed grouse for me--perhaps the last bird studies he ever made, and excellent exam- pies of his accurate and painstaking methods. BRADFORD TORREY It must have been considerably later than this that Bradford Torrey took up his residence in Wellesley Hills, where he lived till tow?ards the closing years of his life when, as is well known, he moved to California. During my annual visits home I frequently met Torrey, and we had some pleasant tramps together over the Wellesley hills. Though by no means unsociable he was not over easy to become acquainted with, owing to a certain diffidence and shyness which tended to limit the number of his clo?e comrades. The slight barriers to his friendship once overcome, he ?as a delightful companion and a faithful friend. He was an indefatigable student of bird life ?nd an accurate and painstaking observer, and his notebooks are full of interesting observations which, for one reason and another, he was unable to fix definitely upon a given species and he was willing to take nothing for granted. His sketches of the habits of birds and of outdoor life, which have endeared him to thousands of readers, are told in a singularly felicitous manner and with a skilled literary touch peculiarly his own. TRIP TO FLORIDA On October 29, 1870, I sailed for Savannah en route to Florida on a bird collecting trip. The peninsula was then comparatively unknown to naturalists and to me was a land of mystery and romance, rich in ornithological possibili- ties and redolent with memories of Audubon's trip in 1831. Our party con- sisted of i?lr. Maynard and his bride, Mr. E. L. Weeks, an artist who subse- quently attained to fame as a painter of oriental subjects, and myself. We sailed from Boston October 29, 1870, and were in such haste to reach the prom- ised land that we stopped in Savannah, then a quaint southern city, only a day, most of which was spent in a walk out to San Buenaventura Cemetery, and I still retain a vivid impression of its avenues of w?onderful live oaks festooned with long streamers of grey moss (Tillandsia).
