64 THE CONDOR Vol. XV merit and guidance. In this instance the son received from his father, although himself not a naturalist, inspiration for a passionate and lasting love for the out- of-doors and for all that it includes. The religious influence of the mother de- veloped in the child a hopeful courage and exuberant cheerfulness, conducive to ambitious effort, regardless of obstacles. The love for the open in general soon had a more definite objective in a collection of birds' eggs, started in emulation of a young friend. "It was in northern Illinois in x883 that I flushed a Prairie Hen from a nest of fifteen eggs. 'Roy Sears collects birds' eggs; why not I? Just one'. (And the memory of those fourteen wasted eggs has haunted me ever since!)" Among still more youthful recollections he speaks of several in- cidents connected with bird life, which stand out in vivid remembrance--at four of being lifted up to see the eggs in a Brown Thrash'er's nest; at five of being lowered over a sandbank on a rope, to investigate Bank Swallows' nests; and of his excitement the next fall at the sight of a migrating host of hawks, which filled the nearby trees at nightfall. The accumulation of eggs soon led to a desire to learn more of the birds +he?r..selves. Wood's "Natural History" and a "Library of Universal Knowl- edge" did but poorly appease this hunger for knowledge, although the scanty in- formation relating to American birds contained in these books was eagerly gleaned from the mass of other matter. Not until he was eighteen did the young student acquire a real bird book, Coues' "Key" (fourth edition), the possession of which marked the beginning of a new era in his development. At sixteen he had begun systematically to keep written record of his ornithological observa- tion.. This journal he has continued uninterruptedly ever since its inception, and this careful elaboration of observations has done much toward ensuring ac- curacy, as well as variety and exactness of expression; while perhaps the great- est value to the mature student is the record of the changing view points of the growing youth. It was while a student at the University of Washington, working under Professor O. B. Johnson, himself somewhat interested in ornithology, that Daw- son first conceived the hope of perhaps some day writing a work upon the birds of the state. A little later, as a freshman at Oberlin College, he came in contacl with an older student, Lynds Jones, and it was to Jones that he owed, as he puts it, "the unstopping of the ears". "It is marvellous in retrospect", he says, "to think how dependent I was upon a single faculty, that of vision, in endeavoring to learn the life of the birds. It was as though I had no ears until Jones pointed out the beauty and variety of bird music. Now' I take as much pride in recognizing a bird by its faintest chirp or twitter as by its color-pattern or fashion of flight. Indeed, in the appreciation of birds I should sooner sacrifice eyesight than hearing." The friendship between Dawson and Jones was lasting, and the two men did much work together. A paper entitled "A Summer Reconnoissance in the West" appeared in the Wilson Bulletin (no. 33, x9 ) giving "horizons" of the birds seen on an extensive western trip undertaken by the two companions. Although from his earliest years so deeply interested in birds, Dawson had only the ministry in mind as his life's work, and in pursuance of this career he entered the theological seminary at Oberlin in I894 , instead of completing his college course. On May I, ?895, he was married to Miss Etta Ackerman, also a student at Oberlin, and the fo.llowing year was spent as a home missionary and Sunday school worker in Okanogan County, Washington, a parish then larger than the state of New Jersey! In this exceedingly attractive ornithological field
