Mar., 1913 WILLIAM LEON DAVSON-- A BIOGRAPHY 65 the birds secured somewhat more than their due share of attention, and various short papers were published as some of the results of the year's observations. Probably the most important of these was "A Preliminary List of the Birds of Okanogan County, Washington", recording 145 species, which appeared in The Auk for April, 1897; His constantly augmenting interest in ornithology bred a desire to abandon the ministry for science, and Dawson returned to Oberlin once more to take his senior year in college, securing a position in the college museum. The dissec- tion of cats in a college laboratory, however, proved much less interesting than the study of birds in a virgin field such as he had just left, and the evangelical interest gained strength once more; so that the following year found him en- rolled as middler in the theological seminary. He graduated from the institution with highest honors, gaining the greatest financial prize awarded for the year. Fig. 16. THE STUDIO, LOS COLIBRIS Following his graduation Dawson returned to Washington, but after a year in Yakima County, in charge of a moribund country church and an equally dis- couraging country academy, he accepted a call to a vigorous city church in Co- lumbus, Ohio. Here the burden of cleaking a big church debt developed an un- suspected talent for "raising money", a most useful faculty in the work to come in later years. The labor involved in this added obligation, however, together with the somewhat uncongenial exactions of a large city parish, caused a physical breakdown which finally decided Mr. Dawson to definitely abandon the ministry, and devote himself entirely to ornithology. Prominent among his parishioners, and a close personal friend, was an ex- perienced book-man, and the two together planned the publication of "The Birds of Ohio". This was published in the winter of 1903-04, and the work tseli met with instant approval, an edition of 5,000 copies being quickly sold out. But the
