the waterproof envelope of its bark a species of powdery, dry touchwood that takes the flame readily. Still, it is easy enough to start a blaze - a very fine-looking, cheerful, healthy blaze; the difficulty is to prevent its petering out the moment your back is turned.

But the depths of woe are sounded and the limit of patience reached when you are forced to get breakfast in the dripping forest. After the chill of early dawn you are always reluctant in the best of circumstances to leave your blankets, to fumble with numbed fingers for matches, to handle cold steel and slippery fish. But when every leaf, twig, sapling, and tree contains a douche of cold water; when the wetness oozes about your moccasins from the soggy earth with every step you take; when you look about you and realize that somehow, before you can get a mouthful to banish that before-breakfast ill-humor, you must brave cold water in an attempt to find enough fuel to cook with, then your philosophy and early religious training avail you little. The first ninety-nine times you are forced to do this you will probably squirm circumspectly through the brush in a vain attempt to avoid shaking water down on yourself; you will resent each failure to do so, and at the end your rage will personify the wilderness for the purpose of one sweeping anathema. The hundredth time will bring you wisdom. You will do the anathema - rueful rather than enraged from the tent opening. Then you will plunge boldly in and get wet. It is not pleasant, but it has to be done, and you will save much temper, not to speak of time.

Dick and I earned our diplomas at this sort of work. It rained twelve of the first fourteen days we were out. Toward the end of that two weeks I doubt if even an Indian could have discovered a dry stick of wood in the entire country. The land was of Laurentian rock formation, running in parallel ridges of bare stone separated by hollows carpeted with a thin layer of earth. The ridges were naturally ill adapted to camping, and the cup hollows speedily filled with water until they became most creditable little marshes. Often we hunted for an hour or so before we could find any sort of a spot to pitch our tent. As

for a fire, it was a matter of chopping down dead trees large enough to have remained dry inside, of armfuls of birch bark, and of the patient drying out, by repeated ignition, of enough fuel to cook very simple meals. Of course we could have kept a big fire going easily enough, but we were travelling steadily and had not time enough for that. In these trying circumstances Dick showed that, no matter how much of a tenderfoot he might be, he was game enough under stress.

But to return to our pleasant afternoon. While you are consuming the supper you will hang over some water to heat for the dish-washing, and the dish-washing you will attend to the moment you have finished eating. Do not commit the fallacy of sitting down for a little rest. Better finish the job completely while you are about it. You will appreciate leisure so much more later. In lack of a wash-rag you will find that a bunch of tall grass bent double makes an ideal swab.

Now brush the flies from your tent, drop the mosquito-proof lining, and enjoy yourself. The whole task, from first to last, has consumed but a little over an hour. And you are through for the day. In the woods, as nowhere else, you will earn your leisure only by forethought. Make no move until you know it follows the line of greatest economy. To putter is to wallow in endless desolation. If you cannot move directly and swiftly and certainly along the line of least resistance in everything you do, take a guide with you; you are not of the woods people. You will never enjoy doing for yourself, for your days will be crammed with unending labor.

It is but a little after seven. The long crimson shadows of the North Country are lifting across the aisles of the forest. You sit on a log, or lie on your back, and blow contented clouds straight up into the air. Nothing can disturb you now. wilderness is yours, for you have taken from it the essentials of primitive civilization, shelter, warmth, and food. An hour ago a rainstorm would have been a minor catastrophe. Now you do not care. Blow high, blow low, you have made for yourself an abiding place, so that the signs of the sky are less important to you than to the city dweller who wonders if

he should take an umbrella. From your doorstep you can look placidly out on the great unknown. The noises of the forest draw close about you their circle of mystery, but the circle cannot break upon you, for here you have conjured the homely sounds of kettle and crackling flame to keep ward. Thronging down through the twilight steal the jealous woodland shadows, awful in the sublimity of the Silent Places, but at the sentry outposts of your fire-lit trees they pause like wild animals, hesitating to advance. The wilderness, untamed, dreadful at night, is all about; but this one little spot you have reclaimed. Here is something before unknown to the eerie spirits of the woods. As you sleepily knock the ashes from the pipe, you look about on the familiar scene with accustomed satisfaction. You are at home.

BREEDING BROWN PELICANS1

C. WILLIAM BEEBE

It is a great compliment to the conditions under which birds in captivity are kept when such a large and wary species as the brown pelican will breed successfully. For many years these birds have played with sticks in the large flying cage, gathering them into tentative heaps and allowing them again to be scattered. Two seasons ago when a severe wind storm had filled the cage with a large quantity of twigs, the birds seemed to receive a correspondingly strong stimulation and went to work with a will, erecting a firm, well-built structure. One stick at a time, however small, was brought in the very tip of their great beaks and with the utmost seriousness added to the nest, tucked in with gentle pokings, sometimes only to be removed and placed elsewhere. A single egg was laid, but nothing came of the venture.

This year an abundance of sticks and twigs was supplied as soon as the birds were placed out of doors, and nest-building

1 Zoological Society Bulletin, May, 1914.

began at once. Two pairs were thus occupied, and near the edge of the water two nests were built. One nest resulted in failure, but upon the single egg of the second pair of brown pelicans patient incubation soon began.

At last the reward came, and the first young pelican ever hatched north of Florida broke through its shell. There are few more ugly things in the world than a young pelican. Lying prone in the nest it appears wholly lifeless, and of the color and texture rather of a bit of water-soaked beef than a bird. It seems to have no definite organs or symmetry. It is naked, dirty-gray, with tiny, crooked, wormlike wings, and a blind, featureless head. The newly hatched chick is an avian postulate which we must accept but which requires all our faith in Mother Nature and the pelican. Nevertheless in the little creature are the latent possibilities of a splendid winged creature which can swim upon the water, walk on the land, soar for hours at a time on almost motionless wings high in the heaven, and finally dive into the ocean in pursuit of its prey. Surely the pelican in the course of its development offers the utmost antithesis of helplessness and achievement.

After a fortnight our faith has its reward, for the gray nestling worm has sprouted a garb of grayish white down; its eyes have opened, and in the somewhat lengthened beak we may even discern the promise of the future capacious pouch. In place of helpless quiescence it moves about, and when chilly, pushes beneath the warm breast plumage of the mother, and at times clamors for food. In the last newly acquired character lies one of the most interesting facts in the life of this species. It truly calls for its food. Not, to be sure, with the pleasant urging of young chicks, but at least with a decided vocal demand rasping croak, so strong that it may be heard many yards away. The far distant ancestors of pelicans undoubtedly had need of voices. They may even have had a song for all we know. And now, to the chick, as long as it requires food, is vouchsafed a voice. When it begins to forage for itself and takes up the serious business of life that of fishing silence falls gradually upon it, the croak becomes weaker day by day, and soon the hiss

a

of air rushing through the throat is the only sound it can produce. The only vocal sound that is, for it can clatter its beak vigorously when it strives to frighten an enemy. On Pelican Island I have listened with wonder to the uproar from the throats of scores of young birds, while the parents were leaving and returning, all mutely, dumbly busy with their life work. It is a problem, both interesting to the ornithologist and significant to the philosophical lover of wild things, why the ears of the old pelican remain so keenly attuned to the cries of the young birds while they themselves are wholly unable to communicate with one another.

To the few naturalists who have enjoyed watching a breeding colony of brown pelicans, the method of feeding has always been of great interest. Heretofore we have known it in New York from descriptions and photographs, but now we may look forward each season to the opportunity of observing it at first hand in the aviary of the Zoölogical Society. The mother has fed, fish after fish being engulfed and swallowed whole, and after a time she returns to her nest, her great wings fanning the air, yet allowing her to come to rest so gently that the topmost twigs are hardly disturbed. The young bird renews its imperious clamor, and, clad in its fluffy white down, stands in front of the parent, wildly waving the stumpy, crooked organs which represent wings. The croaks never cease until the mother pelican opens her immense beak, points it downward, and the young bird, eagerly pressing forward, pokes its head into the gaping, leathery pouch. Farther and farther it goes, at last actually stepping upon the rim of the beak. At this point the spectators begin to be nervous and more than once have been on the point of summoning keepers to prevent the horrible tragedy about to be enacted before their eyes. All sympathy is with the young bird as it apparently pushes on to its doom, a quick death in the deep interior of the mother. From this point, however, events proceed too rapidly for intervention. Up and up, and then down goes the young bird, until he has pushed his way beyond the beak and down the neck. Then begin contortions which turn the sympathy of the spectators to the mother, for a terrible