birds I should be far less competent to advance arguments, and
especially, my dear sir, to you; but it seems to me that two of the
most self-asserting and hardiest of our families of birds are the
tyrant flycatchers, of which the kingbird is chief, and the
blackbirds, or grackles, with the meadow lark at their head, both
characteristically American.

"Did you ever look over the medical statistics of the half million men
drafted during the Civil War? They include men of every race and
color, and from every country of Europe, and from every State in the
Union; and so many men were measured that the average of the
measurements is probably pretty fair. From these it would appear that
the physical type in the Eastern States had undoubtedly degenerated.
The man from New York or New England, unless he came from the
lumbering districts, though as tall as the Englishman or Irishman, was
distinctly lighter built, and especially was narrower across the
chest; but the finest men physically of all were the Kentuckians and
Tennesseeans. After them came the Scandinavians, then the Scotch, then
the people from several of the Western States, such as Wisconsin and
Minnesota, then the Irish, then the Germans, then the English, etc.
The decay of vitality, especially as shown in the decreasing fertility
of the New England and, indeed, New York stock, is very alarming; but
the most prolific peoples on this continent, whether of native or
foreign origin, are the native whites of the southern Alleghany
region in Kentucky and Tennessee, the Virginians, and the Carolinians,
and also the French of Canada.

"It will be difficult to frame a general law of fecundity in comparing
the effects upon human life of long residence on the two continents
when we see that the Frenchman in Canada is healthy and enormously
fertile, while the old French stock is at the stationary point in
France, the direct reverse being the case when the English of Old and
of New England are compared, and the decision being again reversed if
we compare the English with the mountain whites of the Southern
States."

CAMPING WITH PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT

At the time I made the trip to Yellowstone Park with President
Roosevelt in the spring of 1903, I promised some friends to write up
my impressions of the President and of the Park, but I have been slow
in getting around to it. The President himself, having the absolute
leisure and peace of the White House, wrote his acco