they were loaded, however,
the result was not always happy, and I tattooed myself with partially
unburned grains of powder more than once.

When I was fourteen years old, in the winter of '72 and '73, I visited
Europe for the second time, and this trip formed a really useful part of
my education. We went to Egypt, journeyed up the Nile, traveled through
the Holy Land and part of Syria, visited Greece and Constantinople;
and then we children spent the summer in a German family in Dresden. My
first real collecting as a student of natural history was done in Egypt
during this journey. By this time I had a good working knowledge of
American bird life from the superficially scientific standpoint. I had
no knowledge of the ornithology of Egypt, but I picked up in Cairo
a book by an English clergyman, whose name I have now forgotten, who
described a trip up the Nile, and in an appendix to his volume gave an
account of his bird collection. I wish I could remember the name of the
author now, for I owe that book very much. Without it I should have been
collecting entirely in the dark, whereas with its aid I could generally
find out what the birds were. My first knowledge of Latin was obtained
by learning the scientific names of the birds and mammals which I
collected and classified by the aid of such books as this one.

The birds I obtained up the Nile and in Palestine represented merely the
usual boy's collection. Some years afterward I gave them, together with
the other ornithological specimens I had gathered, to the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington, and I think some of them also to the American
Museum of Natural History in New York. I am told that the skins are to
be found yet in both places and in other public collections. I doubt
whether they have my original labels on them. With great pride the
directors of the "Roosevelt Museum," consisting of myself and the two
cousins aforesaid, had printed a set of Roosevelt Museum labels in pink
ink preliminary to what was regarded as my adventurous trip to Egypt.
This bird-collecting gave what was really the chief zest to my Nile
journey. I was old enough and had read enough to enjoy the temples and
the desert scenery and the general feeling of romance; but this in time
would have palled if I had not also had the serious work of collecting
and preparing my specimens. Doubtless the family had their moments of
suffering--especially on one occasion when a well-meaning maid extracte