tained during the winter season when no
longer of use to their builders. Later I was allowed to collect eggs,
and finally the birds themselves. At one time my great ambition was to
become a taxidermist. My family did not actively oppose this desire
but suggested that a few preliminary years in school and college
might prove useful.

I eventually lost my ambition to be a taxidermist but did not lose my
interest in zooelogy and botany. While a student at the University of
Michigan I specialized in these subjects. I was fortunate in having
as one of my instructors Professor Joseph B. Steere, then at the
head of the Department of Zooelogy. Professor Steere, who had been a
great traveller, at times entertained his classes with wonderfully
interesting tales of adventure on the Amazon and in the Andes, Peru,
Formosa, the Philippines and the Dutch Moluccas. My ambition was
fired by his stories and when in the spring of 1886 he announced his
intention of returning to the Philippines the following year to take
up and prosecute anew zooelogical work which he had begun there in
1874, offering to take with him a limited number of his students who
were to have the benefit of his knowledge of Spanish and of his wide
experience as a traveller and collector, and were in turn to allow him
to work up their collections after their return to the United States,
I made up my mind to go.

I was then endeavouring to get through the University on an allowance
of $375 per year and was in consequence not overburdened with surplus
funds. I however managed to get my life insured for $1500 and to
borrow $1200 on the policy, and with this rather limited sum upon
which to draw purchased an outfit for a year's collecting and sailed
with Doctor Steere for Manila. Two other young Americans accompanied
him. One of these, Doctor Frank S. Bourns, was like myself afterwards
destined to play a part in Philippine affairs which was not then
dreamed of by either of us.

We spent approximately a year in the islands. Unfortunately we had
neglected to provide ourselves with proper official credentials and
as a result we had some embarrassing experiences. We were arrested by
suspicious Spanish officials shortly after our arrival and were tried
on trumped-up charges. On several subsequent occasions we narrowly
escaped arrest and imprisonment.

The unfriendly attitude of certain of our Spanish acquaintances
was hardly to be wondered at. They could not believe that