Autobiography of a Bird-Lover

Abstract

FRANK M. CHAPMAN in his autobiography tells of the cultivation of friendship with Nature for many years. He started in a bank, but in 1886 threw up a most financially promising career for the relative poverty of employment in the ornithological division of the American Museum at New York. His story is that of the rise of his sub-department from the dull and dusty crowded and unattractive cases of perched birds, thousands of such mounted ‘specimen's with no study col lections in reserve, to the finest and most attractive department in any science museum. His job was uphill work, entering, arranging and classifying collections, his soul saved by the employment of all his holidays and spare hours in the study of birds in the wild. Gradually the policy of the Museum evolved and determined itself, so that Chapman's life is a long story of explorations and Nature study, with intervals for the consolidation of his spoils.

Autobiography of a Bird-Lover.

By Frank M. Chapman. Pp. xiii + 420 + 59 plates. (New York and London: D. Appleton-Century Co., Inc., 1933.) 15s.