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Mar., 1918 IN MEMORIAM: LYMAN BELDING 53 "When I was about seven years old, our family moved to Kingston, Wyom- ing Valley, Pennsylvania. The mountains surrounding the valley were well timbered, and in autumn the frost colored the foliage rich golden and scarlet, something we never see in California, excepting a few scattered trees and plants that are tinted by the frosts of autumn in the High Sierras. "?Iy happiest hunting days were in autumn. The passenger pigeon was very common, and its cheerful ere-fete-fete--, as it rattled down acorns upon which it was feeding, .was delicious music to me. I have seen millions of pigeons in a single day in spring, when after their usual northern migration, they were driven back by a cold storm. . "One morning early, I was on Ross Hill near Kingston, looking for a deer, the track of which I had seen in the snow the previous day. Soon after the sun appeared, millions and millions of pigeons flew south over the Valley. The flight continued into the afternoon, when patches of bare ground began to ap- pear affording the pigeons feeding grounds. When driven south by cold spring storms, the north branch of the Susquehanna l?iver was a favorite route. The following day I saw the deer I was looking for. It appeared to be pur e white, though I was too far from it to be positive. It swam the river and landed about a mile below .Wilkesbarre, and was shot by two hunters who appeared to be hunting quail "Before I got a gun I often wandered in the woods, sometimes getting home late in the evening and on one .occasion my parents had looked in the open well and other places for me. "When I got a gun I was out early and late with it, neglecting school, though I worked faithfuliy on our farm where the crops needed me, excepting when chestnuts were ripe on the hills I would occasionally steal away and go to the hills for chestnuts. "I must have been a very unpromising boy, but was enjoying life and gain- ing strength and endurance, just what I needed, being naturally frail. I was in a eobbler's shop with some boy companions and told them I intended to go west and hunt buffalo when I got big enough. The eobler said, 'You will never leave this valley as long as your head is hot.' This eobbler's partner said: 'A boy with a gun and fiddle would never amount to much.' I had both a gun and a fiddle. Fortunately I was an excellent reader and we had 'some good books. "I read with great interest l?ollins' Ancient History, Josephus' description of the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans under Titus and was especially in- terested ih successful warring expeditions like those of Alexander the Great. I. did not then'realize the horrors of war. Later, when my sister was in Paris and wrote me of the Louvre, and also mentioned Napoleon Bonaparte, I replied that I would rather have been Shakespeare than Napoleon. I no longer admired military heroes." When a boy, he relates that he Subscribed for Alexander's Messenger, a Philadelphia weekly, and greatly admired its crude wood-cuts. He had an am- bition to be an artist, and while still quite young he had a box of water-colors, and could draw horses, deer, and other animals and objects. In the winter he caught bob-whites by falling lengthwise, on his back, upon the soft snow and packing it upon them after they had plunged into it at the end of a flight. Later, when about sixteen years old, while hunting near Har- vey's Lake, a deep mountain lake surrounded by virgin forest, he narrates that