but because I myself shall soon cease to credit what I now know to be
true. Yet scarcely a month has elapsed since I heard the stealthy
purring of what I believed to be the shoaling undertow--scarcely a
month ago, with my own eyes, I saw that which, even now, I am
beginning to believe never existed. As for the harbor-master--and the
blow I am now striking at the old order of things--But of that I shall
not speak now, or later; I shall try to tell the story simply and
truthfully, and let my friends testify as to my probity and the
publishers of this book corroborate them.

On the 29th of February I resigned my position under the government
and left Washington to accept an offer from Professor Farrago--whose
name he kindly permits me to use--and on the first day of April I
entered upon my new and congenial duties as general superintendent of
the water-fowl department connected with the Zoological Gardens then
in course of erection at Bronx Park, New York.

For a week I followed the routine, examining the new foundations,
studying the architect's plans, following the surveyors through the
Bronx thickets, suggesting arrangements for water-courses and pools
destined to be included in the enclosures for swans, geese, pelicans,
herons, and such of the waders and swimmers as we might expect to
acclimate in Bronx Park.

It was at that time the policy of the trustees and officers of the
Zoological Gardens neither to employ collectors nor to send out
expeditions in search of specimens. The society decided to depend upon
voluntary contributions, and I was always busy, part of the day, in
dictating answers to correspondents who wrote offering their services
as hunters of big game, collectors of all sorts of fauna, trappers,