William Hamilton Gibson: artist—naturalist—author

by John Coleman Adams

But his love of nature, like his knowledge of it, was broad and catholic. He was not a specialist in any narrow or pedantic sense. He was botanist, ornithologist, entomologist, biologist, all in one. A butterfly had as much interest for him as an evening-primrose, a chipmunk as a nuthatch. Everything was grist that came to his mill. Nothing could better illustrate this universal love of all living things, than a note which he left, on which he intended evidently to base a sketch. Imperfect as it is, it is an admirable illustration of his method and of his broad sympathy and interest. He begins with several experiments at a title, and then outlines his plan; after which he enumerates the “available episodes,” as he calls them, to fill the outline:

“‘A Rare Day with the Speckled Trout. Speckled Beauties. A Rare Day’s Trouting.’ See Burroughs’s ‘Speckled Trout,’ Prime’s ‘I go a-Fishing,’ Isaak Walton.

“Begin: It was the 29th of June. A glimpse of a large platter of speckled trout, a one day’s catch displayed with pride by a neighbor, revived my old-time zeal and reminded me that there was but one day left in which to beat the record. I consequently start off fully equipped, and meet with an interesting train of episodes, and an accumulation of a basket of specimens,—plants, insects, bird’s nests. Following the course of the stream, the incidents are such as are perfectly appropriate to this setting and the season. A trout occasionally alluded to, as an accessory, jumping, etc.

“Or begin with quotation about ‘Not even a minister is to be trusted on the subject of fish.’ Fish stories. I have one to tell which however it may compare with others has at least the merit of truth. It is true that I once caught forty-nine trout, within an hour; but that was not a circumstance to the fortune which has often since befallen me. My last is a fair sample of these lucky days.

“End something in this vein,—after an enumeration of natural beauties: And, by the way, the trout? There in the rippling pools; for I left them all there! And yet there are those who would have followed my trail, and have brought home nothing but a basketful of dead fish. Finish with some apt quotation or quaint proverb, of how one went and brought back chaff, and another fetched the kernel.”

It is plain that such a man as this did not love Nature for the sake of the contribution she made to his particular sport or his favorite study. He was one of that class whom Professor John Van Dyke has in mind, in entitling a certain book of his “Nature for Its Own Sake.” He was out after anything that mother Nature vouchsafed to put in his way, and he gathered up reverently whatever he found, as something good for him because it came from her. Witness a single incident in which he modestly attributes to fortune what was quite as much due to his own habitual alertness.

“By a fortunate train of weather conditions I was once favored with a phenomenon by which almost the entire vegetable bill of fare of the winter birds, at least in the way of seeds, was spread out before me—brought to my feet, as it were.

“Walking upon the firm and polished snow-crust, picking my way along a rail-fence at the foot of a steep, sloping pasture, I suddenly aroused into flight a flock of small birds from behind the bulwark of drifts with which the fence was hemmed in and partially buried. So loud was the united flutter of their wings that it at first suggested the whir of a partridge, until I saw it dissipated in the flock of smaller fry above the edge of the drift. They proved to be, as I remember, mostly snowbirds, white buntings, and goldfinches, though doubtless the cedar-birds, winter-wrens, tree-sparrows, pine and purple finches, were also among them. Their noisy flight was the signal for a general alarm all along the line, following the fence for several hundred feet, each zigzag corner sending up its winged bevy to perch and twitter upon the upper rails. Almost every projecting beam showed its chirruping sentinel.

“Interested to discover the secret of such a great feathery convocation, I crept up to the edge of the slippery drift and looked over. Beyond the fence rose the steep, white, glistening slope of the pasture, a distance of a furlong or more, its surface mottled with its brown withered vegetation. Following the rambling rails on either side were drifts of the most fantastic form, now and then almost peering above the fence riders, and between them ran a winding valley, in which the old fence seemed to be walking knee-deep in snow. It needed only a second glance into this hollow, whence the startled flocks had flown, to understand its attractiveness for the birds. Its depths were fairly littered with the choicest kind of allurement. The very cream of the pasture had flowed into this trough. It was the hopper which had received the entire wind-blown tribute of the weedy upland that looked down upon it, and of the overhanging woods far up the slope. Here were wind-rows of various seeds which had been dislodged from the weeds and trees and blown along the glassy snow to be caught in this convenient bin. The small goblet-shaped hollows around the projecting grass-stems were full to the brim with their good cheer, and the deeper vales and gullies were marked out everywhere by their brown meandering lines of intermingled chaff and seeds, often to the depth of two inches or more. A happy valley and a land of plenty, surely!

“A single handful of this grist taken up at random presented a surprising variety of elements, offering a wide choice for the most fastidious bird appetite. Curious to test this question further, I followed the fence for a long distance, occasionally sampling the meadow crumbs, and continually discovering some new ingredient of fruit or seed.