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 THE CONDOle, A ]i-Monthl, Magazine of Western Ornithology Volume XI September-October, 1919 Number [Issued September 30, 1919] AUTOBIOGiAPHICAL NOTES By HENRY WETHERBEE HENSHAW (Continued from page 171) JOIN THE WHEELER SURVEY IN UTAH N JULY, 1872, this chance knowledge, however acquired, bore fruit in a tel- egram from Professor Baird, asking if I would go to Utah as natural history collector on the Wheeler Expedition. Knowing nothing of the expedition or of its objects, I telegraphed for further information, and received it in the shape of the following message: "Report immediately. at Salt Lake City; pay transportation and take receipts". My .inductive powers not being equal to the task of extracting much information from this somewhat brief message, I decided to go to Salt Lake and find out for myself what was wanted of me, a decision not difficult to understand by any young fellow who has read Lewis and Clark and Captain Bonneville and to whom the Great Plains, the Buffalo, and the Indians were words to conjure with. So I "paid transportation, took receipts", and in a few days found myself in Salt Lake City, face to face with Lieut. Geo. M. Wheeler, who, to no small extent, was to be master of my fate for the next decade. Salt Lake City was then but a village compared to what it is now, and the Survey party was camped a mile or two out of the town on the side of one of its grass-bordered streets, through many of which streams of beautifully clear water ran, flanked by pasture land. The country round about being open fur- nished little of interest to the naturalist. Accordingly, after a few days prepa- ration, on July 22, Doctor H. C. Yarrow, in charge of the Natural History work, and myself, duly armed and equipped, left for Provo, some fifty miles to the south, which, owing to its proximity to Utah Lake on one side and to the mountain canyons on the other, and to its orchards and cultivated fields, proved very good collecting ground. Here we spent several weeks before the regular field parties assembled.