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do right by her boy.  On what she said about zoology she asked me in all seriousness - "Is a duck a bird?" And the question was echoed by another good woman at table!
[[margin]] Casper Club [[underlined]] meeting [[/underlined]] [[/margin]]
After returning from the Mt. trip V went to San Pedro for a little [[rock?]] & on his return I informed him at Los Angeles.  Hart met us there the 10th & that evening we went out to the Casper Club meeting.  It was very interesting to look around the room and see the rugged honest manly faces of the boys whose articles you had been reading, and also to look on the dull, spiritless faces of the least interesting & realize what it was to their lives to have a spark of living interest like this.
It was interesting to call out their observations & see where they had been and what they had seen.
When H & V left for the south, I came to Venice where I had found there were unusual opportunities to study [[slates?]] birds at close range. [[image - footnote symbol]]
[[margin]] [[underlined]] Water birds [[/underlined]] [[/margin]]
When the tide is low enough the waders gather on the beach, flying on apparently from the lagoons where they [[underlined]] stay during high tide. As [[/underlined]] you walk along the [[image - footnote symbol]] In the canals you can see cormorants diving & fishing & now & then a dabchick or a duck (see Phalaerocorax).
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[[underlined]] Venice [[/underlined]] [[check mark]]
[[margin]] [[underlined]] Water birds [[/underlined]] [/margin]] 
dry sand above the beach the sand seems to be walking away from you (see Aegialitis [[sivosa?]]). But the view up the shore line is most interesting for shore birds are running out ^ [[insertion]] after the waves [[/insertion]] or hurrying back before them like children afraid of getting wet - back & forth, back & forth, myriad small & big forms.  Godwits, willets, surfbirds, gulls ^ [[insertion]] & an occasional cormorant [[/insertion]] make up the population. (see species notes)
The birds have been so tame that they would walk along the shore ahead of you, and when disturbed by a walker would make a circle - perhaps - in the afternoon - cross the [[sun?]] path - & light a little farther along the beach.  But Sunday more people were here and guns were going off all day at the gun club grounds about the marshes & lagoons. On the shore in the afternoon within a mile there must have been 150 - 200 godwits alone.  They were scattered along in small bunches when a man & a little boy in bathing suits came walking along the beach & the man began throwing stones at each group as he came to it, sending the little boy to pick up stones for him! His face was so hard that there seemed no appeal from it - & what could you say to a man of such wantonness.  It made my blood boil with indignation. The