When Dr. Durgin asked me to write about the pleasures of a health officer I felt that my task was akin to that of the naturalist who essayed the well-known work on the snakes of Ireland. But I remember that my father, who was much interested in ornithology, once shot a white blackbird, and members of the American Public Health Association, familiar as they doubtless are with the principles of biology and with the strange mutations which from time to time appear among plants and animals, may consider it not entirely hopeless to search for pleasure in the routine of a health officer's life.
In the first place, the health officer may usually draw his salary. This, however, is probably not a very great pleasure, and, indeed, on looking up the matter some time since I found that there were many small communities (and this word small may be taken