ch, and that occasionally
comes down to us in the winter from the far north. Another time,
the same youth wrote that he had seen a strange bird, the color of
a sparrow, that alighted on fences and buildings as well as upon
the ground, and that walked. This last fact shoved the youth's
discriminating eye and settled the case. I knew it to be a species of
the lark, and from the size, color, season, etc., the tit-lark. But how
many persons would have observed that the bird walked instead of hopped?

Some friends of mine who lived in the country tried to describe to me a
bird that built a nest in a tree within a few feet of the house. As it
was a brown bird, I should have taken it for a wood-thrush, had not
the nest been described as so thin and loose that from beneath the eggs
could be distinctly seen. The most pronounced feature in the description
was the barred appearance of the under side of the bird's tail. I was
quite at sea, until one day, when we were driving out, a cuckoo flew
across the road in front of us, when my friends exclaimed, "There is our
bird!" I had never known a cuckoo to build near a house, and I had never
noted the appearance the tail presents when viewed from beneath; but if
the bird had been described in its most obvious features, as slender,
with a long tail, cinnamon brown above and white beneath, with a curved
bill, anyone who knew the bird would have recognized the portrait.

We think we have looked at a thing sharply until we are asked for its
specific features. I thought I knew exactly the form of the leaf of the
tulip-tree, until one day a lady asked me to draw the outline of one. A
good observer is quick to take a hint and to follow it up. Most of the
facts of nature, especially in the life of the birds and animals, are
well screened. We do not see the play because we do not look intently
enough. The other day I was sitting with a friend upon a high rock
in the woods, near a small stream, when we saw a water-snake swimming
across a pool toward the opposite bank. Any eye would have noted it,
perhaps nothing more. A little closer and sharper gaze revealed the fact
that the snake bore something in its mouth, which, as we went down to
investigate, proved to be a small cat-fish, three or four inches long.
The snake had captured it in the pool, and, like any other fisherman,
wanted to get its prey to dry land, although itself lived mostly in the
water. Here, we said, is being enacted a little tra