sharp as that of smell in hounds and
pointers, and yet I know an unkempt youth that seldom fails to see the
bird and shoot it before it takes wing. I think he sees it as soon as it
sees him, and before it suspects itself seen. What a training to the eye
is hunting! To pick out the game from its surroundings, the grouse from
the leaves, the gray squirrel from the mossy oak limb it hugs so
closely, the red fox from the ruddy or brown or gray field, the rabbit
from the stubble, or the white hare from the snow, requires the best
powers of this sense. A woodchuck motionless in the fields or upon a
rock looks very much like a large stone or bowlder, yet a keen eye knows
the difference at a glance, a quarter of a mile away.

A man has a sharper eye than a dog, or a fox, or than any of the wild
creatures; but not so sharp an ear or nose. But in the birds he finds
his match. How quickly the old turkey discovers the hawk, a mere speck
against the sky, and how quickly the hawk discovers you if you happen to
be secreted in the bushes, or behind the fence near which he alights!
One advantage the bird surely has; and that is, owing to the form,
structure, and position of the eye, it has a much larger field of
vision--indeed, can probably see in nearly every direction at the same
instant, behind as well as before. Man's field of vision embraces less
than half a circle horizontally, and still less vertically; his brow and
brain prevent him from seeing within many degrees of the zenith without
a movement of the head; the bird, on the other hand, takes in nearly the
whole sphere at a glance.

I find I see, almost without effort, nearly every bird within sight in
the field or wood I pass through (a flit of the wing, a flirt of the
tail, are enough, though the flickering leaves do all conspire to hide
them), and that with like ease the birds see me, though unquestionably
the chances are immensely in their favor. The eye sees what it has the
means of seeing, truly. You must have the bird in your heart before you
can find it in the bush. The eye must have purpose and aim. No one ever
yet found the walking-fern who did not have the walking-fern in his
mind. A person whose eye is full of Indian relics picks them up in every
field he walks through.

One season I was interested in the tree-frogs, especially the tiny
pipers that one hears about the woods and brushy fields--the hylas of
the swamps become a denizen of trees; I had never seen him