nion had a gun in his hand.

Possibly all these birds would have behaved differently another day,
even in what to us might have seemed exactly the same circumstances.
Undoubtedly, too, it is easier, as an almost universal rule, to approach
one or two birds than a considerable flock. In the larger body there are
almost certain to be a few timorous souls,--a few wider-awake and better
instructed souls, let us rather say,--who by their outcries and hasty
flight will awaken all the others to a sense of possible danger. But it
is none the less true, as I said to begin with, that individual birds
have individual ways. And my great blue heron, I am persuaded, was a
"character." It would be worth something to know what was passing behind
those big yellow eyes as he twisted his neck to look once more at the
curious fellow--curious in two senses--who was keeping after him so
closely. Was the heron curious, as well as his pursuer? Or was he only a
little set in his own way; a little resentful of being imposed upon; a
little inclined to withstand the "tyrant of his fields," just for
principle's sake, as patriots ought to do? Or was he a young fellow, in
whom heredity had mysteriously omitted to load the bump of caution, and
upon whom experience had not yet enforced the lesson that if a creature
is taller and stronger than you are, it is prudent to assume that he
will most likely think it a pleasant bit of sport to kill you? It is
nothing to the credit of humankind that the sight of an unsuspicious
bird in a marsh or on the beach should have become a subject for
wonder.

FLOWERS AND FOLKS.

"To know one element, explore another,
And in the second reappears the first."
EMERSON.

Every order of intelligent beings naturally separates the world into two
classes,--itself and the remainder. Birds, for instance, have no doubt a
feeling, more or less clearly defined, which, if it were translated into
human speech, might read, "Birds and nature." We, in our turn, say, "Man
and nature." But such distinctions, useful as they are, and therefore
admissible, are none the less arbitrary and liable to mislead. Birds and
men are alike parts of nature, having many things in common not only
with each other, but with every form of animate existence. The world is
not a patchwork, though never so cunningly put together, but a garment
woven throughout.

The importance of this truth, its far-reachi