4 SHARP EYES. 
Whenever you have learned to discriminate the birds, 
or the plants, or the geological features of a country, 
it is as if new and keener eyes were added. 
Of course one must not only see sharply, but read | 
aright what he sees. The facts in the life of Nature 
that are transpiring about us are like written words 
that the observer is to arrange into sentences. Or 
the writing is in cipher and he must furnish the key. 
A female oriole was one day observed very much pre- 
occupied under a shed where the refuse from the horse 
stable was thrown. She hopped about among the barn 
fowls, scolding them sharply when they came too near 
her. The stable, dark and cavernous, was just be- 
yond. The bird, not finding what she wanted outside, 
boldly ventured into the stable, and was presently cap- 
tured by the farmer. What did she want? was the 
query. What, but a horsehair for her nest which was 
in an apple-tree near by; and she was so bent on hav- 
ing one that I have no doubt she would have tweaked 
one out of the horse’s tail had he been in the stable. 
Later in the season I examined her nest and found it 
sewed through and through with several long horse- 
hairs, so that the bird persisted in her search till the 
hair was found. 
Little dramas and tragedies and comedies, little 
characteristic scenes, are always being enacted in the 
lives of the birds, if our eyes are sharp enough to see 
them. Some clever observer saw this little comedy 
played among some English sparrows and wrote an 
account of it in his newspaper; it is too good not to 
be true: A male bird brought to his box a large, fine 
goose feather, which is a great find for a sparrow and 
much coveted. After he had deposited his prize and 
chattered his gratulations over it he went away in 
