50 SHARP. EYES. 
bowl of the tree, and yelped and piped for an hour 
longer; then he committed himself to his wings and 
went his way like the rest. 
A young farmer in the western part of New York, 
who has a sharp, discriminating eye, sends me some 
interesting notes about a tame high-hole he once had. 
“Did you ever notice,’ says he, “that the high. 
hole never eats anything that he cannot pick up with 
his tongue? At least this was the case with a young 
one [ took from the nest and tamed. He could thrust 
out his tongue two or three inches, and it was amusing 
to see his efforts to eat currants from the hand. He 
would run out his tongue and try to stick it to the 
currant; failing in that, he would bend his tongue 
around it like a hook and try to raise it by a sudden 
jerk. But he never succeeded, the round fruit would 
roll and slip away every time. He never seemed to 
think of taking it in his beak. His tongue was in 
constant use to find out the nature of everything he 
saw; a nail-hole in a board or any similar hole was 
carefully explored. If he was held near the face he 
would soon be attracted by the eye and thrust his 
tongue into it. In this way he gained the respect of 
a number of half-grown cats that were around the 
house. I wished to make them familiar to each other, 
so there would be less danger of their killing him. So 
I would take them both on my knee, when the bird 
would soon notice the kitten’s eyes, and leveling his 
bill as carefully as a marksman levels his rifle, he 
would remain so a minute when he would dart his 
tongue into the cat’s eye. This was held by the cats 
to be very mysterious: being struck in the eye by 
something invisible to them. They soon acquired 
such a terror of him that they would avoid him and 
ae cer os a 
