SHARP EYES. 19 
him with fatal certainty from a stump, or a rock, or a 
eap ona pole. The phrenologists do well to locate, 
not only form, color, weight, etc., in the region of the 
eye, but a faculty which they call individuality — that 
which separates, discriminates, and sees in every object 
its essential character. This is just as necessary to 
the naturalist as to the artist or the poet. The sharp 
eye notes specific points and differences, — it seizes 
upon and preserves the individuality of the thing. 
Persons frequently describe to me some bird they 
have seen or heard and ask me to name it, but in most 
cases the bird might be any one of a dozen, or else 
it is totally unlike any bird found on this continent. 
They have either seen falsely or else vaguely. Not 
so the farm youth who wrote me one winter day that 
he had seen a single pair of strange birds, which he 
describes as follows: “‘They were about the size of 
the ‘chippie,’ the tops of their heads were red, and 
the breast of the male was of the same color, while 
that of the female was much lighter; their rumps 
were also faintly tinged with red. It I have described 
them so that you would know them, please write me 
their names.” There can be little doubt but the 
young observer had seen a pair of red-polls, — a bird 
related to the goldfinch, 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 showed the youth’s discrimi- 
nating eye and settled the case. J knew it to bea 
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 ? 
