Wben (Brass is <5reen 



young naturalist making his own observations and 

 reaching his own conclusions. I have long be- 

 lieved that fish and some batrachians have this 

 matter of their color under control, but careful 

 experiments by others contradict this; still I am 

 not convinced, and it is this room for suggestion 

 that gives such zest to natural history studies. 



Ill 



I HAVE sometimes wondered what Thoreau would 

 have had to say had barbed-wire fences been run 

 here and there through Walden woods. We know 

 what a picture is before us whenever he mentions, 

 however briefly, a New England stone fence. 



This villainous invention is everywhere about 

 me, and probably nothing is so fatal to a ram- 

 bler's enthusiasm as to leave bits of his clothing 

 and an occasional drop of blood on a jagged 

 wire, when just starting out for the day, at four 

 o'clock in the morning. But why not wait 

 until broad daylight, when even the woods are no 

 longer dark ? I have been asked this silly ques- 

 tion scores of times, and my answer has been short 

 and sharp as the barbed wire " fool." If the 

 dawn has features all its own, it is my business to 

 be astir that early, as I want to know the day's whole 

 history. In this case the whole loaf is eminently 

 to be preferred, desirable as half a loaf may be. 



The principal reason why so few people see much 

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