210 RIVERBY 



but the woman whose bonnet does not come up to 

 the mark is at best a blue-stocking." 



So clever an observation upon anything in nature 

 as that is hard to find in the Journals. 



To observe is to discriminate and take note of all 

 the factors. 



One day while walking in my vineyard, lamenting 

 the damage the storm of yesterday had wrought in 

 it, my ear caught, amid the medley of other sounds 

 and songs, an unfamiliar bird-note from the air over- 

 head. Gradually it dawned upon my consciousness 

 that this was not the call of any of our native birds, 

 but of a stranger. Looking steadily in the direction 

 the sound came, after some moments I made out the 

 form of a bird flying round and round in a large 

 circle high in air, and momentarily uttering its loud 

 sharp call. The size, the shape, the manner, and 

 the voice of the bird were all strange. In a moment 

 I knew it to be an English skylark, apparently 

 adrift and undecided which way to go. Finally it 

 seemed to make up its mind, and then bore away 

 to the north. My ear had been true to its charge. 



The man who told me that some of our birds took 

 an earth bath, and some of them a water bath, and 

 a few of them took both, had looked closer into this 

 matter than I had. The sparrows usually earth 

 their plumage, but the English sparrow does both. 

 The farm boy who told a naturalist a piece of news 

 about the turtles, namely, that the reason why we 

 never see any small turtles about the fields is because 

 for two or three years the young turtles bury them- 



