A SHARP LOOKOUT 



wanted to appear terrible to human eyes. 

 Then the creatures had sprung out of the 

 earth as by magic. I found some in a fur- 

 row in a plowed field that had encroached 

 upon a swamp. In the fall the plow had 

 been there, and had turned up only the 

 moist earth ; now a little water was stand- 

 ing there, from which the April sunbeams 

 had invoked these airy, fairy creatures. 

 They belong to the crustaceans, but appar- 

 ently no creature has so thin or impalpable 

 a crust ; you can almost see through them ; 

 certainly you can see what they have had 

 for dinner, if they have eaten substantial 

 food. 



All we know about the private and essen- 

 tial natural history of the bees, the birds, 

 the fishes, the animals, the plants, is the re- 

 sult of close, patient, quick-witted observa- 

 tion. Yet Nature will often elude one for 

 all his pains and alertness. Thoreau, as re- 

 vealed in his journal, was for years trying to 

 settle in his own mind what was the first 

 thing that stirred in spring, after the severe 

 New England winter, in what was the 

 first sign or pulse of returning life manifest ; 

 and he never seems to have been quite sure. 

 He could not get his salt on the tail of this 

 207 



