38 SHARP EYES. 



yond the first general features or outlines of things 

 whenever we grasp the special details and charac- 

 teristic markings that this mask covers. Science 

 confers new powers of vision. Whenever you have 

 learned to discriminate the birds, or the plants, or 

 the geological features of a country, it is as if new 

 and keener eyes were added. 



Of course one must not only see sharply, but read 

 aright what he sees. The facts in the life of Nature 

 that are transpiring about us are like written words 

 that the observer is to arrange into sentences. Or 

 the writing is in cipher and he must furnish the key. 

 A female oriole was one day observed very much pre- 

 occupied under a shed where the refuse from the horse 

 stable was thrown. She hopped about among the barn 

 fowls, scolding them sharply when they came too 

 near her. The stable, dark and cavernous, was just 

 beyond. The bird, not finding what she wanted out- 

 side, boldly ventured into the stable, and was pres- 

 ently captured by the farmer. What did she want ? 

 was the query. What, but a horsehair for her nest 

 which was in an apple-tree near by ; and she was so 

 bent on having one that I have no doubt she would 

 have tweaked one out of the horse's tail had he been 

 in the stable. Later in the season I examined her 

 nest and found it sewed through and through with 

 several long horsehairs, so that the bird persisted in 

 her search till the hair was found. 



Little dramas and tragedies and comedies, little 

 characteristic scenes, are always being enacted in the 



