42 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



The latter, I think, move by leaps and sudden spurts, 

 their protective coloring shielding them most effec- 

 tively. Wilson once came upon the mother bird 

 and her brood in the woods, and, though they were 

 at his very feet, was so baffled by the concealment 

 of the young that he was about to give up the search, 

 much disappointed, when he perceived something 

 " like a slight mouldiness among the withered leaves, 

 and, on stooping down, discovered it to be a young 

 whip-poor-will, seemingly asleep." Wilson's de- 

 scription of the young is very accurate, as its downy 

 covering does look precisely like a "slight mouldi- 

 ness." Returning a few moments afterward to the 

 spot to get a pencil he had forgotten, he could find 

 neither old nor young. 



It takes an eye to see a partridge in the woods, 

 motionless upon the leaves; this sense needs to be 

 as sharp as that of smell in hounds and pointers, and 

 yet I know an unkempt youth that seldom fails to 

 see the bird and shoot it before it takes wing, I 

 think he sees it as soon as it sees him, and before 

 it suspects itself seen. What a training to the eye 

 is hunting ! to pick out the game from its surround- 

 ings, the grouse from the leaves, the gray squirrel 

 from the mossy oak limb it hugs so closely, the red 

 fox from the ruddy or brown or gray field, the rab- 

 bit from the stubble, or the white hare from the 

 snow, requires the best powers of this sense. A 

 woodchuck motionless in the fields or upon a rock 

 looks very much like a large stone or bowlder, yet 

 a keen eye knows the difference at a glance, a quar- 

 ter of a mile away. 



