26 A SHARP LOOKOUT. 



sunshine lies warm on the bare ground, you will prob- 

 ably see a grasshopper or two. The grass hatches 

 out under the snow, and why should not the grass- 

 hopper ? At any rate, a few such hardy specimens 

 may be found in the latter part of our milder winters 

 wherever the sun has uncovered a sheltered bit of 

 grass for a few days, even after a night of ten or 

 twelve degrees of frost. Take them in the shade, and 

 let them freeze stiff as pokers, and when thawed out 

 again they will hop briskly. And yet if a poet were 

 to put grasshoppers in his winter poem, we should re- 

 quire pretty full specifications of him, or else fur to 

 clothe them with. Nature will not be cornered, yet 

 she does many things in a corner and surreptitiously. 

 She is all things to all men ; she has whole truths, 

 half truths, and quarter truths, if not still smaller 

 fractions. The careful observer finds this out sooner 

 or later. Old fox-hunters will tell you, on the evi- 

 dence of their own eyes, that there is a black fox and 

 a silver gray fox, two species ; but there are not ; the 

 black fox is black when coining toward you, or run- 

 ning from you, and silver gray at point blank view, 

 when the eye penetrates the fur ; each separate hair 

 is gray the first half and black the last. This is a 

 sample of nature's half truths. 



Which are our sweet-scented wild flowers ? Put 

 your nose to every flower you pluck, and you will be 

 surprised how your list will swell the more you smell. 

 I plucked some wild blue violets one day, the ovata 

 variety of the sagittata, that had a faint perfume of 



