208 LOVERS OF NATURE 



certain of her features; it lies deeper and is 

 probably a form of, or closely related to, our 

 religious instincts. When you go to nature, 

 bring us good science or else good literature, 

 and not a mere inventory of what you have 

 seen. One demonstrates, the other interprets. 



Observation is selective and detective. A 

 real observation begets warmth and joy in the 

 mind. To see things in detail as they lie about 

 you and enumerate them is not observation; 

 but to see the significant things, to seize the 

 quick movement and gesture, to disentangle the 

 threads of relation, to know the nerves that 

 thrill from the cords that bind, or the typical 

 and vital from the commonplace and mechanical 

 — that is to be an observer. In Thoreau's 

 " Walden " there is observation; in the Journals 

 published since his death there is close and pa- 

 tient scrutiny, but only now and then any- 

 thing that we care to know. Considering that 

 Thoreau spent half of each day for upward of 

 twenty years in the open air, bent upon spying 

 out nature's ways and doings, it is remarkable 

 that he made so few real observations. 



Yet how closely he looked! He even saw 

 that mysterious waving line which one may 

 sometimes note in little running brooks. "I 

 see stretched from side to side of this smooth 

 brook where it is three or four feet wide what 

 seems to indicate an invisible waving line, like 

 a cobweb against which the water is heaped up 

 a very little. This line is constantly swayed 

 to and fro, as if by the current or wind, belly- 



