A SHARP LOOKOUT 31 



cate and sensitive a man's relation to outward 

 nature through his bodily senses may become. 

 Heighten it a little more, and he could forecast the 

 weather and the seasons, and detect hidden springs 

 and minerals. A good observer has something of 

 this delicacy and quickness of perception. All the 

 great poets and naturalists have it. Agassiz traces 

 the glaciers like a rastreador; and Darwin misses 

 no step that the slow but tireless gods of physical 

 change have taken, no matter how they cross or 

 retrace their course. In the obscure fish-worm he 

 sees an agent that has kneaded and leavened the soil 

 like giant hands. 



One secret of success in observing nature is ca- 

 pacity to take a hint; a hair may show where a 

 lion is hid. One must put this and that together, 

 and value bits and shreds. Much alloy exists with 

 the truth. The gold of nature does not look like 

 gold at the first glance. It must be smelted and 

 refined in the mind of the observer. And one 

 must crush mountains of quartz and wash hills of 

 sand to get it. To know the indications is the 

 main matter. People who do not know the secret 

 are eager to take a walk with the observer to find 

 where the mine is that contains such nuggets, little 

 knowing that his ore-bed is but a gravel-heap to 

 them. How insignificant appear most of the facts 

 which one sees in his walks, in the life of the 

 birds, the flowers, the animals, or in the phases of 

 the landscape, or the look of the sky ! — insignifi- 

 cant until they are put through some mental or 



