28 EYES AND NO EYES 
many a time. In this way the naturalist fits himself 
for writing just a small portion of a bird's life. 
Sometimes the long twenty or thirty miles' walk has 
been to no purpose, and, after giving up the pursuit 
as a bad job, I have turned my face homewards, and 
then found the very bird I had gone so far in search 
of within a twenty minutes' walk of my own door. 
By patient watchings and waitings, on the part of 
many different naturalists, fact has been added to 
fact, until the whole life of a creature, furred or 
feathered, has been placed before the public, in order 
that those whose labours confine them to crowded 
centres of industry, but who have strong sympathy 
with life in the open and the creatures who are able 
to enjoy it, may understand what are the real lives of 
the animals and birds. 
It is a difficult matter to please some of these 
would-be students, however, and a short time ago an 
amusing scene was reported to me. A gentleman, 
who had read a certain article which had been written 
by myself, came many miles to see a woodland river 
and an old weir, the haunt of the otter, which I had 
there described. When he arrived, however, a band 
of workmen had, unfortunately, just finished building 
a new weir, and they had also cut down all the 
alders, willows, sedges, and other growth along the 
